Many years ago at work I had a coworker in AP who was rude and always talked down to me. On one occasion she was being rude to me one the phone and I gave it back to her as good as she was giving it to me. The next day she called me on the phone, was rude to me and I was rude to her as well. A couple of days later my boss pulled me in his office and said that she had filed a complaint with HR and had a coworker listening in on the conversation. I was receiving a written warning because my coworker set me up by antagonizing me and she was not disciplined. I was pissed off!

I waited a couple of weeks and I was about to go on vacation, when I remembered that I had an instruction book for my phone. We had a really old phone system, and there were probably only a couple of the old instruction books still around. I was receiving 50-60 calls a day from our Customer Service office to do floor counts. Before I left the office I forwarded my calls to the woman in AP that complained to HR about me. She received hundreds of my calls that week, and every time that she tried to forward the call to me her phone rang a second time!

When I returned to work on Monday I unforwarded my phone. My boss called me in the office as said “I know what you did.” I told him that I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I wouldn’t do it again, and that I hoped that someone had had learned her lesson. He said that my prank was brilliant but please don’t ever do that again and we laughed about it.

I worked with her for another 15 years and she never said boo to me again.

I used to have a business selling collectible card game singles like Magic the Gathering. I attended a small local show weekly, large regional shows, and some national shows. In my local area (LA) I was known to pay top dollar on collections. One of my competitors Jim set up at the table next to me every week at our local show. The weekend of San Diego Comic Con* we both had tables at different locations in the hall. A long time customer of mine came to the booth and was a few feet back from the front of my booth and I heard him tell his son "Jim said to come to John to get an offer on our collection, and he'll beat John's price by $100." I was pissed that Jim was going to have me go through a collection for 2-3 hours and I didn't even have a chance at buying it! I told the customer that if he left it with me I'd go through it and be done in 2-3 hours. I went through the collection and valued it at $3700. I knew that Jim would want to pay around $3200.

Since I had zero chance of buying the collection, I offered the seller $4200, know that Jim would have to pay $4300 for a collection that he'd like to buy for $3200. The seller said he'd think about it and let me know, leaving with the collection. At the end of the show I ran into Jim and he bragged about this amazing collection that he bought and asked me if I had seen it. I replied that I did see it and I was regretting that I didn't get it. He asked me if there was anything in there I really liked, because he felt that he paid a premium for it. I told him that some of the Legends uncommon prices were going up in value (total BS). He suspected that I screwed him by offering too much knowing what he had done, but I never let on that I knew what he did.

Jim never bid against me on a big collection again.

*35,000 people attend Saturday at the show.