Nobody likes difficult people. Why would you ever try to make life difficult for others if you could just… you know… not? Sure, you wouldn’t want to go out of your comfort zone, you enjoy the peace and quiet, but you’re not alone on this planet and civil compromises have to be made.
If civil compromises aren’t made, however, you can become subject to some revenge, or better yet, pro revenge, like this lovely Redditor decided to do on a coworker who was simply too demanding for his own good.
More Info: Reddit
Nobody likes difficult people at work, but there are always a myriad of ways to deal with them, like pro revenge based on a tiny technicality
Image credits: erocsid (not the actual photo)
So, a Redditor by the nickname of u/TheSystemSucked shared a story of revenge from some years back. While they don’t work there anymore, back then they used to be a team lead for a AAA game studio that was going through some changes. Said changes were moving. Several times.
One of the moves that the office had to do was into an old building basement that has been effectively empty for years, save for an elderly lawyer who had an office there. He worked with all things trademark compliance, and he really—really—liked his peace and quiet. Hence, the move was onto “his territory.”
One dev team lead shared an elaborate story of how he took revenge on a company lawyer who was particularly rude about his space
Image credits: TheSystemSucked
After they had moved in, one day they noticed that in the room closest to the aforementioned lawyer’s office—a particular L-shaped affair—all of the stuff there was pushed to the side. After some investigation, the team found out that the lawyer had made himself a convenient pathway, one he could conveniently use whenever going in and out of the office.
Moreover, he also had an issue with how his door opened. It wasn’t really a problem as much as the man himself was being very particular with a technicality in how the door opened, but that’s beside the point.
In short, there was this trademark compliance lawyer working for a game developer, who now needed to be neighbors with a dev team
Image credits: TheSystemSucked
So, the team lead had a chat with the lawyer, figured out his demands, communicated a lot with the heads of the company, and reached a conclusion that 2 people wouldn’t fit in this L-shaped corridor of sorts, so he decided that he’d be housing just one person there—someone who could work alone.
But because of how snarky and pesky the legal trademark eagle was, OP decided that he wouldn’t play Mr. Nice Guy, and so he employed some technicalities to form the perfect pro revenge plan.
The lawyer didn't like how the dev team utilized the L-shaped room adjacent to his, so he started being difficult about it
Image credits: TheSystemSucked
He had one person—the sound designer—working alone, and, based on experience, it was best he worked alone because of the nature of his work. He designed sound, and things could get very loud. Abruptly loud. To a degree that there were solutions implemented in making sure said abrupt sounds wouldn’t scare or otherwise scar the bejeebus out of neighboring developers.
So, OP went through the necessary semantics and communication to sort out the move, replacing the two 2D designers that were previously there with the single sound engineer. Management OKd it, all thanks to said semantics and communication and it was all good to go.
Now, while OP is generally a people pleaser, he decided to take none of the lawyer's bull-pies
Image credits: TheSystemSucked
But what about the lovely neighborhood lawyer? That was the whole idea—he got his walkway, but he didn’t say anything about the noise levels. Abrupt noise levels.
After having spent way too much time moving and not enough time developing a product, everyone was in their places, and, boom, the sound designer started doing his work, and the lawyer went nuts.
Image credits: TheSystemSucked
The lead and the lawyer wound up getting in touch with the VP—the closest entity that you’d have to the general manager—who considered the fact that there had been issues with the placement of the sound engineer before, who was informed and even confirmed this move, and, lastly, everyone had already spent too much time moving and not enough time developing games, so any more moving was out of the question. Besides, “it's temporary anyway.”
The lawyer was specifically complaining about the space he was left with to pass by, but nobody said anything about how loud the dev team should be
Image credits: Radly J Phoenix (not the actual photo)
So, instead of 2 people working in the office, there would only be one... the sound engineer
Image credits: TheSystemSucked
So there you have it folks, 7 months the lawyer had to live through this, all because he was hard to handle, when he could have just be a tad bit nicer. And others thought the same too, as the post got nearly 15,000 upvotes.
And as soon as the engineer started blasting his sound, the lawyer exploded in anger, but you can guess who won in the end
Image credits: TheSystemSucked
Needless to say, people on r/ProRevenge praised the lead for his ingenuity and little bit of malice. Someone needed to be taught a lesson, so it might as well be in a pro revenge way.
Others shared their own stories from their game development years, relating to the story, especially with the sound engineering part. But the part most people appreciated was that OP included the lawyer into the thank-you credits of the game. A consolation prize of sorts.