30 Times People Tried To Sabotage Others, Only To Get Hit By Karma Themselves

Okay, we can sincerely admit that at least some of the stories told in various online threads are untrue or made up. Still, we tried to pick the most believable and real-sounding ones for you.

The very concept of "karma" comes to us from ancient Indian philosophy, which asserts that there is a single universal law that encourages people to do good, worthy deeds and punishes meanness and betrayal.

In some cultural traditions, karma operates alongside divine entities, while in others, it operates independently. But in everyday life, karma’s more like people getting back what they gave out - a sort of 'punishment from above.'

Why do these stories pop up so much at work? Psychologists and sociologists say it’s no coincidence. Work teams are like little communities where negativity - whether obvious or sneaky - tends to bounce back to the person who started it.

The authors of this article on Slow Leadership introduce the concept of "work karma" in a statistical rather than mystical sense. In other words, meanness, humiliation, and sabotage by one or more team members only worsen the overall moral and ethical climate within the team, and other people begin to act similarly.

Sooner or later, those bad moves come back to bite the people who started them. The study sums it up like this: if you throw aggression and disrespect into the mix, it’ll come back to you - multiplied by how many people get involved.

Of course, such a buildup of "systemic negativity" ultimately does nothing good for the company, because yes, the initiators will get what they deserve, but the team atmosphere will still be damaged. This is especially true if unethical behavior goes unpunished for a long time. The results of a study, conducted back in 2009, clearly confirm this.

"It is highly costly to organizations because it slows down efficiency and hurts morale, which is so key to organizational functioning," Kellogg Insight also quotes Cynthia Wang, a clinical professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, as saying. So, the best way to dodge payback drama at work? Just keep your own bad behavior in check.

However, many experts believe that karma doesn't actually operate in society, and that our stories about it are tied to magical thinking and the selective nature of our memory. That is, as a result of a general increase in aggression in a team, many people may experience negativity, but we will only remember the cases in which the perpetrator of the conflict was the victim.

Classical psychology recognizes the concept of "schadenfreude" (malevolent joy, in German). This article in Science News reasonably notes that people sometimes enjoy watching an aggressive or mean person face retaliation. We even tend to view this as justice being restored.

But hey, don’t get too carried away - too much gloating can turn into bullying and harassment of anyone we don’t vibe with. Like in the old fairy tale, where the brave knight, having slain the dragon, eventually became a new dragon himself...

However, these are all just words, and in real life, yes, gloating works, and we don't think about social dynamics when we see, say, the office bully finally get what they deserve. And honestly, isn’t it kinda nice? Like we’re some sort of karma delivery service.

We’re pretty sure you’ve got your own stories like this - so why not drop them in the comments? Just don’t spoil the fun - read through all our stories first!