I don’t know if this truly counts as revenge because it certainly was not intentional, but it was definitely funny and karmically deserved.

I had this blowhard of a coworker who was always trying to take credit for my ideas and complain about being overloaded so that I would have to shoulder a good chunk of her share of our workload. She also realized that colleagues seemed to favor my opinion on things so she would often stamp my brand on wonky things she advised people to do, often in front of me, putting me in the position where I constantly had to say, ‘that is not what I think, I actually think ____.”

So this loud mouth also complained whenever our colleagues would pass around a birthday card or a cake for someone’s birthday because her birthday happened to be January 1, when every job she ever had usually had people enjoying paid time off for New Year’s Day so she never had a work celebration for her birthday in her entire professional life.

So after hearing this complaint from her the bazillionth time when I received a card and cake for my birthday in October, I decided to try to be gracious and secretly plan a surprise birthday card and cake for her on December 1 before anyone started taking off for the winter holidays. Coworkers thought it would be really fun to blow her away with the birthday celebration she never had. Probably 15 colleagues chipped in for me to go get her a cake, a gift card, and decorations for her desk.

So, on November 30 after she left the office, I decorated her desk with a combination of New Year’s party and birthday party decorations mixing the theme to create the connection between the day we were celebrating and her actual birthday. And I had two cakes custom decorated by the bakery with “Happy Birthday, Jane!*” One was chocolate, the other white because I didn’t know what she preferred and people had given me enough money to do both.

So December 1 came and I brought in the cakes and stuck them in the refrigerator to wait for her to come into work to be surprised, but she never came. Everyone was wondering what happened that she didn’t come into the office. She had made up some excuse - had to wait on the plumber or the cable guy or whatever.

Ok, so I had to take the cakes home because the janitor empties our fridge every night, and so I brought them back on December 2, but she still didn’t come in. This time she claimed she was sick, but given her demonstrated work ethic, it was a little suspect.

So I text messaged her and said, “Are you going to make it in today? We’ve been trying to surprise you for your with a cake for your birthday you never get to celebrate and so everyone pitched in for a cake and we’ve been trying to give it to you since yesterday.” She then got upset because my effo...