Business Owner Spends 5 Days Dismantling Furniture in Revenge Against Cheapskate Vendor

There are some people who when they see an opportunity to save some money, even if they're going about it in a grimy way, just can't help themselves from trying to act on it. This is exactly what Redditor @drcforbin said happened when they were leaving their office space and working out a deal with another person renting out an office in the same building.

They posted their story to the social media site's r/pettyrevenge sub, where they delineated how they got back at the other company for apparently trying to pull a fast one on them by teaming up with the building's waste management contractor.

OP begins their story by stating that they "closed [their] physical office" leaving all of the employees in their company to work from home. Upon shutting the business down, they decided to sell whatever they didn't need, which also included the furniture in the office space they were no longer using.

It's around this point where the trouble begins because OP also mentions that their business had to cancel an agreement with a vendor that just so happened to have an office space in the same building that they were renting from. Their agreement was for $12,000.

While OP was chatting it up with one of the sales reps for the company, the rep mentioned that their own business was looking to expand its offices, which is what gave OP an idea: instead of paying them the $12,000 bill that they owed them, why not leave the custom office furniture in the space that the new business was going to take over anyway?

OP started to notice that the sales rep from the company was "dragging his feet" on giving him an official answer as to whether or not they were going to trade the bill for the furniture. So, just in case the rep decided to not officially go this route, OP decided to talk to the building's waste management contractor to see about hauling out the furniture.

The contractor mentions that the guy from the other business said that they may be interested in buying the furniture, and wanted to know if OP was just going to leave it there.

OP carefully explained that they had no intention of paying the bill to the business and forking over their furniture.

OP then met with the waste management contractor who gave him a "very low handshake quote" on the amount of money that it would cost to get rid of the furniture. But the entire situation left OP feeling like there was something going on: "I got the distinct impression everyone had a plan I wasn't included in."

So about "two weeks before the lease was up" OP decided to contact the sales manager from the vendor company asking for a final answer about the furniture. They told OP that all of that was being handled by other folks in the company, and OP said that they needed an answer by the end of that week.

The company never got back to OP, so the Redditor decided to take apart all of their furniture by themselves, calling it a "reverse IKEA" situation. They then put all of the furniture in the middle of the office space and on the second to last day of their lease paid the waste contractor's low invoice amount and turned in their keys.

About a week later, the waste management contractor asked OP if they had any of the "screws and parts to put" the furniture pieces back together. OP explained that they brought all of those pieces back home to throw away and reminded the contractor that they said they had no intention of paying the bill and giving away their furniture for free.

Then just a few days after that, the sales manager from the vendor company called and asked if there was anything left in the space for their company to use. OP said: "I explained that he had quite a bit of nerve asking me for anything beyond their bill."

So while the vendor's company is going to get the $12,000 that OP's business owes them, they're now going to have to spend a heck of a lot of cash on new office furniture.

And the waste management contractor has to do their job.

Other Redditors who saw the post applauded the way @drcforbin handled the situation, however, there was one individual who thought of a way they could've taken their revenge a little further: "Well done. Only thing I might have done differently was hold on to the nuts, bolts, and plates and offer to sell them to vendor guy/building guy for the 12K or thereabouts. You get paid AND own them at the same time."