I've gone through my life trying my best to not hold grudges too much, but there are a few times I've been wronged where I just cannot, with good conscience, let it go. In each of these situations, I feel like part of me desires revenge on the person (or group) who wronged me, but I have not, to date, had the opportunity to follow up on any of these desires. And I honestly don't know if I would, given the opportunity.

But the thought is there. It's always there.

There's one thing the objects of my grudges all have in common: they were all in positions of power, and they all abused that power in some way. Whether that was for their own material gain or the end result simply being hurting someone (me), they all leveraged the power they held in a way that ended up having a negative impact on someone else's life. And not always just me, either.

For the sake of… I don't know, propriety? I will refrain from naming specific examples here. But it's been long enough now for one of them that I think I can talk in slightly more than vague terms.

I used to have a job that I absolutely loved. It was a job that involved using my skills and passion every day, and I thought it was a job that would set me for life. I liked the people that I worked with, and I did well at the work itself. All looked good for a while, but over time, the people in charge started to see fit to… start exerting their influence more than they perhaps had done in the past. And this started to come to a head with a colleague of mine who ended up dismissed from his position — which, like me, he had loved and always given his all too — on the grounds of some spurious accusations about his behaviour. I know they were spurious because I worked with this guy every day and there is no way in hell he would have done anything the slightest bit inappropriate, whatever that might mean to you. (It wasn't anything sexual or violent he was accused of, I hasten to add.)

But he had a target marked on him from thereon, and during the long and painful process of his disciplinary proceedings leading to his dismissal, he asked me to be his second in the various meetings involved along the way. I looked up what a "second" was supposed to do in this situation, and determined that they had the right to ask questions and help to defend the person who had nominated them. So I did. I assembled a set of questions that would help my colleague explain that this was all complete nonsense, and that he had been maliciously targeted… and I was basically told to shut up partway through proceedings. Naturally, as you might expect, that then caused a target to appear on my back, too — again, despite me having not actually done anything wrong. I hadn't even had a single complaint from a customer in my case.

The injustice of it all stung back then. It was excruciating to see first my colleague and friend pushed out of his position, and then to see it happen to not just me but several others of our number also. The people who had all the power in this situation were very obviously misusing it. Why? I do not know. I don't know what they would "get" out of losing several of their best employees — and there were ample metrics to back up that boast, in the form of the "NetPromoter" surveys all our clients had the option to fill out after a session with us — other than a sense that they were in control, this was their domain.

Regrettably, I encountered a very similar scenario on multiple subsequent occasions, and it was always the same. There was always one individual at the centre of it all, who had developed something of a God complex based on the little power they had over other people — or rather, the fact they held the keys to people's careers. In every instance, these people exerted their influence in a way that hurt others, poisoned the atmosphere around them and couldn't have been any benefit to them and their team whatsoever. And not one of them saw any consequences for their actions that might discourage them from doing it again. So they almost certainly have done it again since.

These are the people I want revenge on. These are the people I've never been able to forgive and forget. These are the people who, if I ever saw them again, I would… I don't know. I'm not a violent man, and I have no desire to end up with any sort of assault charge. But if any people in the world deserve a good punch in the face and/or balls (where applicable), it's these people I'm thinking of right now.

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