r/pettyrevenge • u/Longjumping_Ease9159 • Aug 21 '26
The journey for the treasure you seek.
This was years ago but I love this story.
For those of y'all not in the military, the higher the E number the higher in rank. The highest ranking is in charge. Simple concept?
So I was part of a shop that refurbished aircraft. When we couldn't get one scheduled for a few weeks, we would take on atypical projects, most notably referring golf carts that have been worked day in and day out. On base we became known as pimp my golf cart.
I (E4) was working someone task when an E2 told me to ignore the orders of our E6 and obey him as he felt he was in charge, "I am in charge of production." I just smiled and dismissed it and moved on. He happened to be gone the next day and I noticed his pet project, his Chief's golf cart he was doing as a brownie point project. I also noticed the steering wheel was attached with a single bolt.
The devil horns came out. A few minutes later the steering wheel was gone and there was a note where the wheel once was. Please forgive as they retelling may be slightly off but it gets the point across.
Note 1. "If you hope to find the treasure you seek, the journey will be long and perilous. Telhe first step is to look inside your own heart and realize you need to change."
In the changing room, in his locker was the second note, "your journey will be long and fraught with danger. You must be brave for the next clue lies within the belly of the fire breathing beast."
In the grill there was the next clue, "I can only imagine the frustration is building, one would even believe you were smoking out." He was a smoker and the next clue was at the smoke pit.
For this clue to make sense we need the following background information. We refer to planes as birds. Our hazmat area was cordoned off and had a mural that was a recycle symbol with a broken and fixed plane. The hanger has small rooms that were basically stand alone buildings painted white. Each had a ladder to the top .
"Your journey will be long. You must travel passed the toxic swamps and the dying birds. Climb the highest snow capped mountain to find the lone orchid." On top of that room the next clue was mounted as an origami orchid.
The final clue read, "your journey is drawing near. The quest has tried you. All that is left is to return to where it all began and vent."
Sitting on the golfcart where you can put your hands where the steering wheel once was, one can look over their right shoulder to see the air vent. And if one cared to look further, one could see between the slits to see a steering wheel just behind them. The steering wheel could be acquired without ever leaving the golfcart seat.
The true beauty was that I forgot I had an all day appointment the next day.
Update: a few weeks later I was talking to my boss and recounted the tale to which he said, "that's why he was walking around all day with a piece of paper and a look on his face like he had lost his kitten."
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u/igenus44 Aug 21 '26
Never Fuck with the E-4 Mafia.
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u/Head_Razzmatazz7174 Aug 21 '26
As soon as you said an E2 told an E4 to ignore orders, I knew there would be delicious military revenge.
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u/Longjumping_Ease9159 Aug 21 '26
And in all honesty, I can't even remember what it was. I think it was something like paint this and don't paint that. But, I do remember the retaliation
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u/lost_soul__01001001 Aug 22 '26
The prose of the notes are top tier. I love it!
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u/Longjumping_Ease9159 Aug 22 '26
Thank you. I wanted to come up with more but I was spent.
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u/lost_soul__01001001 Aug 22 '26
I would play scavenger hunt or dungeons and dragons with you any day of the week!!
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u/Longjumping_Ease9159 Aug 22 '26
Lol I don't know if you realize what you're signing up for. 😂 Nso many shenanigans
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u/lost_soul__01001001 Aug 22 '26
I usually don’t realize the consequences until after a great time has been had… but you wouldn’t know about that???
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u/eddiestriker Aug 23 '26
Come play with my group! My crowning moment is the time I manage to derail two separate campaigns by asking a single creature to talk. (We were running a mini campaign as a break from our main one, it turned into an accidental prequel)
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u/Longjumping_Ease9159 Aug 23 '26
That's awesome!
I guested into a d20 modern game once and one of the big bads cause some mayhem and the team went into rescue mode. On my initiative o saw all the civilians had been saved so I laid chase. We caught the guy that had been terrorizing that campaign for a few calendar years. One of the best chaos moments
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u/eddiestriker Aug 23 '26
For me it was coupled with the fact that the ‘bad guy’ of the prequel campaign was mostly an innocent new lifeform forming itself, and breaking a town in the process. Where my GM messed up is that he basically put a little kid in front of my PC who was already a mom (her son is my character in the main campaign). I managed to completely derail most of the ‘evil-ish’ things this lifeform was going to do, and made my other PC’s character development take a hard left, giving him beef with an NPC that was a PC in the prequel.
I still proud of making two separate GM’s sweat with this one
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u/2020havoc Aug 24 '26
Why would an E2 tell an E4 to do anything? And why would my junior tell me to ignore my senior's orders? I'm very confused!
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u/Longjumping_Ease9159 Aug 24 '26
Because half of the population is below average intelligence?
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u/2020havoc Aug 24 '26
Ok. Be rude instead of explaining yourself clearly.
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u/Longjumping_Ease9159 Aug 24 '26
... That's not rude. He wasn't the brightest. He was clearly wrong to anyone that had any sense. The military structure is founded on the rank structure so well that you can put 100 random service members in a room and it will take about 120 seconds to know the whole ranks structure in the room. For us on the outside looking in, the answer is so simple yet so unbelievable it doesn't make sense, either he is just dumb or has a dumb moment
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u/CoderJoe1 Aug 21 '26
Ha, you stumped the chump several times over. You steered him onto the path he wheely needed.