People Share Their Food-Related Petty Revenge Stories

From Redditor u/teeveesnack:

So my boyfriend and I went to the beach a couple of weeks ago, and considering it was midweek, it was pretty empty. So we walk for a bit, find a nice quiet spot, and set up our towels. Honestly there were like no one on the beach.

Ten minutes into tanning, these three girls walk up and set their stuff RIGHT NEXT TO US (the entire beach is STILL empty). They set up their things and begin chatting extremely loudly about the most unbearably obnoxious things (“I don’t understand why he wouldn’t like me, I mean I’m ticking all the boxes”) not to mention they’re eating and leaving their rubbish on the beach.

So after about an hour of listening to their bullsh*t conversation and cackling laughter, I’m kinda getting pissed. I mean we walked this far down the beach to get away from the occasional couple of people around. I keep my cool, and I notice they all go for a swim, leaving their food out as they do.

About 5 minutes into their swim, I notice a couple of birds (crows) come along and start picking open their Pringle container. Now for those who don’t know, crows are VERY smart birds. Together they help each other eat the entire contents of the container and begin to rummage around the other food.

At this point, the girls notice and are trying to call out to us to scare off the birds. My petty revenge part? I pretend I can’t hear them, and roll onto my stomach to continue tanning. By the time the girls got out, all of their food was gone.

They were pretty grumpy so they packed up and left. And I finally got to enjoy the peace and quiet I had originally hoped for.

From Redditor u/HorrorIron443:

To preface, I love my MIL and value and appreciate everything she does for my family. But she really leans into her role as a grandmother and has said, “I’m a grandma, I can do whatever I want,” whenever we ask her to respect our food choices for our kid. This means spoiling her grandkids with sweets and treats against her kids’ wishes at every visit. Her kitchen has full cookie drawers at all times. I once watched her give my 8-year-old nephew a full angel food cake “just to see what he would do” (spoiler: he ate the full thing and then got sick).

So over the weekend we’re staying at her house, and my 3.5-year-old son is very well aware that she’ll give him whatever he wants. It’s breakfast time and he’s asking for ice cream and cookies, to which I say no and redirect him to his banana and yogurt. She gives him the chocolate chip cookies anyway, and I say, “I’d appreciate you not feeding my son cookies before 8:30 in the morning.” She just smiles and says, “Oh, come on, let him live a little!”

Later that morning, my wife and I are out shopping at one of those beach/tchotchke stores (it’s a coastal town, you know the type), and I overhear someone else say, “Who would want a fart-noise maker on a keychain??”

Well… this guy.

My MIL absolutely HATES potty humor and my son is a 3.5-year-old boy, so yeah, farts are the funniest thing in his world right now. I bring it home and it goes exactly as I predicted – she hates it and he loves it, but she can’t say anything because she sees how much he’s enjoying himself. The thing has six different noises and he’s absolutely laying into it, having a blast, and all-around cackling.

So my MIL is grumbling about how disgusting it is and how she hopes it breaks, and I just shoot her a grin and say, “Oh, come on… let him live a little!”

From Redditor u/collegekit13:

One night after getting home from work one of my roommates had eaten a lot of the ingredients I had purchased to make a meal. I went to his room and asked him to go replace them ASAP as I wanted to cook dinner and eat. He shrugged and said he was already at work and he can go in the morning (he worked customer support from home).

I was pissed and said I needed them now and he told me to go get stuff myself and he’d Venmo me. I pointed out that it was pissing cats and dogs outside and I don’t own a car. He laughed and just shut his door in my face, saying, “Not my issue.” I ordered food but due to the crappy weather there was a 2-3 hour delay (the whole city got flooded and roads were closed).

I grabbed my phone and spent over an hour entering chats (opening and closing) with the support devision of the company he worked for. As I was about to give up I finally saw my roommate’s very unique name in the greeting message. I then spent 2 hours of my life making his life miserable. From demanding to be sold products that never existed, to asking for a manager, to telling him about my imaginary husband’s scrotox. I stayed in the living room and listened to his screams of frustration as I wasted his time and ruined his productivity and target stats at work (they are supposed to do about 2 chats every 15 minutes). Towards the end he even broke script and started begging me to start making sense. At one point I was crying tears of laughter as he smashed his keyboard on the floor and came in the kitchen to smoke.

I forgot to mention that he started complaining that some woman was driving him nuts at work. I asked him, “[Name] giving you a hard time?” And he went pale… Safe to say he hasn’t touched my food in a while.

From Redditor u/fourthtriumvir:

This happened back in freshman year of college. I was in the common area for my dorm hall with the RA for the hall and another hallmate (HM). The RA was making cinnamon rolls for everyone, and he left the room for a minute. While he was gone, HM grabbed the icing pack to hide as a joke. The RA came back in. The following dialogue is an almost verbatim transcript of what was said.

RA: Where is the icing?? YOU took it! (pointing at me)

HM: No, I took it, I have it right here (holding it out)

RA: Don’t try to cover up for fourthtriumvir, I know he took it.

ME: He’s literally holding it in his hand right now, what are you talking about?

RA: I know you actually took it, and you’re just trying to frame him. I’m not going to let you have any of my cinnamon rolls, and I’ll even give HM an extra one for being honest.

A week later, the RA called a hall meeting to announce a new policy. Since the end of the year was coming up, they wanted to clean out the fridge. So any food still in the fridge in the two weeks before move-out without a name on it would become fair game for anyone to eat. Once solidly within this two-week window, I searched the fridge and found the RA’s last pack of cinnamon rolls without his name written on it. Then I went and asked the RA if I could borrow his baking sheet (he was the only one on the hall who had one). I then cooked his cinnamon rolls on his baking sheet. He came into the common area just as I pulled them out.

RA: Are those MY cinnamon rolls??

ME: Yes, you didn’t have your name on it.

RA: You cooked them with MY baking sheet??

ME: Yes, and now I’m going to let everyone have one except for you.

From Redditor u/Sudden-Pineapple-821:

I used to live with a roommate a few years ago. She was a friend of mine for a very long time and she had some habits I was unaware of until I lived with her. One of my last favorites was her eating habits. This girl ate like a pig! She never ever closed her lips while chewing, and would always take more than her fair share if there was a shared meal. She would do things like cook steaks over and over in the same pan and leave the grease/butter in the pan on the stove in between for days/weeks and then got mad at my cat for jumping up there to eat some of it. I never ate her cooking because I didn’t trust it at all for obvious reasons. The worst habit though was taking food off of your plate while you were eating. I resigned to eating in my room or outside just to avoid this. The dog begged less than she did! I asked her to stop so many times and she never listed to me. So this is how I fixed it and also where I get really petty.

There were two things I know about this woman. She’s got the palate of a toddler. Salt and pepper on a dry a** piece of meat, ketchup is spicy, fresh herbs who? She loves mac and cheese.

So this is what I did. Unlike her, I live for spicy. I grow some crazy hot peppers every year and just love the feeling of a toasty mouth. I was at the store and found some pepper jack cheese. Not any pepper jack though. Ghost pepper jack. I brought that bad boy home and made some mac and cheese. I went the whole 9 yards with it too with the crusted top and everything. I waited until just before she got home from work and sat my butt down with a nice plate of my spicy mac and cheese. She walked in to see me eating this stuff and this time actually asked me if she could have some of it off of my plate. I casually told her that I didn’t mind at all but just neglected to inform her that the cheese did indeed have a kick. Even for me I was struggling to eat this stuff with a straight face.

She took a big bite of it. Her reaction was unchanged at first and then it started to… twist. I think that’s really the only appropriate description of that facial expression. Her face got bright red and I watched the tears and beads of sweat form on her forehead. As she ran to the kitchen for milk, I casually said, “You know, that stuff does have a bit of a kick to it. Probably should’ve warned you.”

She came up with many new and creative insults but she never took food from me again. Do what you gotta do!

From Redditor u/dodgethem:

I used to take my lunch break at the same time every day – 12 to 1. I don’t eat breakfast (just coffee and lots of water), so my lunch is essential and I can’t just skip it.

My calendar was blocked, but my boss (newly promoted, power-tripping) started scheduling meetings right in the middle of it. The first couple of times, I let it slide. Figured maybe it was urgent. But then it became a pattern. I pushed back and reminded him that it was during my break, and he said, “Well, we all have to make sacrifices sometimes.”

Cool. Got it. Next meeting, I showed up with a full plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Had my camera on and mic unmuted, slurping and chewing, occasionally giving thumbs up while mid-bite.

A few days later it repeated, so I brought sticky wings. Last week on Thursday it happened again; glad I still had my pizza.

He finally asked, “Do you have to eat during the meeting?” I smiled and said, “We all have to make sacrifices sometimes.”

It’s Friday today. We didn’t have any meetings during my lunch hours this week.

From Redditor u/asdf_qwerty27:

My old college roommate didn’t know how to cook or do dishes and didn’t go food shopping much. This led to him eating my food, especially my leftovers, as those were prepared meals. I would use my leftovers to meal prep for the week and told him to stop, as it was expensive as well as inconvenient.

The behavior did not stop, and he actually seemed to be eating more of my food out of spite. To punish him, I baked a chocolate cake with habanero peppers and mixed the frosting with wasabi. I labeled it with my name and a bold “Do Not Eat” and waited.

This guy has a very low tolerance for spicy foods, so I thought he would take one bite and quickly realize the error of his ways. About two days later, he and a couple of his friends got really drunk while I was at work and decided to dig into my food. Somehow, they ate about a third of it before realizing, and when they inevitably went to throw up from over-drinking and eating spicy foods, they got hit by the cake a second time. I don’t know for sure, but it couldn’t have felt good coming out the back end.

When he asked me why I made this monstrosity, I told him I found a chocolate habanero recipe online that I wanted to try. He stopped eating my cooking after that.

From Redditor u/im_rickyspanish:

I worked at a call center, and we all sat in teams of between 8 to 12 people. One of the guys on my team was the type that never brought anything to the team potlucks but would eat more than anyone, more often than not. We also had potlucks at least once a month on our team, maybe more.

In November of that year, management held a competition to see which team could donate the most money for a local shelter or something like that. One guy on our team wanted to win so badly – haha. No idea why. The prize was a pie from this local bakery, so nothing crazy. He just wanted to win. Long story short, every person on the team donated aside from one. The last night, it was neck and neck with another team that had another person who was also way too competitive… haha. Anyway, he was asking everyone to look for change in our desks or our cars.

So, of course, the guy that never brought food to a potluck was the one who hadn’t donated. We asked him if he had change on him. He said he did, but he wasn’t donating. And I quote, “Not even a quarter.” This guy was a real piece of work. I should also say I could not stand him. I could go all day, but think Dwight from The Office – but with no redeeming qualities at all. He used to clip his toenails at his desk.

So we won, thanks to our crazy guy going to an ATM – I’m not kidding, haha. The team decided we wanted a cheesecake. I decided I didn’t want d-bag to have any. I sent the team an email saying something along the lines of, “We won. Anyone that donated is welcome to some cheesecake.” Within five minutes, my manager pulled me aside and said I couldn’t exclude anyone at potlucks, which was the rule. I explained this was different because everyone donated money to a charity and it was a reward. Long story short, my manager surprisingly agreed with me. So all day, every time I got up, I saw d-bag staring at that cheesecake in the middle of our area.

At the end of the day, there were one or two pieces left, and the dude was just sitting there, waiting for everyone to leave so he could take them. I was second to last there, and it was obvious what he was doing. I know this was petty AF, but I picked up the last pieces and mashed them into the garbage can while making eye contact with him. I got in trouble the next day because he was a little b*tch and complained. It was worth it though. It’s not always easy to get guys like that “back,” but I jump if I ever see one.

From Redditor u/suprmexp:

So my roommate has this terrible habit of “just borrowing” my stuff… usually food. I’ll grab some snacks, leave them in my room, and by the time I’m craving then… boom, gone.

Last week, I splurged on this giant bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. They were MY special treat after a rough week. I put them in my room with a note that literally said, “Jake, I will END you if you eat these.” Naturally… they disappeared the next day.

Now, I’m not into yelling or drama. I prefer petty revenge. So I came up with the most harmless but glorious prank.

Jake has a desk job and hates getting up once he sits down. So the night before, while we were hanging out, I snuck into his backpack and filled the entire bottom pocket with a bunch of loose Cheetos (like not even in a bag!). I crushed them into Cheeto dust too, so it was extra messy.

Next morning, he grabs his laptop and notes like usual. What he didn’t realize is that he had a meeting with his boss later. He reaches in his bag at work, and BAM!!!!!!! bright orange Cheeto apocalypse all over his important paperwork and laptop.

I got a furious text: “DUDE. WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BAG?!”

He was mad for a day, but then admitted it was fair play. He’s also stopped stealing my snacks (so far). Petty revenge complete.

From Redditor u/Andrewqr1012:

So there was this event at a bar that I was planning to go to this weekend and I asked this guy to be my date that night as I don’t like being alone in crowded unfamiliar places. At first he seemed quite enthusiastic as he messaged me a lot about it. One time, he causally mentioned how expensive going out in NYC has become, which is true. I went, “No worries, I will pick up the tab and we will have a good time.” I genuinely did not think of it as a big deal since I am not the most frugal person in the world.

So the night before our supposed date, I wanted to confirm everything and messaged him that well, “We can also grab something to eat beforehand, what kind of food do you like?” He got back to me, saying there is a sushi place in Queens he wants to try. Initially, I was thought this was bizarre, as the bar is in the West Village and if we do what he wants, I’d have to forfeit most of the night to be in Queens. And the only reason why we are even hanging out is because I wanted to go to this bar. So I made a logical response, suggesting we could get something else near the bar. He became unresponsive. When I pressed for a confirmation from him for the itinerary, he said he needed to think about it.

At this point, I’d realize he really takes me for a meal ticket. He’s trying to get me capitulated to his demands, as it’s already Friday night and I am running out of options of people still free and available, which as matter of fact I was. He really derailed my plan. And, I pulled out my phone and booked myself a $400 17-course omakase at a very nice place in the Village. I had blast with the insanely delicious meal and I posted the picture of the sushi to my Instagram stories. He messaged me later, claiming he’s sorry and he got busy with family, blah blah blah. I blocked him immediately.

From Redditor u/BranMoffTarkin:

I come from a family of six: my parents, my older sister, my older brother, my little brother, and me. Often, in order to bribe us into good behavior, our parents would buy us our favorite candy to munch on in the car. Now, I’ve never exactly been a giving person – not huge on sharing just for the sake of sharing. My parents, however, were trying to raise respectful and generous kids and often forced me to share things even when I didn’t want to.

That’s all fine and good, except that my sister abused this system. See, she would say she didn’t want a bag of candy, then once we were on the road she’d start taking candy from all three of the brothers. That really pissed me off. I didn’t get candy often, as my mom didn’t like feeding us sugary food, so when I got my own bag of Sour Patch Watermelon I wanted to eat every last one myself. Besides, my parents would always offer to buy her a bag of candy for herself; she would just refuse because she knew she could leech off the rest of us. So after a point I started refusing her requests for candy. But that didn’t fly with my mom, because that was “being selfish,” so she would force me to hand over the candy. One time I even said when I purchased my bag at CVS, “Sister, I’m not going to give you any of my candy. If you want Sour Patch, buy your own right now.” “I’m fine,” she responded, “I don’t want a whole bag of candy.” Fast forward 20 minutes into the car ride, my father was requisitioning a candy to give to my sister as I sat fuming.

This went on for years. My whole life, really. And I hated it. I would hide my candy when I got it, I would try to keep it out of her reach, but always a parent would intervene.

Fast forward to my sister’s college graduation. She is now 22. I am a senior in high school at this point, and we’re up at her school at a fancy restaurant celebrating after she had graduated that morning. In attendance are all immediate and some extended family, some close friends of my sister, and her long-term boyfriend, who I was meeting for the first time. So, enough people for the following to be embarrassing to my family.

Our meal ends and my mother offers to buy a nice dessert for anyone who wants it. My brothers, my dad, and I all take her up on it. I ordered a vanilla bean cheesecake with a burnt sugar bird’s nest on top. My mother repeatedly offers to buy my sister anything she wants, but my sister says she couldn’t possibly eat a full dessert right now and turns it down every time.

The food arrives, and everyone is staring at mine. I’m sitting right at the head of the table in full view of everyone, so it’s hard not to look, and aside from the cake slice being large and delicious-looking, the burnt sugar bird’s nest is huge and ornate, hollow on the inside like an old-timey brass globe or something. Honestly, it was pretty impressive.

And right as the food gets placed in front of us, my sister says, “I’ll just have a bite of everyone’s.” At this point, I’m seeing red, having flashbacks to all the times my food has been stolen. Logically, the right thing to do would’ve been to just hand over one bite. I mean, it was her graduation, it was a huge cake, it would’ve been no loss. But it had become a matter of principle.

So, the moment she says this, in one fell swoop, in full view of everyone at the table, I sweep up my slice of cheesecake and stuff the entire thing into my mouth at once, shattering the sugar nest, crumbs falling everywhere, in front of my whole family and some college students close to my sister who, again, I’d never met in my life.

My sister stares, appalled, and says, “Did you do that just so I wouldn’t get any?!?” And I look at her, cheeks ballooning out like a chipmunk, face covered in cheesecake and graham, dead in the eyes, and nod.

There was a fair bit of shocked silence at that moment and in the very tense car ride home. But to this day she never asks for anything from me anymore.

TL;DR: Sister always steals my desserts, so I shoved an entire piece of cake in my mouth in front of strangers and family alike to prevent her from getting any.

From Redditor u/Tentacle-Bride:

Mom takes pride in her beans recipes. My mom is from Mexico and can make a lot of beans, you could say. My mom loves beans.

My dad used to make fun of my mom’s cooking. He would laugh and make fun of my mom’s beans. Fried beans – oh, they’re rotten? Soupy beans with pork rinds – oh, they must be rotten? Beans with salsa – oh, they must be rotten? One day, Mom buys us children pizza but still makes beans for my dad. He always bragged about how Mexican he was because he would only eat traditional Mexican food if it was available.

“Hey, why do these beans taste funny?” My mom waited till he finished eating his beans. “Because those were rotten beans. Now you do know what rotten beans taste like.” Dad ran to vomit. All of us kids laughed. Dad never said anything my mom cooked was bad or rotten.

From Redditor u/GortSmith:

Way back in my struggling to get through college days of yore, I worked part time at the Burger King near my apartment for some extra scratch. This BK was in a pretty sketchy part of town, and neither the facilities, nor the employees, nor the clientele was exactly upper crust.

Now this is not going to be a story of spitting/pissing in someone’s soda or putting their bun down my pants. I would NEVER do something unhealthy or gross to someone’s food. Nobody deserves that, plus, where is the art? The finesse?

All my co-workers were lazy people with sh*tty attitudes. The exception (other than me) was this mousy high school girl who worked the drive through on weekends. She was one of those wide-eyed, meek girls who looked barely old enough to work, and really should have been at a kiosk in the mall or something, but for whatever reason she worked at this BK.

All drive-throughs have their share of crap to deal with, but the drive-through at this BK was particularly nasty. It was a never-ending parade of vicious and strangely demanding customer orders. For example, individual cars would often want to order separately for all 6 people in the car during the busy times. If you told them “no” you would get cussed by the entire car, and if they actually stuck around to get their order, one of the drinks would end up blasting into the drive-through window as they sped away cussing. People would bang on the windows, yell, throw stuff, and if it wasn’t stuff like that, it was just people frequently being really mean and threatening. Like I said, it was a sketchy part of town.

Also, for some reason, a lot of people who came to this BK had especially picky and specific orders. A very common thing was to order the original chicken sandwich (the one that is long, not a regular circle-shaped sandwich), load it up with extra toppings, and ask for it cut in half – turning it into a mini-submarine sandwich. I don’t know why this was such a thing at that BK, but it was very common. The order usually went like this:

“I want the original chicken sandwich with extra lettuce, extra mayo, extra pickles, extra tomato, and extra ketchup. And when I say extra ketchup I mean extra ketchup, because ya’ll never put enough ketchup on anything. And make sure it’s HOT! Ya’ll never heat up the sandwich enough. And I want that sandwich cut in half. You hear me? Last time ya’ll didn’t cut it in half! How am I supposed to eat a sandwich that big if ya’ll don’t cut it in half? Don’t make me come in there… sh*t. Better get it right.”

Typically this didn’t bother me, as I only worked in the kitchen making all the orders and was just focused on getting through the shift. But on days when that nice girl worked, it made my blood boil listening to all the crap she had to endure through her entire shift. If people asked for crazy stuff nicely, I didn’t care. But when the a**holes would bark and be mean to her, I would look for especially petty ways to mess with their order.

If someone was yelling about their food not being hot enough, it got microwaved for 2 minutes instead of 15 seconds. Anything with cheese came out like lava. Berating her for 5 minutes about making sure there was enough ketchup? Enjoy your ketchup sandwich, wrapped in 4 wrappers to keep it from leaking everywhere. “Make sure that bacon is crispy, I don’t want no soft bacon!” Into the fryers your bacon goes, until every strip is as hard, brittle, and dark as your soul.

But my masterpiece was when the “load up the original chicken sandwich and cut it in half” people acted like a**holes. I would load that sandwich up just like they demanded, with every damn topping they screamed for. Lettuce piled up to the sky. Gobs of ketchup and mayo, oozing through the mountain of tomatoes and pickles that were expertly stacked between the two stalest buns I could find. Nuked for 2 minutes in the microwave.

“And don’t forget to cut it in half! How am I supposed to eat a sandwich if ya’ll don’t cut it in half?!”

Oh I didn’t forget. I always remember to cut it in half. THE LONG WAY.

TL,DR: Act like a jerk in the drive through, I will cut your sandwich in half the long way.

From a former Redditor:

We have this amazing Italian place near us. Their meatballs are made of pork, lamb, and beef – truly things that melt in your mouth.

The hard part is that my girlfriend is a very attractive Hispanic woman. The owners of this restaurant, as I have heard, are from Sicily. When she goes in to order our meatball subs, they load up her order. Each sandwich has five of these wonderful mixed meats with Parmesan cheese. Flirtatious, happy Italian men ogling to fulfill her order. Now if I go in to order the same (white man, blonde hair, blue eyes), they are short with me, don’t offer options, and tell me the amount. They wanted to charge me extra for Parmesan cheese. I literally get four meatballs per sandwich. When I get my food, each sandwich is short a wonderful spicy meatball.

The Petty Revenge: A few days later I called asking for the manager. I told him that I was the editor of a popular food critic column for the local paper. I went on to ask him several questions about their foods, menu, and pricing. At the end, I told him that I had sent both female and male critics to judge their menu. When I explained that our female critic was being hit upon and offered more than our male critic, he went into full-on damage control. I said I would publish my report in the next week. Of course, that never happened because I wasn’t a food critic.

Since then, when I go in I get my five meatballs on my sandwiches.