Dealing with nonsense at work from your peers is bad enough, but when it’s from your boss, it’s even worse. Getting rid of a horrible boss is one of the greatest joys an employee can have. Here Redditors tell how they obtained revenge and got their terrible bosses fired. After all, nothing is more satisfying than sticking it to the man.
1. He Should Have Kept His Mouth Shut
My boss and I had desks separated by a 5-foot cubicle wall. He was under the mistaken impression that it totally blocked out sound. Thus, I heard all his loud phone conversations, primarily his booty calls, including those with his boss's fiancé. I figured it was none of my business and tried to ignore it. There was a position in another department that I was interested in, and per procedure, I handed in an application to my talkative boss.
I didn't hear anything further and followed up a couple of days later, only to be told that something must have happened to my application. I filled out another one and handed it in again. As I returned to my desk, I heard my boss on the phone with a friend laughing about how he had just trashed my application again and how he was never going to let go of me. That's when I said, "Screw it." It was time to make him pay.
I went to his boss and angrily offered my resignation, telling him what I had just overheard, explaining that I was constantly hearing his phone calls like his booty calls, and I mentioned his fiancé’s name. He got very quiet and told me to go back to my desk and he'll take care of everything. The next day I came in, my boss was gone, and I got my interview and the position I was applying for.
2. It Was A Sign She Had To Go
I used to work at a title company and witnessed our department manager forge mortgage documents regularly. So, when she went to upper management to throw the entire department under the bus for being behind on recording documents, I knew exactly what I had to do. I marched straight to HR to resign and let them know what she was doing.
She was fired, and they called me and offered me my job back before the week was out.
3. Bon Voyage, Baby!
I worked the register at a tour company. I also had a manager who HATED me for some reason. She was probably the nastiest person I’d ever met. She constantly yelled at us for no reason, got on me about answering questions a new hire had—when I was asked, not her—wrote down I was 30 minutes late for a shift when I was two minutes late, etc.
We had a sneaking suspicion that she was taking money from our tills, as she was always the one who counted the money when someone was let go for lifting cash. I made it a habit to count down every bill when I gave change back to a customer because we would get docked if we were even $1 off. We also had cameras pouring at the registers.
One day, my GM pulled me aside and said $20 was missing from my register and they were going to fire me. I told my boss she could look at the cameras because I counted out all my bills for customers. Lo and behold, my manager was the one who counted down my till and got caught on tape pocketing the money. She was gone by my next shift.
4. She Charted Her Path To The Unemployment Line
I had a job that required my supervisor to do evaluations of my cases and charts, but she hadn't in months. She and my director ordered my co-workers and me to do our own chart audits, fill out the forms, and they would sign off. I was tired of not having adequate supervision and weekly staff meetings where she yelled at us.
Invariably someone cried due to the stress and lack of support, and I was not being paid enough to do everything I was doing, so I refused. I was told to do it or be fired, so I got fired. But I wasn't going to take that lying down. On the way out to my car, I called my former director, who had moved to another agency. She set up an interview for me the next day, and I had a new job within 24 hours.
She asked what had happened, and I spilled the tea. Her sister-in-law was on the board of my previous agency, so she called her, and I told her everything. The director was fired, and the supervisor was reprimanded and put under close monitoring. She had nixed any chance of promotion and left shortly afterward.
5. Worse Than The Office
I worked in a horribly run department. We had an old guy who was either asleep or playing Sudoku all day, a developer who was inebriated at work most days and would break down sobbing about how his wife was cheating on him, and a DBA who was the least competent person I've ever worked with but had too many kids to be fired.
We also had another DBA who realized he was the only capable person in his department, and thus got paid an absurd amount and did whatever he wanted. Then there was some guy called Daryl, whose only contribution seemed to be making popcorn in the galley for everyone on Fridays. I left for a better job and bore no animosity toward the idiots I worked with because I’d been paid fairly.
On my way out, I got pulled in by the department manager and the HR rep, who wanted to do an exit interview. The first question was, "Do you consider this to be a professional working environment"? I replied, "I enjoyed working here. Let's just call everything good." The HR rep insisted they would withhold my last check unless I did the exit interview. So I finally let loose.
I sat and answered every question truthfully and fully, noting every unprofessional, incompetent thing that I'd observed. Then, I left. A few days later, the department manager had been fired, and most of the department had been split into other groups where they would have to be productive or fail.
6. A Matter of Principal
When I was a teenager, my mother was a professional fundraiser. People came to her for help raising money for nonprofits or other foundations that needed it. This was before social workers were more of a mandatory thing at high schools. My high school was poor, and didn’t have one. So, my mother took it upon herself to set up a fundraiser to pay the salary of a social worker so my high school could have one. But she didn't count on one thing.
After raising all the money, she went to talk to the principal, who flat-out refused to take any of it and said the position wasn't necessary. My mother was pretty upset and decided she would donate the money to supplies or something like that. After a few months, at a Christmas party, the superintendent of all the public schools in the area struck up a conversation with my mother.
After some small talk, my mother said it was a shame that the principal didn't take the money for the social worker position. That's when the truth came out. The superintendent was dumb-struck and told her he had ordered the principal to find funding for that position. When the superintendent asked him about it, he replied, "No one is interested in that, and we just couldn't get the money for it." The principal lost his position, and when we returned from the holiday break, the school was hiring for his job.
7. Nothing More Dangerous Than An Employee Scorned
Management was giving an injured worker grief, not wanting to pay him, and accusing him of goldbricking. The worker said, “Tell you what. Do the right thing here, or you will be sorry.” Management told him to go for it. They had no idea what was in store for them. the worker called the EPA and APCD. He told the agencies where to find the logs that showed discrepancies in dangerous material storage and usage.
Sheriff's deputies showed up and raided the offices. Field supervisors from ten years prior that had retired were subpoenaed. It was epic. It cost the company dearly in massive fines and remediation, all because they wanted to mess with one poor guy.
8. No Argument Here
My manager was always slacking off. He'd do a 15-minute task and be gone for two hours. He'd have to leave early for a doctor’s appointment or a dentist appointment, always with no prior warning and whenever he was obviously bored. This was within weeks of the new shop opening and all of us being hired. I was young and went along with it for a while.
However, my colleague was in her 40s. She got fed up and decided to do something about him. She reported him repeatedly to our area manager, who decided to come down to speak to him about it. The area manager called and told him to stay put and send one of the employees out for anything that needed doing. He said he had something to do, but the AM said no, and he was needed in the shop.
My manager didn't get the obvious message and went out anyway. When the area manager came down, he was gone, and my manager wouldn't answer his phone all day. The area manager was furious. At the end of the day, when we were closing up, he walked past, posted his keys at the door, and I never saw him again. He didn't even attempt to argue his case.
9. Do The Math
One day, the boss screamed at my team until his face went purple, making a huge spectacle in front of the entire floor. He said that because a handful of us had elected not to renew our contracts, we were colluding against the company. So I came back with math and graphs to prove to his superior that my boss had underestimated turnover for over three years, costing the company a ton of money and labor issues. He was demoted and transferred out a couple of weeks later.
10. Somethin’ Was Cookin’
I was the head chef of a small restaurant. The owner, who was rarely there, suspected the general manager of embezzlement. On quiet nights, if she thought she wasn't making enough on tips, she would go to the computer and, from the manager’s screen, delete any tables that had paid in cash, pocketing the money. I got suspicious when my food cost numbers would never add up to what was being sold.
So, I got hold of the software company that ran our computer system. They had a backdoor that even the management couldn’t see that logged every keystroke. That's how I caught her red-handed. It turned out that she had ripped off close to $20,000 over six months. She was asked to leave after that, but the owner didn't bother to press charges for some reason.
11. Good Help Is Hard To Find
For a while, I was a project manager who got moved around from project to project as a "fixer". I was moved to a project where the customer could not be satisfied, no matter how many people, how much attention, or how much we bent over backward for them. Our program's director—who should have been our advocate—would not manage the customer.
Instead, he just hammered his employees to do more and more. Our team members were being let go due to "failure", or quitting outright due to burnout, and he complained that he couldn't get good people. Because of my position, I happened to have the ear of our VP.
This project came up in casual conversation, and I mentioned that it seemed odd that if the director was doing his job, how could so many employees with good reputations have "failed"? A week later, the director had been let go.
12. Grow Up And Get Out!
Our manager spent her whole shift in the office watching us on camera, and if we so much as stopped to talk to each other, she'd come out and yell at us to get back to work. She was completely immature. One time, I left my water bottle at the front counter, and my co-worker had to stop her from purposefully throwing it away.
She would make up rules on the spot if she didn't like something someone did; I could go on. She was a terrible, unfriendly, hypocritical, and mean manager. At least she got what was coming to her. We all went to the owners and told them everything and how it made us feel. They got HR involved and got her fired. They also found out she may have been taking or giving away products.
13. Bar None, He Had To Go
My boss was an attorney who was a serial abuser of female clients and defendants. He got away with it for over twenty years and preyed upon at least twelve different victims. The Office of Attorney Regulation censured him multiple times for other offenses, like being late paying his annual bar fees. However, even though they knew about at least five victims, they wouldn't disbar him. That's until I got involved.
I discovered that the Office of Attorney Regulation decides whether to "pursue an action" against an attorney based on a cost/benefit analysis. Over a six-month period, I gathered as much documentation regarding his actions and got him disbarred.
14. Left Out In The Cold
I had a squad leader who made us all stand out in the Missouri winter soaking wet until someone volunteered for weekend duty. I told him I had previous cold weather injuries—frostbite—and he ignored it. The corporal saw my blue feet when I took off my boots and sent me to the aid station. The doctor lost his mind, and the squad leader was transferred to another company the next day.
15. Backroom Bust
I was a store manager at a mall sporting goods store. One of my co-managers was getting busy on a regular basis with one of my teenage employees who was underage in that back stock room after the store closed. This was going on for several months. But it wasn't long before he made a moronic mistake. I found out when the teenager came to me and told me that my co-manager promised her a raise that she never got.
I asked her why he said that he would give her a raise. That is when she told me about the nookie in the stock room. I had to call the authorities and corporate about it. We arranged a sting with the girl’s help, and he was “caught with his pants down.”
16. Do The Right Thing
I had a boss who refused to make accommodations for a disabled coworker. She refused to keep other staff in line and let the disabled worker fall behind and get picked on because she (the boss) felt she was not required to do anything. I worked for a local government agency and reported it to our HR and upper management.
After they did nothing, I contacted them again to let them know I would be filing a suit with the ACLU for ADA infractions. My boss was gone in two weeks, and the rest of the staff had mandatory ADA training.
17. Career Crash
I was an intern at a tech company. In a one-on-one mentorship meeting, my boss asked me what skillset I wanted to pursue. I said that I wanted to do backend programming work. He replied, "Girls aren't smart enough for that type of work. How about we put you on the QA path? You'll do better there". I was so stunned I could barely respond. I just quietly repeated what I wanted to do.
The meeting ended awkwardly after that. I always thought I would be courageous in the face of such behavior, but I was silent because I was a 23-year-old who needed that internship to turn into a real job. A couple of weeks later, I was out to lunch with a few co-workers who brought along a woman who had worked at the company for years.
She'd been out on contract for a while, so I hadn't met her before. Everyone was talking about the boss and some of the rude stuff he had done or said to them. I took a chance and mentioned what happened in that meeting. She said she would take care of it. Within a few days, he was fired. I wasn’t the first person to have serious complaints about him, just the last.
18. Planting The Seed To Her Demise
I had worked at a garden center for a long time and was woefully overqualified for my job. One year, we lost our sales manager, and corporate hired a new one—she was a real piece of work. I don't know what her interview looked like, but she was constantly rude, mean, curt, and dismissive. She was that attention-seeking brand of lazy where she threw her weight around without cause.
She talked trash about anyone not in the room and collected 75% of the credit for 5% of the work. For whatever reason, corporate loved her. One thing led to another, and I got another job. When I gave my two weeks notice, I got an email the next day scheduling my exit interview with the head of HR. My position didn't get exit interviews.
Only managers and sometimes department supervisors did. Everyone at my store knew why I was leaving, so there was NO reason for the store manager to pull strings to get me one. I knew he had set it up so I could tell the head of HR—a man I was very friendly with—that I was leaving because of the new sales manager, and I did. I laid into her.
I said that she was the only reason I was leaving after almost ten years with the company. I had written the company's Health and Safety Program, trained nearly every other person who did my job at other stores, and made spreadsheets that were used company-wide, as well as set audit records that still stood to that day—and all for a few pennies over minimum wage. I told them I was leaving because that new sales manager was the worst and I couldn't take it anymore. She was then let go. I was thanked by most of my old workmates.
19. The Taxman Cometh
I was working at a gas station that was a dump. It was a tiny place that was always getting held up, and occasionally, a drive-by would put holes in it; It was an actual nightmare, but I was broke and needed the money. I worked my first two weeks, and payday came without a paycheck. I figured that sometimes it gets put on the next check because of the way timelines work. The next payday came, but there was still nothing.
I talked to the owner, who told me he had not been able to add me to the payroll and to check back with him tomorrow, and my paycheck should be there. The next day rolled around, and so did the boss man, who told me he still hadn’t added me to the system but offered to pay me under the table and counted out a stack of bills. Alarm bells started going off in my head.
I had been keeping track of my hours, and he was trying to pay me less than half of what I had earned. So, I told him that he needed to put me into the system and pay me properly. I asked him if the money he was offering had had the tax deducted and tracked. My boss was surprised that I wanted to pay my income taxes. I reminded him that tax evasion is a thing, but he didn't care. I got a little heated and demanded he pay me properly, or I would go to the labor board.
He told me to go home and that the labor board wouldn’t do anything. With a calm fury, I proceeded to unleash on him. I walked home, and while doing so, I called the labor board. They immediately emailed me the forms I needed that said he voluntarily pay me what he owed me or he would be forced to pay me and face some steep fines.
I thought for a moment and made another call, this time to the tax agency. I let the taxman know everything about him trying to pay me under the table, and they were very interested in what I had to say. A couple of weeks passed, and I get finally got my paycheck. I learned that several friends who had worked there had also received a call asking if he had ever paid them under the table—or offered to—and assured them they would not be in trouble if they had accepted.
All of them were honest and said he had indeed tried to. That was the last I heard about it until one day, a few months down the road, I stopped in after noticing a friend of mine was working there. My call had started an investigation leading to tax evasion charges, and it was discovered that the heists that kept happening were staged to get insurance money. Suffice it to say the owner was taken into custody.
20. Her Cookie Crumbled
When I was 16, I had a Saturday job at a bakery. There was the shop manager, me, and another Saturday girl. I became really close friends with the other Saturday girl, and we hung out when we weren’t working. Then, another girl got hired who was a bit older than us and had worked there before; she was friendly with the manager.
The manager had always been somewhat terrible. She’d pull faces at customers when they turned around, even if they’d just done something normal like ask for a sandwich. I told her we had a bug infestation, and she told me not to tell anyone. When the second girl got hired, she and the manager would stand around and drink tea all day while my friend and I worked our tails off.
One day, the new girl asked my friend to sweep up. My friend told her to do it herself because she hadn’t done anything all day. The manager fired my friend on the spot for being disrespectful. That was the final straw. That night I went home, wrote a two-page letter to the head office documenting everything the manager had done wrong during my time working there, explained the situation with my friend, and gave my two weeks notice.
A few days later, I got a phone call saying they were hiring my friend back and wanted me to withdraw my resignation, and the manager was getting moved to the head office bakery so they could keep an eye on her. It was one of my proudest moments.
21. I Got Her Written Off
I had been working in retail for five years when upper management decided that all managers needed to switch departments so they could learn all divisions. I was a low-end manager, so I didn't have to switch, but my boss did. I ended up with one of the favorite managers in the store and thought, "How cool!" If I'd known what I was in for...
She had a lot of trouble adapting to our department, so I picked up a lot of her slack because we were a team. Because I had been working in that division for four years, I was much faster and more efficient than she was. Instead of being happy with the help, she got resentful. Suddenly, nothing I did was correct. I was always in trouble and getting written up for the smallest errors. One day, I noticed that many of my department supplies were destroyed before I was allowed to destroy them.
I had to hold onto them for six months before I could do the write-offs. When I asked around what happened, I was told my boss threw everything away in the compactor without going through the correct steps, which meant that my inventory was going to be way off. I was LIVID. I confronted her about it, and she denied it all. During that time, I was taking some leadership classes, which also had her boss in them.
We got to know each other, and he quickly realized my boss was lying about me. Hence, we made a deal to catch her in the act because his boss was on my manager’s side and not his. I found some supplies in my supply closet that weren't supposed to be there. They pulled the camera, and sure enough, my boss, who was keen on getting me fired, was the one who took the supplies off the floor and put them in my supply closet. She was fired over it.
22. His Plan Failed
There was a project manager who worked with my team who didn't understand the business domain. He put no work into understanding it or breaking down any problems with the team. During a stakeholder meeting, we were asked about the game plan for tackling the project. He spewed some nonsense, and I asked what the actual plan was in detail.
When he tried to come up with some nonsense, saying that the problem was very complex and he had no clear path to building the project. His fate was sealed, and he was fired.
23. On Thin Ice
I was working maintenance at an ice rink. The rule is if the Zamboni doors open, you get off the ice. Some moron ignored the fact that they were open and that I was standing in the doorway and decided to rip off one last puck. The puck bounced off the glass and hit me in the head. I was OK but reported it to my boss because we have to fill out an incident report for things like that.
My boss asked, "Are you OK"? I said, “I feel OK”. Then, he responded, "Well, we don't really have to report it then, do we"? I reminded him of the protocol, but it was clear he didn't want to do it. Since he wouldn't do it, I sent a descriptive email of the incident to the administration because I felt there should be some documentation and paper trail in case I ended up having a brain hemorrhage or something a few days later. My boss was fired by my next shift.
24. Face The Consequences
My boss posted publicly on his Facebook page asking, "why so many of his staff have mental problems". Before that, he also posted that he was "having a cheeky snow day" and skipping work. Considering I had been on a final written warning for breaking the "social media policy", I didn’t see why he shouldn't be either, so I reported him myself. He was transferred to another store and was demoted.
25. He Ended Up Under Review
I worked for a pharma company, and my supervisor was always a jerk to me. On one of my annual reviews, he put that I had changed the parameters on one of our pieces of equipment so that it was out of spec. It's a lot more complicated, so I refused to sign my review and proved it didn't happen. Everything was documented, including our reviews.
His submitting false information on my review was a fireable offense. I quit right after I got him fired because basically everyone there was terrible like that.
26. Something Didn’t Check Out
The hotel I worked at was undergoing a complete renovation. During that time, both my managers were putting in less than 30 hours a week, and I was racking up more than 70 doing their jobs as well. I’m ambitious and knew it would look great on my resume, so I was happy to bust my back. Two months in, I started to notice things going missing, like furniture and funds allocated by corporate.
Then I overheard a conversation in the back office. Suddenly, I realized what was really happening. Both my managers were pocketing the $20K in discretionary funds allocated to us. I reported them to corporate, and an investigation was launched. Two days later—on a Friday—I was suspended for misconduct by our district manager, and at 9 AM on Monday, I was told to clean out my office.
By that point, I was burnt out, so I took it as a victory, filed a retaliation lawsuit, and moved states. Six months later, everyone was getting fired, and charges were laid on the two managers.
27. Time To Say Goodbye
I told supervisors that my direct boss was taking product and time from the store. Her stories didn’t add up. She was never helping us on the floor, was always in her office, would take 1.5-hour lunch breaks without clocking out, would leave early, and tell me she was coming in early when the store didn’t open until 9 AM, and she didn’t have a store key.
I told them for about eight months, and no one seemed to follow up on it. Then, she left. She was unable to get rehired or use us as a reference. After she was gone, I got promoted to her position and found thousands of dollars worth of empty boxes shoved in the back of her desk drawers. I’m sure she was taking cash from the register, too.
28. No More Promoting Bad Behavior
My boss confided in me that he was banging a staff member and told me that he would stop. About a year later, he was still doing it, and everyone pretty much knew it was going on. Then, he kept promoting her. I sent in a few anonymous tips to human resources, which led to a few investigations, and ultimately he was dismissed.
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29. This Good Ol’ Boy’s Job Went Up In Smoke
My supervisor would talk about all the people on our team constantly, but only behind their backs. I got sick of telling him to cut it out. My husband and I happened to work at the same place but in different departments, and my supervisor would make comments about threesomes with him, what hotel we picked for our afternoon delight, and stuff like that.
It was extremely uncomfortable. He also spent most of his supervising time outside puffing away. The problem was that my supervisor was "one of the guys", and I was the only female. It got so bad that I decided to quit. I had my resignation letter in my purse but decided to let his boss know why I was leaving. He was disgusted and lost his mind when I told him.
They started an investigation which took three days. They interviewed staff who corroborated what I said. They checked the security cameras and saw that he was spending most of his work day outside and was fired. When he was told I was the person who complained, he tried to get to me to "apologize that I took it the wrong way". Having my co-workers surrounding me as he was hauled out was the best feeling.
30. What A Chauvinist Pig!
I'd heard about old-school chauvinism but never got to experience it firsthand until I met my new boss. He treated other women and me like garbage, and he wanted to shoehorn me into a position that I'd been promoted from three times over because he thought it would make me quit. Then four months after he started, he got rid of a temp worker when he found out she was pregnant.
I had his motivation for getting rid of her in an email, which I forwarded to HR. As a result, he was let go.
31. Out With The Old
At my old job, we got a new food and beverage director. He was in charge of our restaurant/bar, as well as our conference area. He couldn’t care less about the conference area, so he focused his time on the restaurant. He got rid of bussers and made every server become their own bartender. He made a new drink menu and worked with the head chef on a new food menu.
He fired the people he didn’t like and hired his drinking buddies from old jobs to be servers. He was a boozer, always disappearing into his office with a cocktail or a glass of vino and leaving us servers out to struggle. During one shift, I was scheduled to work lunch and dinner, and I was the only one scheduled during lunch. It was the worst shift of my entire life.
We were showing the local college football game, and they were playing their rivals. Every table and bar stool was full. I even had people standing and ordering drinks from me, and my chefs were running my food. The director came out of his office to see how things were going. I was eyeballs deep making drinks, and he complimented me on how well I was doing.
I turned around, and he was gone, as was the drink I had just made. After a few months, everyone hated him, including his “friends” who he had brought over with him. On New Year’s Eve, we would have a huge party, and everyone was expected to work; even his boss was there. Halfway through the night, he said he had to go home because his wife and daughter were sick.
However, he had told his friends he was going to a concert RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET. So, we told his boss, went out to our wrap-around patio, and sure enough, you could see him with his wife waiting to go in. He didn’t return to work.
32. Black Friday Blowout
I was working at a large retailer as an assistant manager. We generally worked single coverage, and I was supposed to work no more than 35 hours. My manager was hourly as well and was at 44 hours max. He was working roughly 15 but was punching in for 48. He would come into work in the mornings even if I was scheduled, take in a shipment—but wouldn’t process it—and would sit in the back.
He would take the company tablet home to take conference calls at home, took me out of view of the cameras, "fake" punched me, and called me names for asking him to approve my vacation. All that, AND he made me work his scheduled hours. I complained to my district manager, who told me I must have misread the scenario. I told her I was uncomfortable at work and felt unsafe working with him. Her response made me even more furious.
She told me that we needed to resolve it between ourselves and that she had never had any problems with him before. Meanwhile, he had been hired three months prior, and I had been with the company for four years, so her statement meant nothing. I took my complaint to HR. After getting off the phone with our HR rep—who told me we should have a joint mediation call to try and resolve it—I got a phone call from my DM.
She asked how I could go over her head like that, which was disrespectful and insubordination. That was the last straw for me. I left the day before Thanksgiving with no notice. I prepped nothing for Black Friday, and the entire back room was packed to the ceiling with unprocessed shipment boxes. I found out later that my manager was fired for theft and time card fraud.
The regional manager found out when he had to come in to help the store. Then, shortly after that, the district manager was fired for withholding bonus hours for the stores in order to get her bonus for unused hours. The HR rep for the area was also fired the same day for not advocating for employees and taking the district manager's side, who was her childhood friend.
Four months later, I was rehired by the same company because they put my termination in incorrectly. Those who were still there welcomed me back with open arms, and I got promoted to manager two months after that.
33. Mamma Mia, This Guy Was A Jerk
I had a boss at Papa John's who was a total jerk to all his employees. I'd seen him throw pizzas, pizza cutters, oven trays—you name it. He'd also curse out employees whether or not there were customers in the store. I even caught him re-dating expired food so he could still use it. After he fired me, I decided to file a complaint with corporate, and they initiated an investigation. He had just been promoted, had received general manager of the year, and had won a free cruise to the Bahamas. They fired him and stripped all that away from him. It felt great.
34. I Took Him Out
In college, I worked at a take-out restaurant just off campus, and we were all employed by the school. I was 17–18 years old, and my boss—the manager—was a 40-something creeper. He kept hitting on me and touching me inappropriately, like trying to massage my shoulders and tickling me, despite me asking him to stop. Then he friended me on Facebook.
I declined, and suddenly, my work schedule was changed. I was on shift during hours when I had class, and when I explained that was a problem, I got taken off the schedule altogether. I told the assistant manager what was going on, even though I was explicitly told by the manager not to talk to them. The assistant manager reported what was going on to upper management, and the manager was fired.
Tropic Thunder (2008), DreamWorks
35. Their Side Hustle Wrecked Them
I worked at an insurance company and ended up in the department that dealt with write-offs and stolen vehicles, etc. I found many vehicles that had been taken and were paid out for, then recovered. But I realized something didn't quite add up. It turned out, my manager and his number two had a little side action where they would be informed of these vehicles, and if there was little to no damage to them, they would personally recover them.
One time his number two flew out to Holland and rode a motorcycle back to the UK. They were selling these cars and pocketing the cash between them. I kept a note of all the case numbers, and then, once I’d had enough of the boss belittling me in front of the team, I handed in my notice. During my exit meeting, I was asked why I was leaving, so I told them.
They asked if I had anything else to say or add. I smiled, slid the list of all the case numbers to the person, and told them that maybe they should look into them. Both were sacked after a very long investigation.
36. Back For Another Round
I had a manager at my new job who offered to give me a ride home after a Friday night shift went long. I quickly regretted accepting his offer. He didn’t turn into my street; he went to a bar about a mile in the opposite direction so we could “get to know each other”. I had one drink and asked to go home. Instead, he bought me a second drink. I asked to go home again, and he tried to assault me.
I emailed the restaurant's owner about what had happened and went to my shift the next day. The owner was outside the restaurant firing the manager. I was impressed, and the remaining young female staff were very grateful for the change. Two years later, I started my first day at my dream restaurant. I did some training, sat down for preshift with the kitchen, and that same jerk manager I was rid of came out to present the specials.
He saw me and froze. After preshift, he tried to talk to me about working together, but I went straight to my new manager and told them I had a history with a current employee they needed to know about. I told my story and showed the emails between the owner and myself. They talked to the guy about it, and he was fired again. He later applied to work for me when I was the hiring manager and, obviously, didn’t get a callback.
37. Only One Way To Right This Wrong
There was a sweet 18-year-old girl who used to work in the kitchen I worked at while in college. She had a massive cognitive issue where she was probably 8-10 years old mentally. One day on her lunch break, she told me in conversation that she thought our boss was cute and that they had been talking a lot. She started showing me the messages between the two of them. I was horrified by what I saw.
They said things like, "What are you wearing? Take a picture of your bra. I’d love to kiss you right now", etc. There were probably 25 or 30 lewd texts and several more that were clearly in the "grooming" territory. As far as the girl said, she was never physical with him, but she was going to have dinner at his house in the near future.
This seemed very wrong because although she was physically old enough, she was a child trapped in a teenager’s body. Not only that, but there was a power disparity present for even someone with age-appropriate cognitive function. So, I made it my mission to get this jerk to go. I had a meeting with the kitchen admin, and all she said was that the girl was old enough, so there was nothing they could do.
I understood that, but it still felt wrong. So, I had a meeting with the president of the facility. She was absolutely appalled. She was appalled that my immediate manager was taking advantage of a situation and appalled at the fact the kitchen admin did absolutely nothing. Within two days, she fired them both and put me in charge on an interim basis.
38. This Manager Had No Integrity
I was a worker at Chipotle. At my store, we would always have new GMs all the time. One GM we had was a complete jerk. She was so mean that my co-workers were scared of her. I have a disorder, and my doctor gave me a note to give to the store that prevents me from working on the line and serving customers. So, I just work in the back, make the food, and do the dishes.
One day, the GM came up to me and demanded I go work on the line. I told her that I couldn’t because of my condition. She told me to go or else I was fired, which is unlawful. If you have a condition of some sort and give a doctor’s note to your workplace that prevents you from doing something, your boss cannot tell you to do the thing you are prevented from doing.
After my shift, my father picked me up. He saw that I was shaken up and knew immediately that my boss had put me on the line. He barged into the store and started laying into her. He was furious. After that, she never told me again what to do. However, she still treated my co-workers like animals. So, all the workers, including myself, wrote to corporate and complained about her, and she was fired immediately.
39. Minority Rules
My boss at a former company where I worked sent me an email where he said he wanted to fire some people to make room for some regular employees. I immediately saw a big problem. The list of people to be fired was ALL minorities. I forwarded the email to the proper authorities, and they began an investigation which ultimately led to the boss getting fired. The jerk totally deserved it.
40. Finally Vindicated
My would-be boss was interviewing me for a position and said, "I don't think we can work with your Army schedule". I was in the Reserves and told her, “You can't make employment decisions based on my military status". She disagreed and hastily wrapped up the interview, telling me I wouldn't be a good fit. I left cool as a cucumber and immediately called her boss—a close family friend.
She was suspended, investigated, and then fired after about three days. Normally I wouldn't be so vindictive, but that was the fourth job in a row that I was discriminated against based on my service obligations and the first one that I had the ability to fight back.
41. The Proof Was In The Pamphlets
During my first summer internship after freshman year in college, I worked at a large aerospace company. They assigned me to write a report on some technology they were using. I used their own pamphlets and technical library, put together a slide deck, and invited the managers to a presentation. A few slides in, I quoted some sources that said their technology was prone to instability.
Suddenly, the attendees became very interested and asked me questions about it. I pointed to the pamphlets that everyone already had access to. The engineers had been complaining about instabilities in their devices, and my manager had been telling them they were full of beans. My manager lost his job during the next round of layoffs.
42. Just Following Protocol
I was working as a supervisor at a warehouse where we had a vault that housed highly critical client information. My boss came around with a couple of people he was giving a tour to and asked me to open the gate to allow them into the vault. I asked for the authorization codes and badges. He refused to provide them, so I refused access.
He got angry, asking if I was really going to make him go back to his office to get his pass and codes. I said, "Yeah", so he fired me right there and asked for the key pass. I told him I wasn't authorized to give it to him and that HR had to check it before I left since that was protocol. While sitting in the HR director’s office, the COO walked in and started asking about what had happened. He thanked me for doing the right thing, and two days later, I got offered my former boss's now open position.
43. They Doubled Down, And He Was Ousted
I worked at a casino restaurant. One night, there were lots of complaints about the food and dishes being sent back. The head chef told all the servers to stop dropping their panties for all the guests and deal with it. A few of the girls complained to HR and the union, and he was gone before the next shift.
44. When In Doubt, Don’t Ship It Out
I worked in quality control and caught a major quality issue in a production run. I immediately reported it to my boss to initiate a hold of the material and to recall if anything had already shipped. She held shipments and quarantined the material. However, our shipping director decided to ship it anyway and sent out an email stating, "When in doubt, ship it out!"
We then had 750+ tons of defective material in the field, spanning 25 sites in six countries. Customers caught the problem and questioned us. They quarantined the material and demanded answers. I saved digital and printed copies of the emails and stored them in a fireproof safe. Higher-ups tried to bury the data and pretend as if nothing had happened. My boss bypassed the chain of command and emailed the full story to the executive board. Seven people from manager to VP level were fired.
45. Caught Red Handed
I took a cell phone video of my boss taking money from the safe and putting it in her wallet. I knew she was doing it, and I also knew that the moment it came out that money was missing, she'd blame it on me. She was so stupid that she didn't realize she should stop lifting cash while I was standing ten feet away with my phone out facing her.
46. The Lunch Lady Got Tossed
The lunch lady in high school was truly disgusting. She was always grabbing lettuce and cheese out of the salad bar and shoving them into her mouth, then letting them fall all over the food. It was pretty gross. Her setup time was during my study hall, so all of us in the cafeteria would watch her every day and get grossed out. One day, we decided to do something about it.
We wrote a letter to the principal saying, “We, the undersigned, in a show of bipartisan effort, would like to draw to the attention of the administration of this esteemed high school the egregious health violations ostensibly demonstrated in the cafeteria each day by the lunch lady”. We all signed it and dropped it off. The letter was supposed to be funny, but it wasn’t. The principal addressed our study hall the next day to tell us she was fired and they were enacting new health standards.
47. A Post Holiday Gift
My boss tried to keep me at work late on Christmas Eve to make me miss my flight home as payback for something I'd done that was not malicious or even intentional but that challenged her authority as a small retail clothing store manager. She didn't succeed, but I was still mad about it when I got back. So, I went to HR and told them I was quitting and why.
They started interviewing the other few employees that morning and received some harassment complaints they might not have heard otherwise. She was fired by that afternoon.
48. Roll Back The Hours
I had a boss who was skimming off employee hours at Walmart. I took screenshots of employees’ hours on a Thursday before the shift started and then screenshots of their hours on Friday that showed all of them had a couple of hours skimmed off their work week. I was a low-level manager, and he was an upper-tier manager.
I believe his motivation was that he wanted to get promoted and show that he could get more done in fewer man hours. He got fired.
49. Agree To Disagree
When I was hired at my job, I had no idea my boss was an absolute nightmare. She was like a greatest-hits compilation of things bad managers do. She would lie and throw us under the bus to protect herself, talk trash about other team members to us, and try to get us to agree with her to hate other people on the team, stuff like that. She also lied about her qualifications and couldn’t do any of the things she should have been able to.
So any time she got involved with a project, it took ten times longer and came out worse. There were people outside our department who straight-up refused to work with her, and she wasn’t allowed to work on their projects. However, everyone in our department was so good at what we did and covering for her that it looked to everyone like our department was running fine.
Finally, less than a year after I had started, she told a coworker that she thought it was time to fire and replace me because I disagreed with her on something and ended up being right. Once I heard that, I went to our COO and told him what was happening. I said I didn’t want to give him an ultimatum or anything, but that I couldn’t continue to work on a team where I was scared of losing my job anytime I disagreed in a very normal and professional way with my boss.
He was horrified and, over the next couple of days, individually talked to the other members of my team. That was towards the end of the week. The following Monday was typical. On Tuesday, I was sitting at my desk working when, suddenly, my boss tapped me on the shoulder and told me they had fired her and she was leaving. I was so shocked I just said, “Wow, sorry, good luck with everything”.
50. Where’s My Money?
I got promoted and received a pretty decent pay raise. I wasn't getting the extra money, so I asked my manager about it. He would say, “Oh, yeah, it's coming. These things take time”, and so on. Eventually, I went over his head, something I wouldn't normally do, but I was getting nowhere. I spoke to his boss and was met with shock and surprise.
Apparently, they had been paying it for months. It turned out my manager was redirecting my raise to somewhere else in the department and cooking the books somehow. He wasn't actually pocketing my money, but he was using it to make sure he got a performance bonus. He was gone within the week.
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