Student Wouldn’t Stop Bullying Him, So He Waited For The Perfect Opportunity To Turn The Tables

No one likes to be on the butt end of bullying, whether you’re a child, a teenager, or an adult. That said, almost all of us have at one time or another.

That’s (sadly) life, right?

OP was working as a graduate student in a lab with certain duties.

I’m a masters student in a well known university in my country.

My job until my thesis is approved is to assist students with their analyses during hands-on laboratory courses and whoever needs assistance in my advisors crew, whether they are doctorate or masters, do analyses they need for whatever they do.

I like what I do and I’m good at it.

Others worked there, too, and one of them went out of her way to make his life miserable.

We had a chain of inconsequential feuds with a fellow masters student, let’s call her F, during my first year here after I devastatingly lost a lot of the elderly side of my family back to back.

I know how it is to work with someone constantly feeling blue but the way I was treated crossed the line. Constantly being told I was a downer and becoming a thankless errand-boy made me hate F.

She made her job to make my life miserable every chance she had. Twisting and turning the unwritten etiquette rules of the laboratory willy-nilly to inconvenience me, especially concerning cleaning the glass equipment.

Making me taking out the trash even though we had janitors, making me wash the dishes by hand and throwing whatever she was using in front of me without saying anything…

She even called him out, getting him in trouble with their superiors.

The straw that broke the camels back was last new years joint gift to our advisor.

The jist of it is that it quickly became a screaming match between us because I had to run to the pharmacy to get my dad’s heart medicine and couldn’t join the crew for getting the present.

I had to run to a store and get my own.

After that, I was singled out. Because I’m a male and she is a female, raising my voice back at her was a cardinal sin. I had to do everything on my own. I made sure everything was going swimmingly and surprisingly made it work, publishing 3 articles in a year.

But the bullying continued.

The last rule that she added was emptying the dishwasher after starting it. I had nothing to do with the dishwasher at the time but since I was the odd one out, the blame fell on me.

Apparently she was about to do her analyses for her thesis and nothing was in place. She was very vocal in our WhatsApp group containing our advisor. I was chewed out by the doctorate students.

So, when the opportunity presented itself to turn the tables, he didn’t waste a moment.

Come spring cleaning in our lab, before the laboratory courses started. The dishwasher was loaded with all kinds of glass equipment. One of the doctorate students told F to start the dishwasher.

This was 2 weeks ago. I haven’t touched anything because I didn’t start it right? This morning I was doing some analyses in the lab and noticed the dishwasher was still full.

This is my time to shine. I wrote, verbatim, down to every emoji she used, to call her out on the very same thing I was chewed out for.

I replied to her older messages about “people are constantly working in the lab so we should be diligent” and hit her with a “dis u?”.

Now, he’s feeling a bit better overall.

It was her off day so she now has to take the bus for 2 hours from her home just to get chewed out by the advisor.

I got a nod of approval and an apology from our advisor on behalf of the crew. I’m feeling better about the whole ordeal now.

Reddit’s going to love this one, I can just tell!

This person thought the whole thing was super immature.

It takes humans a long time to grow up, honestly.

So this is basically kind of expected.

They do wish some actual adults could have intervened.

That said, we do love it when karma does her thing.

Sometimes you take the high road.

But not always.

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