We can all agree that getting fired sucks. But there are some shrewd people among us who managed to turn getting let go into a golden opportunity to get even. From leaving behind a trail of destruction to putting their boss behind bars, these people took to Reddit and Quora to share stories of satisfying revenge.
1. A Slick Send-Off
I was a painter working on commercial properties. I got fired and was told that I had to drive to the owner's house to pick up my check. I got there, pulled into his driveway, and went to the door. When he answered, he had a smirk on his face. He handed me my check, then told me he had to deduct for tools he lent me. I got in my car and backed out. Then I heard a scream from him. I stopped, and the look on his face was complete horror. He just had his driveway resurfaced with concrete; it was dry but turns out I had the oil leak from hell. I dumped at least a quart of the blackest, dirtiest oil right in the middle of his brand new driveway.
2. The Devil’s In The Details
I worked for an architect who never attended to detail and had a load of failures as a result. On the day I refused to give the go-ahead on a design that I knew would fail—because of "unimportant" details—I was fired. The last thing I had to do was supervise the printing of company letterheads, business cards, and A0 drawing sheets. They were supposed to say, "McDonald, Sweet and Partners, Chartered Architects". At the last minute, I chose vengeance. I altered the proofs to say, "McDonald, Sweet and Partners, Chartered Artichokes". Of course, not being a "detail" person he approved the proofs, and thousands got printed.
Freepik,nakaridore
3. Checkmate
I was working for a small game company. They were having trouble and we knew it, but they were upfront about what was going on, so we weren't worried. They had missed payroll a couple of times, but always made it up by the next paycheck. We liked the job, so we hung in hoping it would get better. Until one day we showed up and the doors were locked. I don't know what all happened, but they were in much worse shape than they had let on. I never got my last two paychecks, so they owed me something like $8k. I called one of the owners and he said, “Sorry! The money is gone, they've liquidated everything to pay off debts, and there's nothing left”. A month goes by, and I get a phone call. It was one of the owners asking if I knew what happened to a particular computer. I had taken it home over the weekend to compile and run some renders, and when I showed up Monday I didn't have a job anymore, so I just put it under my desk and forgot it. But that's not what I told him. I simply said, “No, I really don't know where it could've gotten off to, but I also don't know where my last two paychecks are either. Maybe it got liquidated with them? I'll tell you what, though, if my last two paychecks were to show up and clear the bank, I might be motivated to try to find out what happened to that machine with the entire code base, all the model files, and textures, and all the storyboards on it". Three days later, I got an envelope from FedEx with a personal check for everything they owed me, a note saying, “The hard drive is sufficient," and an address. I mailed them the drive after the check cleared.
4. A Dish Best Served…Greasy?
While going to college, my sister worked in a NYC greasy spoon that was mobbed every day. One day, one of the cooks in the kitchen threw a dish at her simply for asking if the right cheese had been put on a customer’s burger. My sister left the kitchen and told the manager what had happened, but he didn’t want to hear it and sided with the cook. That was the last straw. My sister then told the other waitresses there who happened to be her friends what had happened. They all then proceeded to take all the orders from a now packed restaurant, (this was before point of sales computer systems), with no table numbers on the checks, then put all the orders in at once. Then they got their bags and walked out the door as one. The manager came running out to the street screaming at them to get back in there and finish serving the customers and my sister told him, “You and the cook can do it”. That restaurant had to shut down for a week while they scrambled to find new servers. It must have cost them tens of thousands.
5. Called In The Cavalry
When I was fired at a large financial services organization, the head of HR essentially told me to clean out my desk and leave. I was a participant in a number of executive compensation programs, and no provision was being made to give me some/any of that money. I knew others had been treated differently when they were terminated. I called my former boss (the ex-company president) who had been fired two weeks earlier and asked him what he thought I should do. He said, “Call the guys in the field. The field loves you”. This was at around 10:00 am. So I called every senior salesperson I knew—and asked them to call the CEO on my behalf. All I asked was that I be treated fairly. At 2:00 pm, the head of HR called me to say that the CEO had gotten the message and my “little campaign” worked—I could “call off my dogs”. I negotiated an equitable severance package and a transition job within the organization. I get by with a little help from my friends.
6. Up in Flames
I had just gotten out of the army. I went to work for a guy who was a real creep. He had been married four times and had inappropriate photographs of all his ex-wives, which he was always trying to show me to prove what a stud he was. I knew where he kept the envelope he stashed them in. When I quit, I got the perfect revenge. I burned all the pictures and put the ashes back into the envelope with a goodbye note from me. I thought that if he was stupid, crooked, and a creep, he deserved it. Have had my own business with 60+ employees for 40+ years. I owe it to him for getting me started.
7. Sound Familiar?
I was fired from a sporting goods company for not fitting in. I was fired by the VP of Technology and my manager was the one who brought me to his office (she didn’t say a word to me). Anyway, a few years later, the jellyfish manager I had was at a conference where I was the keynote speaker. I was actually in the middle of telling the story of how I was fired and that got me the right to call myself ‘seasoned’ on my resume. I am explaining the whole experience minus names and I look out into the audience and there she is, sliding down in her chair. It was classic!
Wikimedia Commons,Women Deliver
8. Smell You Later
I had a family of three brothers as bosses. They inherited the business and really were unfamiliar with how to run a ladies’ boutique. They fired me without cause….I was the top salesperson and they had to pay for my expertise and added commissions and bonuses. I was making too much money according to them. I left, got a job at the local competitor, and sent them a nasty "gift": 100 lbs of bagged cow manure delivered to each of the doors. Sure felt good.
9. Just Plane Wrong
I worked for a small airline in the 80s. My pay was $800 a month, paid once a month. I got a call during a 14-hour workday and was told they were closing, and to finish my out-of-state run and bring the plane back to the hangar in a different city. I was to pick up my check taped on the hangar door. After taxes, it was $712. I got a taxi and went to the bank. I went in and tried to cash my check. They told me the account did not have enough to cover my check. The bank teller asked me if I had $20. I did and she deposited it in the account and I got $712 in cash. The next night, the owner called me screaming about the paycheck. I just said, “Now John, you wouldn’t write me a bad check, would you?"
10. What Goes Around…
I was fired from a small law firm. The separation was nasty. The owner had the lock changed and had building security walk me out. I opened my own office and within a few months, the legal affairs manager for my former employer's biggest client was on the phone with me sputtering with rage. He had finally had enough of the overbilling and poor service. The client shifted its business to me. Whenever I encountered my former boss in the courthouse or on the street his enraged expression was a pleasure to behold. Payback is such a guilty pleasure.
11. So We Meet Again
I was working as a Case Manager for a national company with a remote digital presence, but no brick-and-mortar offices in our state. Another local nurse wanted my position and started planting weevils in ears up the chain of command. Long story short, she was committing a bunch of tomfoolery and blaming it on me without my knowledge at the time. She got my position, but was fired within three months because she was caught committing aforementioned tomfoolery, partially because her accusations caused a state-level investigation and audit. This cleared me and cost her her job. Brilliant planning on her part. Fast forward two years and she applies for a job at another local facility. One that I happen to be the associate clinical director at. She has been on a suspended license with remediation and stipulations after reactivation and basically been unable to work for two years. She walked into the interview, saw me sitting behind the desk, whispered, “Oh, no!" and just ran out of the building. I didn't have to say a word.
12. Fight For Your Rights
A relative of mine came to Canada, he started working in a restaurant that paid him $8/hour when the minimum wage was $14/hour. He worked there for two years before they fired him for no reason. When they dismissed him from the work, they still owed him nearly two months of pay. The restaurant owner started toying with him for months and wouldn't pay his money. When I heard about it, I knew just what to do. I filed a case with the Labour Board and got him his payment for two years at the lawful minimum wage, which was around $10k. A few months later the restaurant closed down. I heard the restaurant partners had a bad fight over that money since no one wanted to take responsibility for the loss. Also, two other workers filed labor disputes against the restaurant as well, so they all got their money. They very much deserved that fate.
13. The Uncrackable Code
My revenge was simply having done my job too well with skills my colleagues lacked. I developed complex spreadsheets that allowed monthly billing to be done much faster than before. When I left, I heard they had to go back to doing it by hand and take a whole week, because nobody knew how to do anything with my formulas!
14. There’s A New Sheriff In Town
This is how my brother got his sweet revenge: by buying the company when it finally went bust, then giving them their jobs back on less pay, less generous holiday package, no company car, and him as their boss.
15. Turn The Other Cheek
I was moved to the sister company of the franchise I was managing, becoming a salesperson and losing my salary in an instant. At the new company, we went on a team-building exercise weekend. My former immediate boss at the franchise was a director of the sister company and was involved in its projects. The team building exercise was paintball. And I got to shoot him in the rump.
16. An Expensive Deworming
I once worked at a large defense contractor. One of the programmers was given two weeks' notice. Well, he decided to go out with a bang. He spent his last two weeks programming a worm into the system that tied up two years' worth of work on one of the projects. No one could access any of it. If I recall correctly, they ended up paying him to remove the worm.
17. Nuclear Revenge
When I was getting ‘made redundant’ from one job, one of the last things I did was put my expensive IBM laptop in the microwave for a minute or so. Apparently, according to my old colleagues, it never worked again. The woman from HR tried to ‘get me’ but as she had seen me using my laptop five minutes before I handed it over, there was nothing she could do. They never worked out it had been zapped in the microwave.
18. Took It To The Top Brass
Years ago I was subcontracted to work for a company I won't name. The manager would often blackmail me with jobs to do which I shouldn't have done because it wasn't within my remit, but because I was only one of a couple of men there, she would put it on me and say, “Do you like working here?" Anyway, my line manager paid me a visit and caught me in the act of doing something I had again been blackmailed into doing. I explained the situation to him and he held a meeting with said manager. That should have put an end to it, but after that, she looked for any way to get rid of me and eventually made up some story. Skip forward a month or two. What the manager didn't realize was I had made notes of everything her and her team were doing that was against company policy so I sent an email to their head office with it all. I didn't really expect an answer as they were a national company. A few weeks later I had a reply. A month or so later, they sent me another email to say they had investigated all my accusations and had found them to be true, and thanked me for letting them know. The manager was demoted and sent to another store, and her two supervisors were sacked.
19. Success Is The Best Revenge
I quit because of an awful supervisor. A year later, I had built up my small business that they had laughed at. I was just returning from a job when I ran into that supervisor in a Mcdonald's. He sneered, “Are you ready to come crawling back to your old job yet?" I had the most satisfying response ready to go. I looked at him. “Well. I just got paid more for working three hours than you paid me for working 40. What do you think?"
20. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
I was a lobbyist for an industry. During a legislative session, I learned about a regulatory change that would impact my industry. The next morning, I was called into the boss’s office and fired. Apparently, the Association president didn’t like the way I did things and got the Board to fire me, but the vote was very close. Six months later, I learned that the President’s personal company had lost $12 million because they didn’t know about the change. When asked why I didn’t tell them, I calmly explained that, once fired, I didn’t work for them anymore. The business went bankrupt.
21. You Messed With The Wrong Guy
I got cut from an old age home after four years because they confused me with the person I was covering for one shift (who didn’t take care of a resident). I fought it, tooth and nail, but they didn’t budge. But there was something they didn't know. I had a record of every case of misconduct and neglect from the CNA’s and Board, so I promptly turned over all info to the State and every other advocacy group that would listen. They did, and the entire staff quit or was removed within a month. Wrong guy.
22. Going Postal
I had a friend who got fired because the boss's stupid son wanted to start over for the 30th time in the family business. My friend got no severance or payment for sick days he hadn't used or leftover vacation. On his way out, he decided to run one last letter through the old passage meter. He posted $10,000 and change on the letter and walked out with it in his box. It's now framed. The boss' son embezzled several hundred thousand over the next two years. The building is now the site of a nice parking lot.
23. Cheaters Never Win
I worked for a government agency and everyone in my division knew this guy was cheating on his wife with someone else in the division. Well, he was a micromanaging idiot of the highest order. One day he yelled about me talking to a coworker when we were on our breaks, so that day, I called his wife's work number and left a message giving all the dates and times he was with his side piece. Shortly after that, she kicked him out. I have zero regrets. His wife and kids were better off without him—their words not mine.
24. Ghost In The Machine?
I still have access to some of my company's social accounts even after I told my boss how to prevent the account from being "hacked" after a password change. Every so often, I post things on their page that make them look like they shared it by accident, change their links, or run ads designed to fail that get no traction and eat up their marketing budget. It's been months and they still haven't fixed it.
25. Not The Brightest Decision
I was laid off from an Internet Marketing job. It took me by surprise because I was definitely a source of profit for the company. I had a new job about a week later. Two-thirds of my clients followed me to my new company, losing my old company about six times my salary in gross profit on billing. Every one of those clients is still a client today.
26. Clock’s Ticking
The day after I left my job, I started getting calls from that office, asking about various things. I told them that I would get back to them, and sent an email to corporate and to the management in our area. I let them know that from that time forward I would be happy to help but my fee was $150 per hour with a minimum four-hour charge and that the clock started ticking the minute that I answered a call or opened an email. So the next day, I got a call and helped the caller with their issues. I then sent an electronic invoice to corporate. They called and said it was only a ten-minute call and they were willing to pay me twenty dollars. I reminded them of the e-mail and told them if I didn’t receive payment in full ($600) within thirty days I would notify the credit-reporting agencies and start legal proceedings. Three days later, a check arrived, FedEx next-day delivery, signature required, and strangely enough, I have yet to receive another call or email from any of their employees. I can’t imagine why…lol.
27. Just Following Orders
I worked at a radio station selling airtime in a town of 30,000. When I took over my route, a retired Army major was occasionally hitting $6,000. I took billings over $8,000. Three months later, I was fired (I was the only man), and a young cutsie 22-year-old girl was hired. She had zero experience. My sales manager/station owner’s wife told me to “clean out my desk”. I did just that, trashing everything including sales invoices for the month. She made a big point of letting me know I wouldn't be getting my commissions. I waited patiently for my salary check ($1,500 at the time) at my desk, then walked to the bank and cashed it. Two days later I got the call. I was expecting it, but it was still so, so sweet. “Where are all the sales invoices for August?" “In the trash”. “What!?" “You said to clean out my desk. I did”. Then I hung up. I heard later the young girl didn’t work out, and the station went bankrupt. Sad, isn’t it?
28. Justice Was Served
A lawyer I know to be smart, capable, and thorough was treated terribly by the litigation partner of a major old-line Austin law firm. (A lead litigation partner who brought in clients but had never tried a case). The young lawyer was mercilessly hammered every day by the litigation partner. After a month or so, he was fired for pointing out some problems in court documents drafted by the partner. He wasn't offered a severance package. Within three days the fired lawyer had a job working for the appellate court judges who often heard appeals filed by the firm's litigation partner. The fired lawyer was now in a position to closely examine any appeal filed by his former firm and their litigation partner and point out all of the partners' future errors in public court opinions.
29. Locked Out
I had been working with someone for almost a year as a temporary employee and was told that when the job officially came open, it would be mine. This was mostly data type entry, but some of it was sensitive material so it had to be password protected. I interviewed for the job, but they brought in someone from out of state. My supervisor was furious when she found out that they hired someone else. So, when I tried to give her my password, she refused to take it and I didn't bother to give it to anyone else. They had to bring in someone to hack their own computer, and to top it off, the company then had a hiring freeze, and the person they wanted couldn't be hired. My supervisor told me they were now without someone working the position, and they had spent quite a bit of money to have someone come in to bypass my password. Funny, they never even bothered to call to ask what the password was. In the end, after all of that, they asked me to take the position. I did, but only with a pay raise and additional hours.
30. A “Miner” Inconvenience
I worked security at a gold mine. In the normal performance of my duties, I got stuck in a wash on the outskirts and had to have a tow truck pull me out. The patrol vehicle suffered minor damage. My boss accused me of lying and fired me. The day after my firing, I was called to the Imperial County Sheriff’s Department to talk to the FBI about a theft that had occurred at the mine a few months earlier. Because I had worked security at the mine longer than anyone (including my supervisor), they (who I had shown how the theft could have occurred) had some loose ends to tie up to wrap up the investigation. Through questioning, it became abundantly clear that the person they had charged with the theft had to have help stationed nearby. I suggested that the alleged thief was a good friend of my supervisor, and to look in my supervisor's general direction. They were able to piece together that the supervisor had been involved.
One arrest later, and he accepted a plea deal in return for full cooperation. I lost my job. He lost his freedom for five years. I’d say I came out the winner in this case.
31. Karma’s A Glitch
I worked at a Biotech Research company. My lab was a support lab for the majority of the company. My direct boss was ‘downsized’ and my lab was transferred under a different group. Apparently, this new "Boss" was partial to the employees in his original group. He sent them to work in my area although they knew nothing about the technology. One woman decided she knew better about "everything" and re-programmed a very large and expensive piece of machinery. The entire lab came to a crashing halt. That cost the company almost $250,000. I got let go and he kept her. Guess what company went out of business?
32. A Mass Exodus
I was the manager of the nuclear division of a large international company. We had about 100 people in the division when I was laid off along with many others at my level. Almost immediately I was asked to join another company that was our client and I recruited about 12 of my former employees (engineers and designers) to join my new company. Within a year there were only about 15 people left in the nuclear division at my old company. I was the one that brought in most of the work and it dried up after I left. The person that made the decision to lay me off was at least four levels above me. I had never met him and he had no idea what I did or how I did it.
Flickr, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
33. Safety First!
I was an automotive tech for a few years. My manager was the nephew of the owner. His favorite line was “if you don’t do (xyz), you can take it to the house (fired)”. I guess he could tell that every employee was turning against him, as we were all one day pulled one by one into the office to have a “talk about morale”. Two of us were already talking about starting our own small shop, taking our loyal customers with us. I guess the nephew found out and was none-too-happy about it. The next day, we both received a call informing us that we were suspended for two weeks due to the smell of "drink" on our breath (which there wasn’t). Immediately, I went into defense mode. I got on the horn with the EPA, informing them that the manager instructed us to dump oil and oil filters, antifreeze, differential fluid, and transmission fluid into the dumpster. A day later, I found out that the EPA had hit him with a huuuuge fine. Two months later all locations were sold off.
34. Irreplaceable
I worked for a doctor who was forever hustling a buck. I taught biofeedback and relaxation techniques and he thought anyone could do it. I returned after lunch to find his wife in the patient chair. He told me to teach her what I know so that I could be fired and make his wife work for free.
“No problem," I said. “What you do is put the indicator on the dominant digit, blah, blah” (total nonsense). Her eyes filled with tears. “I have no idea what you are talking about and I can't do this!" Well, she didn’t end up replacing me. I got certified and left when I was ready.
35. Don’t Know Her
My boss made my life at work miserable. Then I was transferred to another department where I had a great boss, and we uncovered all of the old boss’s screwups. Politics arrived and my new boss was bought out of his contract and the department went back to the old boss who violated the law and company policies. I complained to HR and got a nice buyout. A few years later, the old boss was looking for work and I was contacted for a reference by the recruiting agency. I didn’t say much and that spoke volumes. She never got the job.
36. A Costly Mistake
The boss came in and had a massive rant about something that someone else had done. He fired me, I went home and started another job almost immediately. Two weeks later, I got a phone call: “I need the password for the office server”. “It's in an envelope in the backup safe”. Turns out, he had thrown out all my paperwork including the server password. I felt I had been unfairly dismissed, said I was going to go to a tribunal, and had been advised to say nothing to them until it was resolved. Two years of medical research was locked away until my dispute was settled.
37. Dial Tone
I once worked at an environmental testing lab for seven years and was terminated for accidentally not doing a duplicate test on a sample that the EPA wanted tested. Turns out, no one else in the lab knew how to do the tests I did. So a couple of days later, my lab manager calls me up on the phone at home and tries to act all sweet and telling me that I got a raw deal (even though he was the one that reported me and put all the blame on me so that he wouldn’t get in any trouble). He then asks me really nicely if I could please tell him how the test was done. I’ve never hung up a phone so hard in all my life.
38. A Snow-Brainer
My boss eliminated my position as a cost-saving measure, and as I was clearing out my stuff, I mentioned to her that she’d need to contract snow removal, as I was the guy that did the shoveling, scraping, and salting. “Oh," she said, “I never thought of that”. I was laid off right before the winter snow arrived, and this is the sort of contract that one needs to arrange several months in advance, and the cost to have sidewalks cleared promptly and preferably before business hours was likely greater than my monthly salary. Everyone else in the office were petite women who had to be absolutely immaculately groomed, and sweat and scent-free, and shoveling snow was well below their pay grade and skill set anyway.
39. Double Or Nothing
I got hired to rebuild an electric system for a municipality. I was a year into it and almost done when raise time came around and everyone got $1-an-hour raise but me. I went to the next board meeting and requested an equivalent % raise. They laughed and said nope! Then one board person said I was temporary so they wouldn’t give me a raise. I stated I didn’t know I was temporary and would have to look for another job. Made a phone call the next morning, had a new job paying much better starting the next Monday. I called the Mayor and told him I quit. He told me to come to the office at 2:00. The board members were there and the woman that told me I was temporary started giving me a hard time about two weeks' notice.
I waited until she was done ranting and told her that because I was temporary, notice wasn’t necessary. I then negotiated to work weekends for time-and-a-half of my new pay rate to finish the substation controls. When they called me for an outage on the 4th of July because none of their workers would answer the phones, they paid me double my rate. Minimum for holiday pay. They never called after that!
40. Say It With Flowers
I knew someone who was working in a garden center who got fired, through no fault of their own. Apparently, the manager was disliked by most of the staff. The employee got the most epic revenge. Opposite the garden center, there was a muddy bank and the dismissed person returned after dark and planted a load of daffodils in the banking. This was in the Autumn. Come spring, they obviously bloomed—and they spelled out “(manager’s name) is a moron”.
41. Not So Fast
I was accused of something and the owner told me I had to come to another town to get my last paycheck. By law, they had to provide my paycheck at the store where I worked. The store was going to move to the larger store next door. I filed a lien which prevented them from moving. I got my check pretty quickly.
freepik,wayhomestudio
42. The Surgical Approach
I worked for a surgical instruments supplier. I found out that no sales manager lasted more than three months because they fired them on a flimsy excuse and then followed up all the quotes/leads generated. Sure enough, at my three-month review, I was fired for not making enough appointments. I later researched the managing director and found out that he was barred from this position as he was an undischarged bankrupt. I reported him to the relevant authorities and he had to resign his directorship, putting his son in his place and still effectively running the business. I reported him again, and he got a massive fine and barely avoided prison.
43. A Wrench In The Works
My friend Bob worked in an oil field. A wrench was dropped down a well, and Bob was blamed. So Bob fished the wrench out of the well. As he was putting the wrench away, the boss said, “You’re fired!" Bob was putting the wrench back in the toolbox, so he got his revenge right there and then. He picked up the toolbox and dumped half of the tools down the well.
44. Slipped My Mind…
A road truck driver I know was fired for dropping off freight at an agency in New Jersey because his tractor-trailer combination was too long for the streets in New York City. But HQ didn’t tell him when he dropped off the load. They apparently decided to fire him when the agency submitted bills for re-delivery. The agency filled out his semi-trailer and he left, heading west to make multiple deliveries. HQ called him a day or two later and fired him over the phone. But they didn’t mention his load. The agency didn’t know HQ was going to fire him.
So he left the company semi-trailer (he owned the tractor) in a truck stop parking lot. Somewhere between Ohio (where he made a delivery) and… well… presumably Oklahoma where he lived. And the company didn’t notice for two days… And he ditched their calls for the next day… And he had a sudden bout of amnesia when he did speak to them. Gee, those truck stops all look the same.
45. We’ll Be In Touch
I was let go when the owner’s new son-in-law was put in my spot. A few years later, the son-in-law was caught heading up the street with a desktop computer under each arm. I was heading up a department in a different company and received a call from the aforementioned son-in-law, looking for work. I had it all planned out. He would arrive and I would have security remove him from the building! A co-worker advised me to just interview him and then basically say, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”. And she was right.
46. Keeping It Classy
I heard once that the best revenge is living well. I was fired from a job that I moved across the country to take after seven months. So there I was, in a new place, with a lease, a house on the market 1,000 miles away, and my mother dying. (The triggering event was that I went to be with her without giving “sufficient notice”).
I spent the next six weeks dealing with the initial estate issues, then got myself hired at a place that values me and treats me well. I’m living well, thank you very much. I rarely even think about that earlier situation.
47. The Long Walk
I knew someone whose boss fired him, out in the field, while on a service call. The boss had ridden with him. He dumped everything that belonged to the company out of his pickup and drove off. Yep, HIS pickup. 30 miles from anywhere, nobody else around, and NO cell phone reception. He did stop by where he used to work, to clear his locker, collect his check, and tell them to think about sending somebody to retrieve the idiot.
48. The Domino Effect
I was once the manager of a corporate Domino's store and was fired for giving a thief too much money. I filed a discrimination case and during depositions, it was found out that the area manager was taking supplies from the stores he overlooked and was afraid that I would discover him as I went over my bills with a fine-tooth comb. The day before we went to trial they wrote me a big six-figure check and paid my legal fees. That's sweet revenge.
49. A Happy Coincidence
My friend transferred from the IT department to a small marketing team which she felt was a better match for her skills and talents. After a while, it became downright unpleasant. The other team member (I did say it was a small team) did not pull her weight and was hostile. But there was no use complaining to the boss because he was having an affair with the other team member! Anyway, my friend quietly looked around for another job and was offered a post elsewhere at a much higher salary. She wrote out her resignation letter and took it to work the next day. She delayed handing it in, perhaps not wanting a confrontation. During the morning, the boss called her into the office and told her she was being made redundant! She took her remaining holiday time and left with a hefty redundancy payment, straight into her new job!
50. Bye, Karen
After recovering from cancer I went back to work and was called to a meeting with my boss. The first thing she said to me was not hello or any other suitable greeting but, “At your age and with your sickness you should retire”. I still had six years of service before my retirement date. I stuck it out for about one year and then went to HR and asked them to make me an offer to leave. HR knew of the awful relationship with my boss, who had managed to get rid of all the men in the department. They made me a very generous offer to leave provided I didn’t take them to court for harassment. I left with a six-digit sum.
A short while later, she was moved to another department. Then she went to another company where she lasted less than six months, then to another company, and yet another company. I think she has changed companies five times in four years. She's such a nasty person who can’t hold a job down without upsetting all her staff. However, daddy is a famous politician, so she will always get a job because of her connections. Her not keeping down a job was, for me, the perfect kind of karma for Karen.
