Like the title says, what’s the best story you have of personally “sticking it to the man”?
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That was a satisfying, then infuriating story. Thank you!
Ha, thanks. It’s pretty much my only “sticking it to the man” story, so at least it’s a good one.
The ending is a little less infuriating when you realize the old miser lady probably called back to get those account fees refunded (I reversed the refunds I did‡) and was told by someone else (who wanted to keep their job) that she was out of luck (those were legit fees). She most definitely would have said something like, “well, the other guy I talked to said he was going to refund two of them” (as if we don’t hear that all the time) and then still being told no.
I’d like to think she reflected on that and realized that her entitlement caused her to get nothing, but people who complain like that usually don’t do that kind of soul searching.
‡ Not really reversed, just didn’t finalize the process after she went on her tirade.
I once made a music video for Sony Universal.
They paid me £4k.
They liked it a lot and asked if I would do another. I asked if the fee was the same and they said I’d be doing it for exposure.
I told them I’m capable of exposing myself.
I stuck it to them.
I’m still poor, but at least I’m not working for it.
Hell yeah! Working “for exposure” is a crock of crap. Good for you for knowing your worth.
Young me went to a strict, highly academic school where we had a lot of rules written in the back of a pocket diary we had to carry around (to log homework, sports training and fixtures, etc).
I was also a little rebellious and I hated being told what I could or couldn’t do.
One day, our Art teacher is off sick and an English teacher who hated my insubordinate guts sat in on the class and made us do sketchbook work in silence.
I’d just got my hands on the first MP3 player to hit the market (by doing a lot of gardening work for family members). So I popped in my ear buds and started sketching.
A minute or so later, the buds are yanked out of my ears and the English teacher confiscates the MP3 player, saying it’s against school rules to have one. I, naturally, object rather passionately and get myself written up for having a banned item in school.
Later that day, I’m pulled into one of the disciplinary staff member’s office to be given an ear full. After they finished chastising me, I pulled out my little pocket diary, flicked to the back, and read:
“Students are not permitted to possess nor use CD or cassette players on school grounds”.
Me: “This is an MP3 player. It’s neither of those things.”
After a long silence, I’m handed back my MP3 player and told to not bring it back again.
The next term, the new diary has a mysterious little amendment to the rules, now mentioning “audio” players instead.
But that very term I also spotted that “All students must have a school tie” with no specification that one must actually wear it…
I had an almost opposite scenario to this happen to me in middle school.
I was done of my classwork for the day, so I was playing games on my iPod Touch. Teacher notices it, confiscates it, and tells me I can get it back at the end of the day at the front office. Not so much getting an earful, just trying to get me to focus.
At the end of the day, I go to pick it up and the teacher says “I didn’t realize this wasn’t a phone. I would’ve let you keep it if I’d known”
I got pulled over a few years ago only a week after installing a dashcam system and the cop claimed I didn’t have my belt on and only put it on as I was pulling over for him.
I had it on the whole time. I had proof that I had it on the whole time with my dash cam system. The cop wanted to swing his dick around though and not listen or watch the footage which I could have easily gotten on my phone and instead insisted on calling me a liar and giving me a ticket.
I was so ready to provide the evidence and prove my innocence in court but unfortunately, the bastard pig never showed up to court so I didn’t have to do anything and the ticket was dropped. I was ready, willing and able to stick it to the man; but I was denied my opportunity. 😮💨
What an asshole, us police im guessing?
He wasn’t beaten nor was a bribe taken so ya prolly us
I was the unofficial “security” guy where I worked as a software engineer. (Web apps, mostly.) We had a scanning tool (Burp Suite Pro, for those who want to know) that we ran against our apps on a regular basis to find any security issues. I was almost always the guy who did triage and remediation of any issues that came up. And when I had fixed a hole, I’d put a summary of the issue and the fix on the internal wiki page where we tracked such things.
For one particularly interesting vulnerability, I had to create my own implementation of a subset of the Java serialization API in order to remediate the vulnerability in a way that maintained backwards compatibility and didn’t inconvenience users. In the summary I wrote that the fix was “a hack” but it closed the vulnerability, which is all the PCI auditors would care about anyway. (If you don’t know what a PCI auditor is, don’t worry too much. They’re a regulatory thing that’s required if you’re a big enough business that process credit cards. They have to audit your security practices annually.)
My boss pulled me into his office to tell me to change the wording. He was worried the auditors would see the word “hack” and think that… I dunno… I committed some kind of financial fraud in the process of making the code change or something? Or maybe that we’d failed to disclose a security breach?
It didn’t sit right with me. For one thing, I’m the sort of person who wants to reclaim the positive connotations of the word “hack.” (And, honestly, using the word “hack” in a positive light never died.) But more importantly, if I were a PCI auditor and I heard that the boss had pressured a developer to alter their wording of the description of a remediation to make it sound better to PCI auditors, I’d probably pitch a shit fit at said boss.
(And, honestly, the boss and the development team weren’t on great terms at the time for reasons. So it sat worse still than it would have otherwise.)
But also, it wasn’t a hill worth dying on right then. I agreed to change my wording without raising a fuss. I decided if I ever got called to testify in court because there was a massive breach or something (I’m being hyperbolic here, but you get my point), I knew who to point the finger at.
But it still stuck in my craw. And when I resigned a few months later, I went and edited my comment back to say “hack” on my last day and didn’t tell anyone.
Actually, when I gave my resignation, my boss didn’t handle the process correctly with HR and they didn’t find out until way later into my notice period than they should have. As a result, they didn’t schedule an exit interview with me until way late. So I contacted HR about it and stayed late on my last day to voice how terrible the management was. (I was hoping to be the first of several to send such a message to HR.)
When I returned to the same company/position 5 years later, the page was still present and had the word “hack.” One of the first things I did once I had access to the corporate wiki again was to check that page. I still work there today and it’s still in the pristine state it should be in.
The boss in question also left and came back, but he’s been promoted up high enough in the ranks that he doesn’t concern himself with little old me and my security remediation reports. I imagine he’s probably forgotten about the whole thing.
Plus, his boss was way worse, and it’s very likely it was that guy who demanded I change it and delivered the message through his underling. And the worse guy isn’t at the company any more, but that’s a story for another day.
It’s small. And petty. But I feel satisfied with myself every time I think about it.
Hey, nothing wrong with small and petty. Everything, everywhere generally sucks these days, so take joy when and where you can, I say.
I’m totally on your side with regard to the word ‘hack’: Context matters, and in that context, ‘hack’ pretty much always means a kludge of a fix that works but could be better. It’s also a signal to whoever looks at the code later to take a better look / improve it. OTOH, auditors are the worst (though I would not personally want their job lol), and I can’t say I’ve never had to do similar pedantic things to appease them.
No, totally wrong. It’s like driving, where it doesn’t matter if you have the right of way but get t-boned and airlifted to the hospital. You’re playing on the auditors field, you have to play by their rules, use their language, and it’s just not worth insisting you’re right. Apparently your phrasing was accepted or not noticed, but it really seems like playing with fire.
I’m sorry, but this story makes you seem like an entitled prick. I’m sure you are not, though, and the story is missing some crucial context
Successfully ran from the cops.
I was on a bike and they were in a car so I kept off the road system as much as possible. I went through a school (the kids saw the start so knew what was up - they cheered me on), through a swamp out the back and then a long bumpy ride down a railway line.
There is no rush quite like it.
Got to work only 15 minutes late.
I got a ticket, jaywalking in LA. The ticket was $35.
Decided it was dumb, and I wasn’t going to pay it.
Became a $400 bench warrant. That’ll teach ‘em!
That totally sounds like something I would do. Oof.
TL;DR I worked for a department store as someone who fetched large/heavy objects for customers. Coworkers smoked together outside multiple times on shift. I did not smoke. I took “smoke breaks” in the back break room whenever this happened and a newer middle manager tried to make me work while they smoked. This same manager would later get flustered when I offered to buy an old unsellable item for 10 cents USD and he agreed. I was serious, he was not!
In 2004, I worked for the moderately sized department store, K’s Merchandise, before they went under. A few months before I quit, we got a new mid-level manager. He was a young guy with clear aspirations to move higher in the near future.
I worked as what they called a 600. I don’t remember why it was called that, but my job, along with a couple other 600s per shift, were to bring up large couches, non-assembled furniture, and anything that was too heavy or bulky to exist on the floor. These items were stored in the back warehouse. I got a lot of daily steps in with this job for all the walking we did. When a customer bought one of the large warehouse items, we would grab an appropriate cart and bring it to the front to load for the customer. We would carry walkie-talkies and floor salespeople would call for us to come get a ticket with the item(s) to be pulled.
All of my coworkers at the time smoked and were permitted to take smoke breaks periodically. I didn’t smoke, so any time they took smoke breaks, and they’d do it as a group with some others in the store, I’d be the only 600 available.
One day, my coworkers went to smoke with others, leaving me alone again. So, with my walkie still with me, I sat in the back and drank a small drink item from a vending machine in the staff break room. As I sat there drinking my…chocolate milk, I think, the newer middle management comes in from the back warehouse and asks me why I’m sitting down when I should be in the back sweeping the warehouse and other such stuff while business is slow.
I told him I was on a smoke break while the others were also on a smoke break. When he brought up how I was not smoking and needed to get back to work, I refused on principal as I felt I was being punished for not smoking. He wasn’t pleased but just told me to keep the walkie close. I got to take little breaks like this whenever I was working with those other guys that smoked.
This was also the same manager that casually complained about some large mirror, with corkboard, set in a wooden frame that wasn’t selling. I offered to buy it for $0.10. He laughed it off like I was joking and said sure. So I brought the item up front a little while later to ring it up. Told the cashier that the manager said I could get it for 10 cents. She congratulated me on my purchase.
As I was coming back inside after loading it into my FORD AEROSTAR van, the manager asked me if I had really purchased that thing for 10 cents and when I confirmed he said he never said that I could. I corrected him and brought up how others were there when he said I could. He had no choice but to let me keep it.
That mirror still has a place in my house, 20-years later!
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I canceled the TV cable and streaming services and got an OTA antenna. Bite that you stupid machine!
Does ditching school or cheating on finals count?
Maybe, lol? Depends on the context, but I feel like that’s generally more sticking it to yourself.
It’s not much, but I got a parking ticket once and decided to just … not pay it.
So they eventually put a boot on my car. But for a while there, it really seemed like I had found a glaring loophole in parking enforcement: just don’t pay the ticket.
They booted the car, and I went and paid those tickets. Gave me more respect for the systems our society has.
It’s so crazy that Jewish religious leaders know that it’s a flood myth and not at all historical. This isn’t a new realization either. This is a long standing view.
A lot of Jews see the Torah as allegorical, just like a lot of Catholics. I went to Catholic school and not a single person tried to tell me that a day really meant a day in the creation myth. Everyone just sort of had an aside that time was funky and people weren’t the best at clear note taking back then, so it’s more a loose allegory than definite fact (given that the Vatican is cool with evolution, it’s not so surprising).
That said, I think this is the wrong comment section
Are you lost?
