20 Times People Let Their Enemies Self-Sabotage

1.

I work as a teacher and we had an ex-manager guy who decided to get into teaching late. He had lots of pretty horrible habits (eating other people's lunches, perving on the female teachers, squeezing people's shoulders painfully hard as a 'matey' gesture) but the habit that this story is about, is how he tried to use weaponised incompetence to get people to do his tasks for him. None of it was really important. He just seemed to enjoy talking people into doing things for him. So he comes up to me one day with a USB data stick in his hand. Apparently it has a copy of a previous year's exam that it was his responsibility to update and edit. He'd taken the file home and his daughter had done the update (really dude? Roping family into doing your paid government job for you?). He wanted me to copy the file from the USB back into the server, replacing the original file he'd copied. It was literally click and drag between the USB and the file server. I flat out refused and said it was part of his responsibility and I was too busy with my own tasks. He proceeds to loudly and publicly proclaim to the entire staffroom that I didn't understand how difficult it was for people of his generation to learn computer technology and that I really needed to help him out. That he was currently doing a computer course but this (dragging a file between two folders) was too difficult for him to sort out. I let him go on for about a good 5 minutes about how horrible I was for not helping the poor helpless old man out, until I just as loudly asked him "How the hell did you get the original file from the server onto the USB in the first place?" You could have heard a pin drop in that staffroom. He walked off and copied his own goddamned file. u/joalheagney

2.

I was accused by a neighbour of reversing out my drive and hitting his car. He gave me the date and time I had allegedly done it, and pointed to a (small) scrape on my car that supposedly matched perfectly the location of the dent on his. This was 7 weeks after the alleged event, by the way. I said it wasn't me but told him to contact his insurance and we'd see what they said. Few weeks later I get a letter from my insurance asking what had happened, to which I responded with the date I had bought my car (and updated my insurance) - two weeks after the supposed bump. He never spoke to me again but I used to give him a cheery wave every time I saw him glowering at his window. u/Gazcobain

3.

An old boss who was awful to me after I took an extra few days of bereavement. She was just not smart so I emailed her a recap of a meeting we’d had about said days off. She responded not only confirming what she’d said but throwing in a bit of racism. I escalated. I’d been at the company in a different location for 8 yrs with an outstanding track record so I had some credibility. 2-3 weeks later my team was called into a last minute meeting where her early retirement was announced and my colleague saw her crying in the parking lot later that day (her last day!). I really don’t hate anyone generally but that made me so happy and looking back I still hate her lol. u/Objective-Amount1379

4.

When I practiced family law I saw this often on the stand. Turns out if your opponent is crazy most of the time all you need to do to reveal that is give them a microphone and mildly question their story. The best, however, was in Motion to Withdraw hearings. For context, I hated these hearings. I dreaded them. I already felt like a failure for having to withdraw from a case (95% of the time because the client couldn’t/wouldn’t pay me, but sometimes because they turned out to be uncooperative and/or combative with me). They were not difficult to win, however. Inevitably if I simply asked the (ex-)client when and how they intended to right their retainer they’d start listing off excuses about how they don’t and never will have the money to do so. It’s heartbreaking, but it also proves my point. The clients who were uncooperative, however, were the best. I’d read off a list of times they cursed me out, ignored my advice, and threatened me and my staff, then just wait. You could watch their blood boil on the stand, followed by completely unhinged justification as to why no lawyer could reasonably work with this person. “Mr. Jones, can you explain why you threatened to ‘shove a phone up my paralegal’s ass’ if she called you again?” “She calls me every fucking week with another fucking thing that I have to do! You’re supposed to be handling my case! It’s why I hired you! I don’t have time to be searching through my emails and getting bank records and bringing you papers every damn day! And every time my retainer is empty for like a day she calls to remind me to refill it! I’ve got other things to pay for, like the damned child support you put on me when I left! How rude can you be, right? Right? I swear if I have to hear her damned voice one more fucking time I’m going to drive over there and slap the shit out of her!” “Your honor, I rest my case.” u/CrimsonYllek

5.

In a meeting with my project manager who has not been in the office or worked a proper full day for MONTHS. she has increasingly been annoyed by people bypassing her to get things done by telling me and her other direct reports what to do. I was about to answer a question for stakeholders, she told me to let her speak one sentence and will let me have my bit. I did as I was told, and she told the stakeholder a completely wrong thing about the system we were handling and made a complete fool out of herself. She got sacked this month. u/Choiaera

6.

Years ago I worked extremely hard on preparing a presentation for a tech conference. It would be my first speaking gig. I was nervous af. I practiced. I refined. I got advice. I practiced some more. My manager was generally a nasty woman but she was supportive of this. Though she never once saw or heard my presentation. We travel to Vegas. It turns out there was a far greater demand than they expected, so they moved us to the main stage room. There were expecting about 500 plus walk-ins. I was 10x nervous af. Well, immediately prior to the start, she noticed a very well known media person and their photographer sitting in the front row. She got all excited and insisted that she was going to co-deliver it. She even went so far as to put her name on title slide. So... I of course was fuming. We go on stage, she does a decent intro and then I start in. She keeps interrupting so I just let her run with it. It reminded me of a morning show. A bunch of people, with overwhelmingly fake smiles talking over each other. This was a deeply technically topic with a live demo. She fumbled each slide worse than the next. And then she got to the "Live Demo" slide and... froze. I had the wherewithal to let her die. It was gloriously brutal. We had a, let's say, confrontation after. I left within 2-3 mos. She got fired shortly after. Oh, and the media people she was prancing for left immediately before the start. I think they were just sitting there from the prior session. Perfect. u/kooknboo

7.

At my current job, part of my duties is to do trailer audits (make sure people are unloading/loading safely) and I was training a new member for the position to do the job. After a few weeks, it turns out that the other person wasn't doing ANY aspects of the job, instead they were just mingling like it was a cocktail party. When asked why they weren't doing anything, they say it was because they were never trained. Well, turns out that due to past complaints about this particular person management put them on a PIP, that if they got any type of training they were to have a piece of paper documenting what kind of training it was, who trained them and management sign off, with all party's signatures. When they pulled the file that said they were indeed trained in all duties of the job, they just sat there silent and was fired. They were fired because they pulled the same stunt in every department of the building, and mine was their last chance. u/Express_Topic_4081

8.

Guy stole a presentation from me, this is 25 years ago. We hated each other. When he started presenting I realized I had made a huge error, didn’t say anything. Let him get through it. Asked him about the error, he couldn’t answer. This was in front of COO. Got fired, not for just that, he was an overall douche. This was before everyone was on PCs, had one printer in one room. u/Bmilvis

9.

I was doing a mortgage for a French guy in Miami Beach that had a French realtor. Even though both were completely fluent in English, she frequently did asides in French having no idea I spoke the language. When they settled on a property and we were riding the elevator down from the condo she told him that look, these guys are scumbags, and they're going to screw you over and I have a much better person that you can work with (even though the way foreign investment works is identical throughout the state). Towards the end of the ride, I say to the guy in fluent French that we would be happy to compare our proposal with whatever her people could come up with and it's his choice but certainly we would like to work with him on this and any future investments. He starts laughing his ass off, and she was completely mortified. He went with us and fired her as his agent. On the spot. u/austexgringo

10.

During my very long and exhausting divorce, my ex husband kept insisting he was ready to settle, we would schedule a conference with my lawyer and I, and then pushed papers around the table for 2 hours. He would just argue over petty details rather than actually discuss anything. This happened a few times. I was incredibly frustrated because I genuinely walked into this wanting to compromise so it would be over quickly. But that was never an option. Note that I hired a lawyer and he did not - he was convinced he could do it on his own better. So after a few rounds of this, I got the impression that he was trying to waste my money until I could no longer retain my lawyer and then he thought he would have the upper hand. I made less than half of what he did at the time and my lawyer's retainer fee wiped out my entire savings so it was a very real concern. My suspicions were confirmed when one day as we were walking out of my lawyer's office, he told me this, word for word while chuckling. I passed this on to my lawyer who actually cackled and told me "let him." It was then that I learned that we were 6 months out from being married 10 years and at that point, I would be entitled to a sizable part of his pension upon retirement. She let him play his games for 6 more months without saying a word and then finally took our case before a judge 5 days after our 10 year anniversary. Not only did I get part of his pension, but she also got the judge to order him to pay almost all of my lawyers fees. The beauty of it was that it 100% his fault for playing games. u/littleirishpixie

11.

I let the lady who changed lanes into me run her mouth about how I rear ended her before pulling the cop aside to show him my DashCam footage. u/ThrowingChicken

12.

Several years ago my older brother was fighting for custody of his son with his ex-wife. As the first custody hearing date approached, they were exchanging [un]pleasantries over text and my brother ended up saying something along the lines of, "I'm not continuing this conversation. I will see you on the 15th." The ex-wife told him, "The hearing is on the 25th dumbass." So of course instead of correcting her, my brother just allowed her to keep thinking it was the wrong date, and she missed the first hearing entirely. It became the first of many mistakes she made in the court system that eventually led to my brother and the woman who is now his second wife winning full custody of his son. u/Damn_Furries

13.

We had a catered lunch at work. There was a sushi platter along with all the usual condiments. My stupid manager (whom I despised very much) slathered her maki roll with wasabi. She looked at me and said: "I didn't know sushi was served with guacamole". She then shoved two pieces in her mouth simultaneously. Exactly 3 seconds later, she began to sweat profusely and spat out a sludge of half-chewed maki rolls and wasabi. After recoveing from the shock, she yelled "What kind of guacamole was that ?", not realizing it was not guacamole at all. u/osiris1213

14.

I'm working on a job site and the architect is there one day. I've been given some light fixtures for the sconces in a leasing office lobby. The fixtures are meant to be hung from a ceiling, they can't be installed on a wall. I attempt to convey this to the architect, but he brushes me off and just tells me to follow the prints. I turn to the apprentice and say, well you heard the man, put them up. A bit later, we hear the crashing of glass. The architect asks what was that? I said, your light fixture. As I picked up a broom and dustpan to go clean up. u/Ohhhhhhthehumanity

15.

Our friend group had one guy I had personally cut off because he was a terrible drunk. Another friend of mine was having a cookout and decided to invite the guy I had cut off despite me saying he was going to do some stupid shit. Fast forward into two hours into the cookout, the friend I had cut off from my life got drunk and decided it'd be funny to sucker punch a guy with aspergers...everyone was telling him how big of a piece of shit thing that was to do...but he laughed and shrugged and played it off as no big deal...as the aspergers guy was holding back tears. I didn't have to do a fucking thing, he showed everyone who he was. everyone stopped fucking with him after that. Good riddance. u/JakeSkywalkerr

16.

I reminded my ex-wife the divorce court was the next day, and was invited to Get Fucked. So I went by myself, she failed to appear and pissed of the Judge so that he asked what would be my desired outcome for assets and Custody of the kids. He wrote down whatever I wanted and I could hear her screams when she read the Orders from 3500km away. u/comforablynumb15

17.

A former coworker decided to blast profanity at me for having used a company truck typically assigned to him from the night prior. His biggest problem was that I destroyed the seat with my big fat ass. I calmed down as much as I could and called my supervisor who rushed over and sat us both the company office. With the exception of a few head nods and "yes" answers, I let my coworker dig himself deeper and deeper. He was a very loud and bombastic character so it was easy. Supervisor advised him to collect his personal belongings and take a few days off to cool down. He was then fired after 3 days rest. As for the truck seat, I forgot to reset the lumbar support on the seat. u/Kinenai

18.

I’ve written about this before but my half sister moved in with my ex-husband the day I moved out. They swore they weren’t sleeping together (I didn’t ask, they told me without prompting). So I saw no reason to tell my ex that my sister had herpes. After all, they said they weren’t sleeping together. Guess who was on Valtrex two month after the divorce. u/BronxBelle

19.

I'd asked our very macho and loud manager for a raise, and he went on a ten minute rant about how "kids these days" thought there was money lying around just because we worked in a luxury dealership. Lots of condescending "sweethearts" and "honeys" thrown in for the fun little misogynist cherry on top. He got so loud and frothy I shut down a bit, but my face stayed blank. When he noticed I wasn't cowering or seemed to change my mind he started offering a marginal raise. I reflexively lifted one eyebrow at the ridiculousness of it all, and he sighed, and went up significantly. Got a solid raise, a better position, and somehow his respect for the rest of my time working there. u/BergenHoney

20.

As I was being fired from a job, the district manager requested we record the conversation. He thought I was gonna be very upset, so I obliged. Then when he started to tell me why I was being fired he started with, “You are gonna be graduating college soon, and we want to make sure we get ahead of you leaving us.” I very calmly asked he send me the recording right after he said that. Then later that day I called a lawyer. I now have no student loan debt.u/JRTHEAMAZING