Dealing with horrible bosses is familiar to most of us, but getting revenge on them is a much rarer occurrence. These Redditors came together to share their tales of the moments when they were finally able to get back at their bad bosses--from simply petty revenge all the way to getting them fired. Strap in, because these stories are as satisfying as it gets.
1. He Had Himself Covered
My boss told me, “You have to cover Jo this coming weekend, for both days, since everybody else said no”. I asked, “How do you know I’ll say yes”? He said, “You have to. There’s nobody left”. My response made his jaw drop. “You’re wrong; I’m left. But I quit. Now, there’s nobody left”. He was speechless, and his expression was priceless. I stood there for about 10 seconds before telling him, “I’m walking away now,” and then I just left.
Thank God this happened the day after I had secured a better job. It’s probably one of my fondest memories.
2. Their Boss Thought They Wouldn’t Notice
My best friend and I worked at the same small company under a horrific boss (think Miranda Priestley from The Devil Wears Prada, but with early-onset dementia). One day, my friend got a great new job and submitted her notice. In an effort to get my friend to stay, our boss did something that made my blood boil—she offered her my job. I don’t know why the heck she thought my friend would accept. She knew we were friends—we’d even booked off the same holiday week to travel together.
Of course, my friend said no, and then I handed in my notice the very next week—and I let my boss know why. I mean, there were a hundred reasons, but I told her that her little scheme was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She had no idea until then that I knew what she’d done, and the look on her face was priceless as she tried to figure out some way to deny it.
3. 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”.
4. Getting Off The Roof
I was about 18 and working doing residential roofing for a summer job. I had never installed clay or tile shingles before, so my boss told me to watch one of the other guys for a few minutes to get the hang of it. No less than two minutes later, he started screaming (literally screaming; the guy had anger issues) asking why I was standing around and not working. So I grabbed some tiles and started putting them down.
Since I still had really no idea of what I was doing, I, of course, shattered the first two tiles I tried to shoot down. My boss came over and started screaming at me again for breaking tiles. But that's not even the worst thing he did— he then proceeded to PUSH ME OFF THE ROOF! Granted the fall was only about 10 feet, but it still could’ve finished me. At that point, I was fuming mad and decided I was done with that jerk. As I was packing up my gear, I could hear him cursing me at the other guys on the roof.
As I was walking off of the job, I noticed this moron standing on one of the air hoses running from his nail gun to the air compressor on the ground. In one swift movement, I grabbed the air hose and yanked it hard toward the ground. He came tumbling down off of the roof and landed in a pile. As I was getting into my Jeep, I heard him threatening to call the authorities on me. The foreman came up to him and pointed out how foolish he would look when all of the guys on the crew clearly saw him stumble and fall off on his own. It was glorious to hear that freak ranting and screaming at all of us as I rode off. I realize that I probably committed assault, but turnabout is fair play as far as I am concerned.
5. 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.
6. Computer Company In The '60s
This is not my story, but my father’s. He was working hard in an early IT company (back in the late-'60s). This was back when IBM was still known as International Business Machines. He was the only one who knew how to support and manage some of the large microcomputers that some of the customers had. His boss was giving him grief over him wanting personal leave; but my mother was just about to give birth to her first child, my eldest brother.
He didn’t even want to allow my father to leave when my mother went into labor. So naturally, my father lost his temper. He told him how incompetent he was, how he was riding on other people’s talent, and then he quit right there and then and left for the hospital. I still remember my mother telling me that my father came in, congratulated her on the birth, and told her he had just quit his job. She laughs about it now, but you can imagine how she felt!
A day later, the owner of the company called my father and offered him his old boss’s job. The kicker? The old boss now had to report to my dad. That’s got to hurt.
7. 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.
8. It Was Over The Top
Here's the backstory: My boss is a huge jerk. All he does during his shift is walk around and yell at everyone to tuck their shirts in. He's also just generally unpleasant to work with. So, I came into work on my birthday the other day, and my friend ran up to me and yelled, “Happy birthday"! right in front of my boss’s office.
My boss then looked at me. I thought he was going to wish me a happy birthday since he undoubtedly just heard my friend say it, but that's not what he did. “Yeah, go ahead and tuck your shirt in, 'kay” he said to me. Then, he made a hand signal like he was tucking in an imaginary shirt. I said, “Okay, no prob. I just have to put my stuff down real quick and I’ll take care of it”.
So I walked over to my desk, which took approximately seven seconds, to put my stuff down. My boss immediately came up behind me and again barked, “I said to tuck in your shirt”! I quickly tucked it in. As he literally walked right by me, I answered, “Sorry, I just had to put my stuff down first,” but my boss just kept walking as though I’d never said a word. He was acting all high and mighty, but I shut him down real quick.
I immediately busted out my HR manual and checked the rule on tucked-in shirts. It turned out that employees must tuck in all types of shirts—EXCEPT for Hawaiian or guayabera shirts. So, I took my butt to Walmart, bought 10, and defiantly wore the most obnoxious-looking Hawaiian shirt the next day. Of course, the second I walked in, my boss looked me up and down and glared at me—but there was nothing he could do.
He turned around and walked away. Then, afterward, when everyone asked me why I was wearing such a ridiculous shirt, I gleefully told them about the loophole. Now half my office is wearing Hawaiian shirts, and it’s driving my boss crazy...But it’s all within the guidelines as outlined by company policy.
9. The Relieving Of The Guard
I worked at a waterpark, and our supervisor was a witch who wouldn’t let the lead guards at the top of the tallest slide go to the bathroom. One day, one of the guards at the top began radioing that he needed to go #2 but she wouldn’t let him. Mind you, the boss would allow the lead guards to ride down the slide every once in a while to make sure that none of the tubes had gotten stuck.
Anyway, this poor lead guard was about to soil his pants in front of a ton of guests. So, with no other option, he came up with a shocking alternative—he went into the utility closet and did the deed in a bucket of cat litter we kept to clean up vomit. He then proceeded to ride down the slide to clean himself off and left the supervisor to clean up his bucket.
10. It’s Just Not Working Out
I had a boss from the underworld back when I worked for a logistics company (we will call him ”David”). This particular company did not hire directly for dock workers—you had to go through a temp-to-hire service—and it had a 90-day window in which the dock super (who in this case was David) could call your temp agency and tell them your stint at the company was over. The temp would be called into the office where David would look at him or her and say with a large, smug grin: “IT’S JUST NOT WORKING OUT”.
This jerk would ridicule new temps about the way they dressed, the way they talked, and their mannerisms in front of everyone at shift meetings. When a new batch of temps would start, he would pick an unlucky one out and ride him or her until they quit or made some minor mistake. Then, he would tell the temp agency that person was just not working out for the company.
David was married to some big shot at a hospital in town. She was the breadwinner, so he had no problems with keeping some low-level super job. To top it all off, David was also the only minority with a supervisory position, so the Logistics Company didn’t want to fire him. David was simply a shift super for the dock and he had no desire to be promoted because he had absolutely no responsibilities except to post an end-of-shift report, which he had one of the receivers do for him (that was my job). For two years, I typed this jerk’s nightly reports, knowing full well he never witnessed any of it going on—he just sat in his office eating or riding the dock on a golf cart looking for reasons to fire new people. I knew something had to change.
Anyway, I was hired in as a temp, kept my head down through David’s nonsense, and eventually, I got promoted to head of a different department away from him. Three years later, the company decided that receiving (David’s department) was lacking direction, and decided to hire a department head for them. I got the job. I was now David’s boss.
He turned pale when it was announced the next day at work. I thought he was going to expire on the spot. He knew that for years I witnessed every bit of the terrible things he had said and done to the temps. I showed up nightly for three months on his shifts to “monitor” how David ran his shifts, watching him make stupid mistakes one after another; any one of these things I could have easily terminated him, but I held out and documented everything.
When it finally came time, I called him into my office, armed with months (years, really) of reasons to fire him, but I simply looked at him and told him, “David, it’s just not working out”.
11. Overseas Exit Plan
I had a bunch of jerk-face bosses who were looking all school year for reasons to fire me. It got to the point where I was turning in three times the number of lesson plans despite already having less freedom to do my job than any other teacher at that school. It was all personal too. Very unprofessional stuff like “my son is in this guy’s class and he does it this way, so you should do it that way also”. Meanwhile, I'd walk by that same teacher’s class and he'd be showing the Peanuts Christmas Special.
They said my lesson plans weren’t detailed enough, so I asked for their best lesson plan from any other teacher to compare, and mine were clearly more detailed, a fact that shocked even me. They spent so much time telling me I was a bad teacher that I actually began to believe it. Now, this school had a free year’s license to Rosetta Stone, so I switched my language to Korean and learned Hangul. Almost weekly, there would be someone who would say, “Korean!? Who the heck knows Korean!? What would you ever do with that”?
At the end of the year, they told me not to come back, but all I could do was smile. I said, “Thank you, but I just got a job in Korea”. They had the dean in there to make sure I didn’t make a scene, and I think even he was surprised that I was almost laughing as I walked out of the office and shook hands with everyone with a big sly grin on my face. Right now, I am sitting here at my desk in Korea, the only native English teacher at my school, and they love me. To tell you the truth, I might have stayed at that job another five or 10 years. Getting asked to not come back was the best thing that ever happened to me.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. You Never Know Who’s Listening
I worked at a supermarket, and my manager Rob was as jerkish as it gets. He gave us bad employee evaluations so that we couldn’t get raises, and he’d leave the store for hours at a time, which sometimes even confused the other managers. He treated us all like garbage—he walked all over us, yet he was probably the least productive of us all.
Then one day, I got angry at him. On that day, some old woman in the parking lot fell RIGHT in front of me. I grabbed another customer, told him to stay with the woman, and then ran inside to grab the store manager, a pharmacist, and a bottle of my water from the break room. I then helped her in her car and had someone at the service desk call an ambulance.
Afterward, I received a customer compliment (which can be redeemed for a free sub if the manager deems it a formal compliment), but Rob refused to honor it. He said, “That’s not exceptional; it’s what we expect out of you”. Annoyed, I clocked out for a break and bought my own lunch. One of the cashiers mentioned something about the incident and said, “Rob the hero,” was now taking care of the situation.
So I said, “Right. More like Rob the giant jerk”. That was a big mistake—I didn’t notice who was checking out behind me, so I looked to see if anyone had heard what I had just said. To my horror, behind me was a customer who was known throughout the store for his autism and tendency to remember and repeat phrases. I immediately took off out the door, thinking I’d surely be fired when I came back.
Luckily, the customer said nothing, so I managed not to get in trouble at all. This is where it gets interesting: For a few months after that incident, every time the autistic customer would see Rob, he’d say “Rob the giant jerk” right in front of everyone. The first time I saw it happen, the look on Rob’s face was priceless. It was very deer-in-the-headlights.
Of course, I busted out laughing, and so did all of the other employees who heard it, so I blended right in. It was unintentional, but it was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen…AND I got to see it happen myself three times.
15. Music Is Food For The Soul
I worked in this one corporate kitchen where our general manager didn’t like our music, so he would put on children’s music instead. When we all started singing along at the top of our lungs...Well, we quickly won that battle of attrition. But then, years later, we got surround sound in a different, closed kitchen. Once again, the uppity manager did not like our music and started passing draconian censorship rules about what we could play.
Little did he know that we had the perfect plan to really tick him off. We switched it back to children’s music for a week. The moral of the story: Never underestimate the power of a kitchen crew of misfits singing “Banana Phone” at the top of their lungs to fight fascism, jerk! Viva La Raffi! Viva La Raffi!
16. Knee-Jerk Reaction
I used to work at the Jaws ride at Universal Studios, Florida. Our uniform consisted of a blue T-shirt, jeans or jean shorts, white socks, and white shoes. However, the “unofficial” dress code had all of us girls wearing jean shorts and white knee socks. One summer, I ended up working the Jaws ride and the Jungle Cruise ride at Walt Disney World simultaneously. I love Disney and had always wanted to work there, but I ended up finding it stifling, with all sorts of silly and over-the-top rules.
While working at the Jungle Cruise ride, I had to wear a khaki shirt, khaki shorts or pants, white socks, and brown shoes. But one day, I didn’t have any normal-sized socks to wear to the Jungle Cruise ride, so I ended up wearing my white knee-highs from the Jaws ride, which looked RIDICULOUS with the Jungle costume.
When I got to work, one of my managers flipped his lid. He told me my socks weren’t in compliance with “The Disney Look” and he made me roll my socks down. It looked like I was wearing little white life preservers around my ankles, and they ended up looking even more out of place than they did originally.
I was annoyed, but I would end up having the last laugh. When I went home, I scoured my Disney Look booklet for the policies pertaining to socks. All I could find was that the socks had to be long enough to cover the ankle bone—there was no maximum height. Heck, I could have worn white tights under my khaki shorts if I really wanted to. So, the next day, I wore my knee-highs again as a small act of rebellion.
The same manager was there, and of course, he flipped out. He actually pulled me into the office to write me up, but before he could get me to sign the paperwork, I pulled out my copy of The Disney Look. I showed him that, while incredibly silly looking, my socks were perfectly acceptable, and I told him I would continue wearing them like that.
And so I did. I looked stupid, but I didn’t care. Working for Disney wasn’t a pleasant experience, in my opinion, and it was very liberating to know that I could at least wear my socks...however the heck I wanted to.
17. The Bright Side Of Life
My brother-in-law worked for UPS for 17 years. He was a bit of a joker and was constantly getting in trouble for coming to work with crazy hair colors or cornrows (he was a big Italian guy and was told by his superiors that it wasn’t appropriate). It was always something. But then, later on, he learned that his bosses couldn’t say anything to him about wearing sunglasses. So, his little rebellion at work was to wear the most outrageous sunglasses he could find.
He had ones shaped like giant red lips; guitars with the stems sticking up; purple ones with rhinestone hearts on them…Anything for a laugh. After a while, people knew him by his glasses. If someone said they lived in a certain area, I would say, “Oh, my brother-in-law is your UPS man, the guy with the crazy glasses,” and their reply would almost always be something like, “Ohhh, John. Yeah, I love that guy. He’s hilarious”.
He passed four years ago after being hit by a tipsy driver while out walking one night. When we attended his funeral, we were shocked at how his co-workers honored him—all of his guys from work attended, dressed in their browns and wearing crazy sunglasses. His best friend gave his eulogy wearing a pair of neon green glasses three times the size of his face, and the pastor even borrowed John’s guitar glasses when he went up to speak.
We counted after his funeral, and he owned over 200 different pairs of crazy sunglasses. What started as him being a pain in the butt to his boss ended up as a tribute to his character in life: He always wanted to make someone else smile.
18. Sorry, Not Sorry
I used to work at a TV station. This place had absolutely awful management and I complained about it to my friends all the time. Eventually, some people began asking me about my job on Facebook, and I would reply truthfully, knowing I could get fired for speaking ill of the company. So I started reading the HR handbook, and I found out that as long as I didn’t specifically name the company, I couldn’t get fired for talking about it.
Then about a month later, I realized I couldn’t take the misery of my job anymore. I did what I never thought I would never do—I posted on Facebook how terrible my job was, and even though I never mentioned the company by name, my bosses fired me the next day. I gladly walked out of that building and into a lawyer’s office. In the end, I got $17,800—my yearly salary (seriously). Felt good, man.
19. Who Called The Fire Brigade?
I used to work as a developer for a company that makes EDI software. My boss was a paranoid, penny-pinching, micromanaging knob. For example, he'd say things like: “I know your contract says you can take an hour for lunch, but most people take just 15 minutes and I think you should too”, or “I don’t see any reason why you should not make a habit of coming in 30 minutes early and leaving 30 minutes later”.
My main beef with him was that he refused to give me time off to be with my wife when her mother had only a few days left to live. Our office was in a converted factory that was split into several units. My boss’s brother owned the building. Within that building, there was our company, a karate studio, and a creche. I noticed that the fire alarm panel at the main door to the building never had any lights lit on it. It looked like there was no power going into it.
So I called the fire brigade. The surprise inspection came 30 minutes later due to the fact that there was a creche in the building. The building owner got himself a conviction and a $10K fine (I had hoped it would be bigger). He had to pay a load to get a new fire alarm system installed. A few months later, when I was made redundant under questionable circumstances, I told my boss who called the fire brigade. The color drained from his face. I then launched a claim against him for unfair dismissal and my case. I have enjoyed punishing him for the unfair way he treated me.
I should point out just how beautiful it was to watch the inspection. The fire brigade sent around two young ladies, who looked more like salespeople and nothing like fire safety inspectors. They came into our office and asked to speak to the building manager. My boss came out of his room with a big Terry-Thomas grin on his face to greet them. “Hi, I manage the building for my brother”. “Great, we’re from the fire brigade and we are here to have a look at your fire safety systems”. His jaw dropped.
20. NYC Comes First
I used to work at a sandwich shop and bakery in Nashville, and my shift started at 6 am. The horrible, uptight manager would call at 6:01 if I wasn't there and he'd flip out. I had taken a weekend off to travel to New York to play a show, and when she realized she forgot to take me off the schedule, she tried to get me to cancel my trip. When I said we had already booked a show, she told me my music sucked and that the girl singer of our band was “too ugly for country”. Firstly, she’s hot and secondly, we didn't even play country music. Inside I raged, but I kept cool on the outside. I eventually decided that enough was enough.
I told her I would cancel my plans so I could work that Saturday for her. Little did she know that while I sent her that message, I was already on my way to New York, and I put my phone on silent mode when I went to bed. The next morning, I had six new messages. The first three were her freaking out, the fourth was just silent, the fifth was my shift leader saying, “I think he's trying to tell you to take a hint”, and the sixth was my boss telling me I was fired. I just shrugged and carried on with my life.
21. 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 manager 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.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. Failed Sabotage
I had a jerk boss who was out to get me. Within his first week at the company, he decided he wanted to fire me even though he had no idea what I did. I was actually the only IT person and I was probably one of the more productive people in the entire building. He told me I had a week to “turn things around” or I was gone. There was no explanation as to what needed to be “turned around” or what in particular was wrong.
My assumption is that he had his own guy who he wanted to bring in. I basically told him to shove it up his rear and if he didn’t like it, I’d walk right there. He was a bit taken aback by that and after another nine months of being there, he continued being a jerk toward me. Fast forward another three months, and the tables had turned—the company had decided it was going to fire him. The decision was based on information I had provided to them in regard to his lack of performance and waste of company resources. The irony, right? The owners (against my recommendation) gave him advanced notice of their decision and let him stay for an entire day in his office without any supervision.
As I didn’t trust him, I started monitoring his activity very closely. That's when I discovered his secret operation—he was copying a large amount of data from our servers and deleting it. Additionally, he was cleaning out his contacts and other client-related information. He was copying all of this to a USB drive. On the final day, the owners took him to lunch right before he was going to leave. I took the opportunity to “return” all of the data he took. I had backups, which I was going to restore; however, I didn’t want him to walk away with stuff that didn’t belong to him.
Finally, a couple of very incriminating emails "accidentally" got forwarded to his wife. Turns out, he was cheating on her for months—he had been talking to this other woman about ditching her and screwing her out of the house, then leaving her with the kids...I'm not sure how that worked out, but I hope the wife got him good.
25. Lazy Boss At The Bookstore
The best way I’ve gotten back at a boss? Brutal honesty. I worked at a bookstore. I used to be on the overnight shift, shelving books, but they did away with that to try and save some money and brought us all into the daytime shift. When they enforced that change, I was doomed to eight-hour shifts—usually by myself—at the registers.
Now, our store manager at the time was totally useless. He’d lock himself in his office filled with pictures of his ballerina boyfriend and do absolutely nothing during his shifts. One morning, in particular, I was at the register, and I had a line. I tried paging for backup, and no one came. I assumed everyone was busy, so I just did my best to bust out the line.
Meanwhile, our phone started ringing. No one went to get it because everyone was busy helping customers...or so I thought. After three rings, our intercom system beeped and the manager started saying: “Backup to phones...back up to the phones”. The brilliant part was that you had to pick up the phone to even use the paging system.
Meanwhile, I was nearly through my line, and a sweet old lady tottered up and told me she ordered a book and got a phone call about it being in. I got her details and went hunting through our order shelves. I couldn’t find it. I verified that I had all the info right and tried again. The order just wasn’t up there. So I paged for a supervisor or manager, and then the store manager paged for me to call him at his office extension.
So I called the manager’s office and explained the situation to him. He told me to look at the hold shelves again. I tried to tell him I’d already done that, but he just hung up on me. The lady was looking unhappier by the second, and I was worried I was going to get yelled at. So I paged the manager again, asking him to come to the front register.
He paged me back, telling me to call him at his office extension. I do. He asked me what I wanted from him. I told him I still couldn’t find the lady's order and that I could really use some help—but he cut me off mid-sentence and told me he’d check in the office to see if there were any additional orders back there. Meanwhile, I kept telling the woman how sorry I was, and I asked her if she can move aside while we kept looking and I continued ringing up other people.
I was nearly done, there were maybe two people left in line. I’d handled three more pages from the incompetent manager—all of which were to tell me he couldn’t find this book—and I was forced to tell the lady we can’t find it. She still looks annoyed, but she patted my hand and told me she knew I did all I could. She called the manager a useless piece of trash for not getting off his behind and coming out to help like a good manager should do, and then she breezed out of the store.
Two minutes after that happened, the line was gone, and I was alone. Three people come up to the registers, claiming that the manager sent them up there to “help me out” and he told one of them to have me go into the back “to talk” when I had a free moment. When I got back there, he was all buddy-buddy. “Hey what’s wrong, you sounded stressed...everything okay”?
And I remembered that old lady. And I told him that no, it wasn’t okay. So he asked me what was going on—and I told him exactly what frustrated me. I told him it was the first time ever that I felt a manager didn’t have my back. I said he was unprofessional and complete nonsense. I also told him—word for word—what the old woman said. He just stood there and stared at me. I asked him if I could go back out there and do my job since it was awfully busy out there (I sort of expected him to fire me)…He didn’t speak, just nodded. So I flounced back out.
Apparently, he locked himself in his office and cried for the rest of the day.
26. Lecturing About Light Switches
I worked at an independently-owned coffee shop and wine bar. Most of the people working there were young women because my boss was a class-A pig who liked to yell at them and periodically make them cry. Every few weeks, he would find some minor little detail that someone did or didn’t do (grinding flavored beans in the non-flavored grinder, for example) and literally yell at that employee, sometimes in front of customers, calling her stupid, empty-headed, etc. I witnessed these little tantrums on my shifts and I’d always try to help console the poor girl.
One night, I was working with a girl who had just gotten torn apart by him the day prior and she was trying her absolute hardest not to mess anything up to the point where I was actually doing most of the work. It was an evening shift and we “turn into” a bar in the evenings, so there were certain things we had to do to prepare for that. Heidi, my coworker, had turned the lights down and we were busy doing other prep work when the phone rang. I answered and the boss said he was watching us over the cameras. He sternly told us to turn the lights down.
I informed him that we’d already done that, but that I’d turn them down even more. I did so and then went on with my work. An hour went by and he suddenly walked through the back door. My stomach sank–he never showed up to the shop later than 2 pm unless something was wrong. He said, “Who turned these lights down”? I told him that I did. He started lecturing me on how to turn the lights down, what the place needed to look like, etc. I just stood there and let him finish his rant. When he was done I said, “I’m sorry that I didn’t turn them down enough. Could we maybe put a line on the light switch, so we know where they should be every night”?
Well, that started another rant! This went on for a good 20 minutes. Customers started watching, and Heidi did her best to stay behind him so as not to somehow evoke his wrath upon her. I, on the other hand, just stood there, letting him yell at me. Each time he would finish one rant, I’d just say something like, “Well, if I’m not doing it right, then there should probably be some regulation”. And it would start him up again, yelling about how there shouldn’t be any regulation because we should be smart enough to figure it out ourselves.
Finally, I just walked away from him. This caused him to freak out: "What do you think you're doing"? he yelled at me. Very calmly, I said, “You’ve repeated yourself plenty of times. I know what I did wrong and I know how to fix it. I think you just want to yell at me in hopes that I’ll cry so you can feel good about yourself. That’s not going to happen, so there’s no point in me standing here taking this persecution when I could be getting work done”. Surprisingly enough, he actually left the store and never bothered me about stupid stuff again.
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. Out To Lunch
In the Mcdonald's I used to work at in Pennsylvania, it was the norm for the managers to not clock out for their lunch breaks. This, unfortunately, meant that whenever there was a huge rush, you HAD to forfeit your break to get up and help. Well, according to the rules of the state, we were entitled to a lunch break off the clock, undisturbed. But one day, I just had enough—I clocked the heck out, then sat down and had some food.
Then the owner walked in. He immediately wanted to know why I wasn’t helping because they were backed up. I put him on notice, and everyone left me alone afterward. In fact, they actually started doing it themselves.
31. He Nailed It At The Eleventh Hour
Nobody ever received a positive comment in their evaluations at the place where I used to work. In fact, somebody once questioned in a meeting, “Do you think we could say something nice about somebody just once”? Coldly, the immediate response was, “That’s not what we’re here for”! I resisted all of this for five long years until, eventually, certain people who’d held years-long grudges against me personally rose up to the right positions and put together a case to get me railroaded out.
Fortunately, my co-worker filled me in on what was going down, so I was able to interview around and get another job before the hammer finally came down. They were gonna drag me in on a Tuesday at 11 o’clock, and I got the other job offer at nine. I preemptively turned in a resignation that said nothing more than, “I resign my position”. I also refused an exit interview and presented state and federal statutes that showed I was not required to give one.
Even though these people so badly wanted me gone, they were furious that I’d beaten them to the punch. The reality of their intentions was much darker than I had initially assumed—they wanted to put me on a set-up-to-fail PIP so they could exploit my expertise through the summer season. Instead, I handed them a post-dated resignation, knowing they would immediately throw me out of the building.
I also knew they would have to pay me through the effective date, which gave me my annual profit-sharing distribution. Now I’m in a job with far fewer hours while making more money, with co-workers that I actually like. Meanwhile, the old company laid off 10 percent of their employees and slashed the compensation of those who remained by thirty percent.
Good. Screw them.
32. Heart-Shaped Box Of Chocolates
I had a manager at a clothing store who just went on a power trip anytime the boss was around. On Valentine’s Day came, I bought one of those huge boxes of chocolate shaped like a heart and put it in the backroom with a note from the boss (who was married), telling her how much he cared for her and how he wished they could spend more time together. I ended the note with his number, and a prompt to call him if she felt the same.
And you know what happened? She did call him. Turns out they had an affair, and the wife found out and left the boss, who in turn fired the manager. I don't know what happened after that since I quit shortly after Valentine's Day, but it still made my day.
33. Desktop Shortcut For Solitaire
A lady on our team never did any work. Instead, she would whine her way out of stuff or go on endless lunch breaks where she just played solitaire. Eventually, it got to the point where we were uninstalling the games from her computer accounts via the local admin accounts. One day, I noticed she STILL had one game on her PC, even after we removed the default ones.
That same day, she left the office and left her PC logged in—a rookie mistake that I planned on exploiting. I got on her PC and found the game linked on the desktop. I went to the shortcut properties and changed everything so that when she clicked on the game, it would open the Wikipedia page on work ethic instead of the game. She doesn’t play games in the office anymore.
34. You’re Not The Boss Of Me Anymore
I was hired on contract by a small three-man start-up to do a particular job. By a year later, after they’d hired a few extras—including a product manager who was technically my boss. I was scratching around for things to do and thinking about moving on. One day, my “boss” (I didn’t like him at all) sat me down and proceeded to explain my next task.
Now I had absolutely no interest at all in this new work—it was mundane, boring work and not at all related to what I was originally hired to do (and since completed). When I tactfully explained that it really wasn’t my area of expertise and I didn’t really have any interest in that type of work, I was taken aback by his response. He told me that I “simply have no choice but to do what I’m told”.
Now, to be clear, it was more of a “How dare you defy me? You’re my property”! type of attitude, rather than an “If you want to continue working here, then you will have to work on this” situation, which, by the way, I would not have had any problem with at all. Well, I all but laughed in his face and told him I had no interest in doing it. I could tell he was furious, and no doubt he was deciding how to get back at me.
But before he had time to engineer his revenge, I had cheerfully informed the CEO that, given I wasn’t actually working on anything, it was my last day. And he was good about it. It felt so good to then inform my “boss” that I was finishing up that day. The look on his face was priceless! I somehow refrained from remarking that I “actually didn’t have to do what he told me after all”...
35. 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.
36. 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.
37. 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.
38. Yay, Or Neigh?
Our old CEO was a jerk. He made a rule saying that no dogs or cats were allowed in the office (we were previously dog-friendly). Our department head was not having any of it. One day, he decided to bring in freaking a miniature horse. He was fired a week after for it, but it was hilarious. He got rehired after we got rid of the CEO. Our new CEO lets us race our dogs.
39. He Paid For It In The End
Back when I was working and attending classes, I would go straight from campus to work and would often arrive 10 to 20 minutes early before my shift. On occasion, my boss would ask me to help him out with something before I clocked on, like putting something away or answering the phone. But over the span of a couple of months, this evolved from “occasionally” to “every day".
After doing this for a couple of weeks (still clocking in at my usual 3 pm), I decided that if I was to work for a few extra minutes each day, I’d better get paid for it. One time, I tried to ask him to pay me, and I didn’t even make it an hour into my shift before my boss started screaming at me and throwing down the employee handbook, saying that I’m only allowed to clock in five minutes before and after my scheduled shift.
That's when I decided to fight back...in the most passive-aggressive way. From that moment forward, I made it a point not to check in until five minutes after my scheduled shift every day, no matter how early I was. Fast forward to three months later, and my boss got fired. He got what was coming to him.
40. It Suited Him Just Fine
My father was working in a post office in the early '80s. It was an unusually hot day with ~85°F inside. There were no fans available, so it was crazy. Men weren’t allowed to wear shorts, but my dad came to work wearing shorts that covered his knees and a part of his shin, figuring he was fine. Apparently, it wasn’t, and his boss sent him home to change.
His boss probably thought that was the end of that, but he had no clue what crafty plan my dad was cooking. He returned in his grandfather’s apparel from the late 19th century: top hat and all. The boss kept asking if it wasn’t a little hot in that suit, but my dad insisted he was fine.
41. Good Thing She Maid It Out
As a nanny, it’s weird when your boss is a mom with no actual experience in being a boss. The worst boss I worked for wasn’t that bad when I first started working for her, but over the course of the year, she kept adding more and more things for me to do. Suddenly, I wasn’t just taking care of the baby; I became their maid too, with no pay increase. Eventually, it got to the point where I was basically her personal assistant.
She got a taste of power and completely abused it. As a young 19-year-old, it was hard for me to see how bad the situation really was because it wasn’t an overnight thing. I was eventually “fired”. Then, the day after she fired me, she pulled a major Uno reverse card—she weirdly called me asking where I was. By that time, the job was so bad...I did everything in that house, from taking care of the baby to hand washing the mom’s delicates.
She even got me a “uniform” and would reprimand me if it wasn’t kept well. It was the same with her hair and make-up requirements. Then, when the woman was a couple of weeks pregnant with baby #2, she suggested that I become a wet nurse for them. After I got fired, I never went back—and the lady flipped out and showed up at my house.
42. Boss Caught In A Lie
I worked in the IT department of a rather large firm. A guy I was sort of friends with who worked a couple of desks down from me had kind of a bad attitude and he ended up getting into a long feud with the tech support manager. In his defense, the tech support manager was, admittedly, a stupid cow. He ended up getting fired over the feud. He called to tell me about it the night it happened (I was working on a project after hours, so I wasn’t there when it happened). The next day, my boss called the department into a meeting to tell us that my pseudo-friend had quit, but because he was in IT and had access to all the passwords, they were not allowed to give him two weeks’ notice.
This was, of course, complete nonsense. Everyone knew that he got fired and that our boss was lying through his teeth. So, fast forward about six months later—I had just come through being scapegoated big time for some stuff I wasn’t even remotely responsible for, and I could see the writing on the wall that they were working on building a case to get me canned. Little did they know that I was prepared to deal with their nonsense. It just so happened that I got a job offer through a referral from a friend that worked at another company. So, when the offer came through for about $6K more, I did a little dance, and then I shut the heck up.
My girlfriend was a flight attendant at the time, so we planned a little last-minute getaway between jobs. The day before we were scheduled to leave for EUROPE, I came into work, did my best to close out all my issues, put out any fires I could (for the sake of my coworkers), and then marched in and handed my boss my letter of resignation, effective immediately. He read the letter and there was a long pause—then he asked me when I wanted my last day to be. I looked at him for a minute, savoring the trap, and reminded him that “because I had access to all the sensitive system passwords, I wasn’t allowed to give or take two weeks’ notice”.
His jaw hit the ground. He muttered some sentence fragments, and it was pretty clear I caught him in a lie. The best part was, while we were living it up in Italy a few weeks later, I checked in on my bank account at a cyber cafe and saw that my direct deposit had cleared a check for the pay period for two weeks after I left. So, even though I didn’t work it, I was given my two weeks’ notice in salary. That extra paycheck essentially paid for an extra week in Europe. And that extra week was by far the best part of the trip.
43. I’ll Do More Than You Asked
A million years ago, I was waiting tables at my first job. Enter ye old standard awful boss—I could easily talk about what a dumb jerk he was, but I’ll skip to the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were short-handed one day, and I was pulling double closing work for my shift (remember, as a waiter, you make $2.63 hourly plus tips, so anything that doesn’t involve tips is essentially just free labor that they can get away with).
After I finished up my work, I ordered and paid for lunch (something I would often do, since half-off is a decent deal). My horrible boss came charging into the side room that employees would use to eat and relax in before and after work and he just effing exploded on me with an off-duty cook watching. I was shocked when he pointed a finger at me—apparently, another employee had simply bailed on their work, and he was blaming me for not having done TRIPLE duty before punching out. Essentially, he told me that if I didn’t do the cleanup and restock before I went home, I would be fired.
I wanted to keep my job, so I did the task, but when it was done, I felt that it could be better. I opened up the ice bin and got another bucket of ice. Then another. And another. I filled the ice bin up to the ceiling, then I went home. I had a message from him waiting for me when I got home, but laughed and went about my day. When I went in to work the next day, I had been fired, then an investigation had taken place and I was rehired. That horrible boss’s hiring and firing privileges were revoked, and he subsequently gave his two weeks’ notice.
44. Follow The Clues
Back in 2005, I was leaving my job as the night auditor of a hotel to go to school in Arizona. The whole staff, with the exception of the manager and assistant manager, were pretty bummed out because I’d made it my mission in the year and a half that I was there to treat them all like people and not like paid slaves as a lot of the guests and management did.
The day before my flight, I went to Walmart and bought a big bag of Tootsie Pops. I went to the hotel at about 6 o’clock that night and got the set of master keys from my friend working the front desk. Starting with the comments section of a guest reservation for the following day, I left a trail of little riddles all over the grounds of the hotel. The back office, several guest rooms, a closet by the pool, in a bush, you name it. It would require pretty much everyone working to get the game finished before most of the staff went home at 5 pm.
The very last clue led to the maintenance tunnel that bisected nearly the entire building. And at the very end of the tunnel was my piece de resistance—taped to the wall, was a heartfelt goodbye letter and a bag of Tootsie Pops. The letter specifically ended with, “In this bag, I’ve put one Tootsie Pop for every single person that works at this hotel...except for the manager and the assistant manager, because screw them”.
A week later, I called up the hotel when I knew my friend who’d given me the keys that allowed me to set up the game would be working again. She told me that the game was a huge hit. Thanks to the walkie-talkies that we used every day to communicate back and forth, the entire staff (front desk, maintenance, housekeeping, and even the breakfast hostess) had gotten in on it and were following my clues to the prize.
I also called my mom, who worked at the hotel next door (which, funnily enough, was where Assistant Manager had started as a desk clerk). I told her about what I’d done and, after she stopped laughing, she revealed to me that Assistant Manager had been trying for a week to get my new number because “they wanted to talk to me about something”.
45. 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.
46. 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.
47. 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.
48. "Missteaks" Were Made
My boss went away for about three to four weeks for a conference, and while he was away, a workmate and I had a brilliant idea for the office: a George Foreman grill. So, every day for over a month, we’d go to the deli and grab stuff for lunch (hamburgers, lamb chops, pork, steaks, etc.). But when the boss got back, he put a stop to it with the exact words: “I don’t want that thing inside the office”. We, therefore, decided to take the grill to the shared kitchen area on our floor (we rented a suite).
But our boss got angry at that too and exclaimed, “I DON’T WANT IT ON THIS FLOOR”. So we next took it down to the underground parking area and used the power outlet by his parking space while he was out for lunch. Unfortunately, one day, our plan was foiled BIG time—he caught us hunched over our tiny George Foreman grill cooking hamburger patties as he came back from lunch with a business partner (who, by the way, was in the car with him).
Just imagine catching three IT guys crouched on the ground like cavemen in a poorly lit underground parking lot, cooking hamburgers on the concrete floor. Yeah, it went over about as well as you would think. If he hadn’t specifically used the words, “Take that home, or I will break it and throw it in the trash,” our next step would’ve been to use the power in the church parking lot directly opposite the building (which faced his office).
49. Petty Officer
When I was in the army, I pulled my car up to an ATM on base. Four guys emerged behind me, and while I was getting my cash, someone remarked, “You actually drive that freaking piece of junk? I should call in for a tow truck”. Without bothering to turn around, I yelled back, “Screw you AND your tow truck”. I never did see who it was behind me, as he was gone by the time I got my money.
But the next day, my squad leader called me aside and asked me if I told SSG “P” to go screw himself yesterday, and I had to admit that yes, I probably had. So, I was in trouble; the three other witnesses were interviewed and signed sworn statements to the fact that I had told a staff sergeant to go screw himself and a towtruck.
I was allowed the opportunity to read the incriminating statements against me before I made my own; probably just to make sure I understood there was no point in lying. Fortunately, I found out a juicy detail that worked splendidly in my favor—only one of the witnesses knew who the guy was because SSG “P” was wearing civilian clothes…He wasn’t on duty.
So, my statement detailed an “aggressively profane and hostile person in civilian attire, identity unknown to me,” whom I found to be acting irrationally. I then said that I attempted to diffuse further confrontation by “responding jovially in kind fashion”. The beauty of it all was that I would’ve been unable to mesh my version of events so perfectly with the bland facts the others reported without reading the other statements.
You see, under the UCMJ (the army’s uniform code), there is no such thing as “disrespecting a non-commissioned officer". There’s only “insubordination,” and it’s very clear that the officer needs to be in uniform. So at that point, everyone decided that the best thing to do was sweep it all under the rug, as SSG “P” had far more to lose than I did. Magically, everything went away.
“P” continued to be a jerk to me at every opportunity, so whenever I saw him out of uniform, I made a point of yelling, “Hey, ‘P!’ Screw you”! Eventually, my squad leader asked me to stop as a personal favor to him, so I did...but it was fun for a while.
50. Sandal Scandal
The company I work for has a dress code that allows women to wear open-toed shoes, so long as they are leather; however, the dress code does not allow men to do the same. When I started wearing leather sandals a few years back during the warmer months, some managers mentioned to me that I was violating the dress code. I had a simple but highly effective response to this.
I pointed out that they would consider my shoes acceptable if I were a woman and that it was gender discrimination to deny me the ability to wear something considered okay on someone of the opposite gender. I haven’t heard any comments or problems since.
51. Small Changes Lead To Big Problems
My father is a project manager working on financial programs for banks and financial companies. A lot of the stuff he does is projects for programs that basically do the accounting and back-end management of money for large companies. We're talking about programs that manage and account for hundreds of millions of dollars.
Basically, as is standard in the financial industry, his bosses were complete idiots with no understanding of coding and the amount of effort it takes. My dad found out his job was getting outsourced as he was finishing up a huge project; from what he told me, it was something like $100K+ lines of code. He saw the perfect opportunity to exact his revenge—he went in and added three lines of code that messed up the whole program, and told them that they could figure out what was wrong with it themselves. I hope to one day live up to such awesomeness.
52. I Don’t Know
I had worked for a family-owned computer reseller for five years when greener corporate pastures called. I gave the required two weeks’ notice and the owner of the reseller called the CEO of the company for which I was going to work and got my departure delayed by two weeks. They got everyone in the company to take me aside and tell me how big of a mistake I was making, blah blah blah, generally making my life miserable for those two weeks. When I left, I got even with them, making sure they got a taste of their own medicine. changed the entire internal networks’ passwords to “I don't know”. When they called to ask me what the passwords were, I told them the truth.
53. Nothing Fancy
I worked with a supreme jerk for a few months in my early 20s. He's one of those guys that tells stories to try and impress other people, but really he just ends up making himself look like a villain (cheating on his girlfriend, beating people up for fun, selling substances). It was a boring, mindless job, so I took it all in stride; in one ear, out the other...until the night I discovered his secret side hustle—he was selling pills right in the middle of the store, amongst the eight to 12 security cameras. I didn’t pull any superhero moves to get him busted, just reported to the owner (whose son is a sheriff), who watched the tapes. The jerk was gone within hours. Felt okay.
54. 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".
55. 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.
56. 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.
57. Found The Loophole
When I worked at Best Buy, the dress code was black shoes, pants, a belt, and a tucked-in blue shirt. Except I never wore a belt nor tucked my shirt in, because as a chubster, whenever I knelt to organize the DVDs on the bottom shelf, my shirt would come untucked, and the belt would cut into my belly. First-world problems, huh?
Anyway, my boss would constantly freak out on me for not having my shirt tucked in, and she eventually got on my case for not wearing a belt, too. So, I checked the dress code and found it read something like: “Wear a belt if there are belt loops on the pants”. What I did next is pretty genius, if I do say so myself—I found an Exacto and cut off all my belt loops.
When I came into work the next morning, my boss again noticed I wasn’t wearing a belt and exclaimed, “WHERE’S YOUR BELT”? I gave her the biggest smirk I could muster and replied, “WHERE’S MY BELT LOOPS”? It was one of my finest moments.
58. It Shaved Him Some Time
When I worked at Big 5, there was a policy that the men either had to be clean-shaven or have a mustache: no beards, goatees, or star-burns. I could NOT wear a mustache without looking like a creep or an '80s-era “adult” star, but I hate shaving every day. My decision ended up ticking off my managers to their bones.
I grew out the biggest, creepiest Hulk Hogan mustache ever witnessed and wore it proudly for the entire time I worked there. Winning.
59. 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.
60. From Zero To Hero
At the store I worked at, they wanted a minimum of 70% of our transactions to be membership transactions. I found a foolproof loophole for this, and they hated me for it. I would deliberately get 100% by only ringing one customer through on my whole shift and I'd get them to either use or sign up for a membership. Then, on a random day, I’d ring someone though without using their membership card so that I would be at 0%.
Whenever management came to me to complain that my percentage was zero, I’d tell them that I’d been 100% all week and that I’d only had one transaction that day, and the customer didn’t want to sign up. They couldn’t get mad at me for 0% on one person (you can’t win ‘em all), and they couldn’t get mad at me for only ringing in one person every other day because my numbers were technically 100%.
It annoyed the heck out of them, but on paper, it looked great.
61. No Key
Before you ask, I was dealing with a crippling inferiority complex and some pretty bad depression, which is why I didn’t do anything sooner. I used to work for this local coffee and sandwich place down in Florida. There were multiple locations and the one I worked at was in a library. We would regularly be short on supplies or change or something, but it was the only job I had been able to find and it could have been worse, so I dealt with it.
Then they moved all of my hours to a different location, half an hour away from my home, in a hospital. It was the only source of food for hospital employees (they only had kitchens for the patients). I thought it would be fine, but it turned out to be an even bigger nightmare. I routinely had to go to the grocery store to make sure we had something to feed the people in the hospital. I’d be reimbursed for the cost of the groceries, but never gas, and usually I would be yelled at for getting “the wrong thing” no matter how often I tried to compare it to what we had on hand.
They had always ignored lots of labor laws, but it got way out of hand here. I would be literally the only person on shift for eight or more hours, so no breaks. Ever. Bathroom breaks had to be fast and I had to run because the cash register was stuck open and the owner refused to give me a key to lock up or to fix it. He would even have me open and would scream at me for being “late” even though he knew I had no key. For a while, he made me have security let me in until security put their foot down and pointed out that it wasn’t their job. He had to come himself, and he didn’t like that, so eventually, he give me a key.
I worked way more than 40 hours a week and never saw a dime of overtime, but I couldn’t find any other jobs, so I toughed it out. Then, suddenly, out of the blue, he cut my hours. At first, I was glad to only work 20ish hours for a little while, but then it kept on going. Eventually, he had me working about 5 hours every other week. So I told a coworker who worked before me that I wasn’t showing up on a certain day and then I didn’t. I found out much later that he does this regularly to people to drive them to quit, so he doesn’t have to fire them and pay unemployment.
Disgusting.
62. Centralized IT Department
I used to do IT work for a large university. A few years back, they decided that having specific IT people assigned to specific departments, and being paid by those departments, was a bad idea. Everything would be better if IT were centralized, then parsed back out to the departments (I argued that it was better to be paid and accountable to the people you were supposed to be helping, but that wasn’t really the goal in hindsight). In many places, that might work. At this place, it was going to be a disaster for reasons that aren’t relevant to the story.
I knew it was going to be a mess and didn’t want to work someplace where a user was required to fill out a ticket before I could even look at their problem, so I decided to leave. I found another job and gave my two weeks’ notice. As I was cleaning out my office on my last day, a professor came running down the hallway in a panic. I could feel my heartbeat getting faster.
This guy had been a huge pain in my behind for years. He was a jerk, he was condescending, he thought he knew anything that mattered about computers, etc. The standard blowhard. I also knew he had been one of the biggest proponents of switching up how IT worked, and that on at least two occasions, he’d suggested that the best way to save money for the department would be to cut my position.
He always claimed that a central system would lead to faster response times, etc., so while I had always been professional with him, there really was no love lost (although I don’t think he knew I was aware of all the stuff he’d said in faculty meetings). Anyway, back to the story. He was huffing and puffing down the hallway, and when he got to me he said, “Oh, Derp, I’m so glad I caught you before you left. I’m giving a big presentation in 30 minutes to the administration! My computer won’t turn on, and my only copy of my presentation is on there”! I told him, “I’m sure if you fill out a ticket with the central IT desk, someone will be with you shortly”.
He just stopped in his tracks, and I think he suddenly pieced together that I knew exactly what things he’d been saying when I wasn’t around. He turned beet red and walked down the hall back to his lab and slammed the door shut. His computer wasn’t fixed in time.
63. Firing The Hardest Worker
I was a right-hand girl at a small local grocery store. He fired me for a lot of poor reasons, none being the one that was offered to me (“not living up to expectations”, expectations which he never bothered to share with me—it had more to do with the up-and-coming required pay raise). So I let myself get fired and left him to deal with the fact that the other employee did nothing but talk with customers all day. But that's not all—I was the only one who could deal with the many substance users, not to mention the fridge and freezer cleaning, and his wife—a skinny woman who worked with her mouth rather than her body—was to take over where I left off. Good luck, and good riddance!
64. Taxes Not Reported
I was the manager of a nightclub. One morning, I got a phone call from the assistant manager saying my services were no longer required and that he was taking over my position at the request of the owner. So, I rang repeatedly to ask why I’d lost my job and I couldn’t get through. The owner was always unavailable. I rang every hour for 2 days. In the end, after coming to the realization that I’d been screwed over, I rang the inland revenue and asked if I was due a rebate.
They had no knowledge of me working in the place despite the owners telling me I was paying tax and national insurance that was taken from my wages each week. I was also issued a wage slip each week. So I reported him—and he got exactly what he deserved. I told the inland revenue his name, how many bars he owned including the names, what car he drove, how many staff he had working for him, and a description. Two months later, he had to sell up and move on. A few of his other bars closed down not long after that.
65. 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.
66. 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.
67. 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.
68. 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.
69. Shoe Boss
I used to work at a lingerie store as an assistant manager, so I had to dress nice and look professional. All the other girls wore huge heels, and they always ended up complaining about how sore their feet were at the end of their shift. I always wore flats to avoid having sore feet. They were still nice, stylish shoes, but they didn’t have towering heels on them.
My manager always used to get mad at me for not wearing heels and tried to claim they were part of the dress code. I looked up the dress code and showed her that it didn’t say anywhere that I had to wear heels; just that I had to wear acceptable work attire (or something along those lines). She then tried to tell me it was an out-of-date dress code. That's when I had the final straw.
I told my manager that she should get an updated dress code if that were the case. Eventually, she brought the head office into the argument, and the provincial manager ended up trying to convince me to wear heels to work. I replied that they would have to pay me much more than minimum wage to ruin my feet.
Needless to say, I did not get a raise, but no one ever told me to wear heels to work again.
70. Bet This Threw Her For A Loop
Five or so years ago, I worked at a Petsmart in the “Pet Hotel,” where we boarded the animals whose “Pet Parents” (owners) were on vacation. Everything I did was in the back, and no customers ever saw me—just the dogs and kitties. Still, my witch boss would always get on my case for forgetting my belt. One day, she got particularly mad at me for not having a belt despite the fact that I’d only just taken that shift last minute for someone who was sick.
My next move left her speechless—I picked up a dog leash, put it through my belt loops, and said, “Well, it appears I now have a belt”.
71. Taking A Breather
When I worked at OfficeMax about 10 years ago, I was the only employee who didn’t smoke. Naturally, this meant that everyone in the building got to take 15-minute smoke breaks two or three times per shift—and I got squat. But I would soon have my sweet, sweet justice. One day, I asked the manager if I could have a “clean air break”. Needless to say, he was confused.
I explained that if the smokers could take 15-minute breaks two or three times a shift, I should be able to step outside and do the same without having to smoke. It irked my manager, but he knew he ultimately had to let me do it to avoid any discrimination.
72. All Wired Up
I work in food service. My job created a rule one day that no employee's hair should touch his or her collar. I have rather long hair, but I always kept it in a braid, and we wear hats, anyway. I was informed of this new rule about two hours before the end of my shift and told that I HAD to comply IMMEDIATELY because I was breaking the health code.
I politely informed them that no, I was not. It was only a store policy, but I would be happy to come in with my hair up the next day. I didn’t think this was unreasonable—it would take me a while to put my hair up, not to mention all the pins, hair products, etc. that I would need to do it. Unfortunately, I got told, “Not good enough! NOW”! That lit a fire in me.
I punched out for a break and bought some rubber bands and floral wire. I then made eight braids with the wire woven inside and stuck them out in every direction. When my boss saw me, he began screaming. I calmly told him that my hair wasn’t touching my collar.
73. A Series Of Small Pranks
I worked in a coffee shop and my manager was a jerk. He had two open cases against him for harassing my coworkers, constantly making people work 10- to 12-hour shifts, making me close at 11 pm and open the next day at 3:30 am, giving us no breaks, serving spoiled food to customers, changing our temperature logs so we wouldn’t get in trouble with corporate, serving burnt hours-old coffee, and so on.
I started doing all sorts of pranks to feel like a little bit of vengeance was taken. They were little victories, but they were oh-so-good. When he would go into the office, I would put salt in his coffee, smear jelly, and sometimes put jelly donuts under his car door handles. I asked friends who stopped in to park extremely close to his driver-side door if I knew he was leaving soon so he’d have to crawl in the back, I changed the password on the office computer so he couldn’t play solitaire when he was supposed to be helping us during rushes.
We were forced to fill out receipt surveys pretending we were customers, so I would put really negative ones about him specifically. In my last month, I stopped caring and I would yell at him to stop screwing around. He was from India and wasn’t used to women, especially a 19-year-old girl, being so aggressive and not taking his nonsense.
74. Pizza Delivery Boy
Not too long ago, I was a delivery boy for an Italian restaurant. My boss paid us under the table with table scraps; $6 an hour to be exact. We had to use our own cars, we weren’t given mileage, and he decided when he wanted to pay us. The people who worked there were all jerks and insulted me on a regular basis, yet they demanded I do favors for them while on deliveries. The boss had some of the most broken English ever and he got frustrated when you didn’t understand him. He would flip out when little things went wrong. He “bag-tagged” the staff on random occasions and spoke to us like children. He was a loose cannon with no remorse.
Finally, one day after taking up an offer on a new job where I currently work as a Tech Support Analyst, I was threatened because I wasn’t focusing on my work (I busted my rear for them, constantly, this being the one exception). That's when I put my foot down. I looked at the cook and asked him if he knew how much I cared about this job.
I told him I was doing them a favor by staying there because I didn’t need the job, the harassment, or to put up with being berated by a bunch of ignorant losers who think they’re hot stuff even though they’ve worked in a pizza shop for the last 20 years of their lives. I’ve never seen anyone’s jaw drop so low. Oh, and the boss? He was in Italy on vacation, so he got to find out about losing his fastest/best driver when he got back.
75. A Grand Exit Speech
I worked at Walmart as a cart pusher. You know how in Office Space, the guy has eight bosses who all curse him out for one mistake? Well, I was scapegoated for mistakes done by others, which I would have to then solve. They were primarily maintenance issues. Surprisingly, I loved the customers. Being a cart pusher, I mostly dealt with old people asking for electric carts. I’ve always been polite and I always smile when dealing with customers. We had a few regulars who took the time to learn my name, and I had a fun time working there for them. Sadly, my boss would put an end to all that happiness.
Fast forward a month, and my bosses were all awful to me. I was only going to be there for the summer due to leaving for college. I think a few of the people immediately above me resented me because they had squandered their lives away, and now worked full-time at Walmart. Suddenly, after being treated like just an instrument rather than a person, they cut my hours severely. I decided enough was enough. My pride was worth more than the minimum wage they were giving me. I quit when I was the only person working on the 1st of the month, just before a holiday. My exit speech was a little bit plagiarized from The Cask of Amontillado. It felt great.
76. The Worst Option
For a while, I worked as a web designer in a small ad agency serving a very niche industry. Previously, the design team had no creative lead and were all sort of operating independently across varying clients. We decided to hire a creative director to fill that gap, and I was given the task of sorting through and giving first-round interviews to find the person who would later become my supervisor.
Two candidates in particular stood out from the rest for very different reasons. One was exceptionally talented, an all-around nice guy, and somebody who generally would have been great for the role. The other (let’s call him John) had mediocre talent and came across as an insufferable and arrogant jerk, but he had previous experience working within the niche industry that we serviced. He also had contacts within that industry that could lead to new business. Despite my strong recommendation to not hire John, his relationships in the industry were too compelling for our agency’s leadership to pass up, so they hired him.
It didn’t take long before the company realized he was a nightmare. He had virtually zero experience in anything related to digital design. Design for apps, websites, mobile, etc. was all completely and utterly beyond his grasp, but he used his position of relative power to make decisions on those projects that the entire design team refused to support, most of which came back to bite the company in the rear end later.
The design team hated him because fixing and working around his screw-ups became part of our daily routine. The sales team hated him because he’d claim it took him unbelievably exaggerated amounts of time to complete even the most trivial of tasks (for example, four days to design a business card template), so they wouldn’t even assign him projects anymore.
Work that was clearly his responsibility started to rapidly trickle down to the rest of the design team. We’d be working late nights four out of five days a week because all of his projects that were in danger of missing deadlines would be reassigned to us. Meanwhile, he’d be the first to walk out the door every day, right at 5 pm, without fail. On top of all that, the guy was, without a doubt, the biggest tool I’ve ever met. Always right about everything, completely unbending on his idiotic opinions, and completely clueless that literally, every person in the building wished he would get hit by a truck.
I genuinely tried to work with him for about a year, until I decided that the job had become intolerable because of him and it wasn’t going to change any time soon, so I turned in my two weeks’ notice. About a month after I left, I was informed of a shocking new development—t he had been let go from the job. Shortly after that, I noticed that he had changed his LinkedIn status to show that he was working for a new agency I had never heard of, also servicing that same niche industry.
I looked them up, and quickly figured out that he had started his own agency... a primarily digital agency... when he had NO experience in digital or interactive design and had literally messed up every digital/interactive project he’d ever been on (I know because most of them were reassigned to me when he proved incapable of doing them himself). I looked at the portfolio on his website and found literally project after project of my work. He was using my work from the ad agency as an example of the work his agency could produce.
I briefly considered contacting him and requesting he remove my work from his portfolio for ethical reasons. But I could already hear his reply in my head: “As creative lead, all work done by my team is an extension of my creative direction”. He’d used similar lines in the past to insert himself into receiving credit on successful projects he’d had zero involvement on.
So instead I sent an email to one of the partners of the agency we both had worked for, saying something along the lines of, “Hey, not sure if you’ve noticed this, but it looks like John is using your company’s intellectual property to directly compete against you... If I had to guess, I’d assume his next step would be to make a move at your client list”.
The reply was short and sweet: “Thanks for bringing this to my attention. He’ll be hearing from our attorney in the morning”. John’s website was brought down less than 24 hours later.
77. 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.
78. 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.
79. 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.
80. 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.
81. 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.
82. They Had A Right To "Bare" Arms
I’m a senior in high school, and one day, a bunch of senior guys decided to start up a “Tank Top Tuesday”. So every Tuesday, about half of the senior guys would come to school wearing tank tops. Our school had no rule about tank tops except that the straps needed to be at least two inches thick, so we didn’t anticipate any problems (especially considering that the girls at our school wore tank tops all the time).
But after the first day, the school announced that boys were no longer allowed to wear tank tops. When we questioned why that was, they claimed that visible armpit hair was a distraction that inhibited learning. Our solution made our teachers want to rip their hair out. the following Tuesday, we all went to school wearing tank tops and sported shaved armpits.
83. He Sub-Dude His Boss
In the navy, you must always wear a white T-shirt under your uniform. I had a Senior Chief who would constantly check if our T-shirts were not visible, and he required that they be seen. I checked the uniform regs and found that we could wear a V-neck tee while in a working uniform. So I started wearing them, and sure enough, he took notice as soon as he saw me. That's when things got heated.
When I told him that the regs allowed it, he was taken aback. His only comment was, “One for the blue shirts,” before he walked away. Then, he hammered me for every regulation violation he could find. Smart alecks never win, at least not in today’s Navy.
84. This Principal Got Schooled
I went to a Pentecostal School even though my family and I aren’t Pentecostal. They made me get haircuts all the time, but I liked having long hair and sideburns. One day, the school gave me the most disturbing ultimatum: Either I had to shave my sideburns, or they would do it. So, I told the principal that I wanted a tattoo. She immediately told me that I could not because the school’s rules were biblically-based, and then she read Leviticus 19:28: “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD”.
I then told her to please read the verse above, which read: “Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard”. I got to keep my sideburns.
85. There’s No Shaving Face Now, Stesha
I worked at a chain Americana restaurant and I had this one witch of a manager who would always send me home to shave if I came to work with a five o’clock shadow. I was a busboy and I never even talked to the customers, so I don’t know why she had it out for my facial hair (which I grew out like Wolverine), especially since we could technically either be clean-shaven or have a full-grown beard, mustache, or goatee. They couldn't stand what I did next.
I took a week off, grew an amazing beard, and came to work the next day to show it off. Suck it, Stesha.
86. They Made No Concessions
I work at a movie theater, and because I’m a girl, I always have to work concession. One of our managers even calls us the “candy girls,” which is ridiculous. Anyway, we all have to wear these stupid visors, and THEY DO NOTHING. So, I always tried to get away with not wearing one until one day, the oldest manager working there got so furious with me that he threatened to write me up.
However, I noticed one very important detail that would end up giving me the upper hand—the boys never had to wear the visors whenever they came to help with the concession, with the justification being that they “don’t have as much hair as us girls do”. So, I got a pixie-style haircut, and now I laugh my butt off every time my old-timer manager tries to say something.
87. Not Lying In Court
I had a six-month school internship at a mobile phone store. The boss was a total jerk that treated his school interns like full-paid workers (even gave me some concerning money responsibilities). A while after the internship, he called to tell me I would have to give a statement in court. He had a problem with some customer and a shipment and he planned to tell the court that he explained everything to me concerning shipping precisely.
Of course, he didn’t. And of course, I didn’t lie in front of the judge. My boss’s attorney gave me a look I will never forget when he realized his stupid plans didn’t work out. A few weeks later, my now ex-boss tried to call me again. I didn’t pick up. Screw this guy.
88. Rigging The Toilet
I worked as a mechanic at Pep Boys several years ago. The service manager was a complete menace that regularly cost me money because he would give all of the good jobs to mechanics that he liked better. While I worked there, some of us discovered that if the drainage pipes in the shop were pressurized, the toilet would shoot water out of the bowl. That's when I had my eureka moment.
The day that I quit, I waited until he went into the bathroom to take a dump. I filled up a Cheetah (a device used to seat a tire onto a wheel) and released about 200psi all at once into the drainage pipe. The toilet spewed water and poop everywhere, the manager screamed and then comes storming out of the bathroom COVERED in excrement.
89. Truth Prevails
Last year when I was working at Chipotle, one of the assistant managers got on my last nerve. He would just sit in the office on his phone gossiping or screaming in Spanish all day, and if something needed to be done, he’d always make one of us do it, no matter how long the line was. He’d take breaks for over an hour when we were allowed 30 minutes, and he would blame other people for things that went wrong.
One night AFTER I left for work, disaster apparently struck and we got lots of bad reviews. I came back to work the next day and my manager sat me down to discuss all of the things I did wrong. The assistant manager told me, “I don’t want you to lose your job, but you need to do better” and that was a wrap.
I find out he somehow blamed me for everything HE did wrong. At that point, I was done taking his nonsense. So instead of making a scene, since I’m the quiet one who just listens instead of causing drama, I took my assistant manager aside and told her how it really happened, getting other coworkers that hated him to back me up. They reviewed the security cameras and he got fired the next day. I saw him about a week later at the neighborhood grocery store and it was mad awkward because I don’t think he realized quiet little me was the one that got him fired.
90. 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.
91. 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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92. 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.
93. 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.
94. She Earned Her Stripes
We had a dress code for our “casual” days where I worked: No jeans, no T-shirts, and no sneakers. Basically, casual days are days when “men don’t have to wear a tie,” but otherwise, they’re just like regular, business-formal days. So, I decided to make a point. One of the outfits I liked to bring out for our casual days went something like this: black-and-white zebra-striped pants, a black and white horizontally striped shirt, a black and white vertically striped jacket, a black and white scarf, and four-inch platform heels.
Then there was also my glorious, perfectly respectable blouse—in neon green, neon orange, and chartreuse—which looked absolutely delightful when combined with my modest turquoise skirt and rainbow-striped knee-high socks. Technically, I was completely in compliance with the dress code. The ladies from the admin section would stare at me by the elevator banks and whisper to each other in what they considered a secretive manner about my fashion faux-pas.
Their pitying expressions read, “Clearly, she doesn’t get it”. Heh, yeah. I’m pretty sure I’m not the one who “didn’t get it”.
95. Going Out With A Bang
I did not like the overly condescending boss that I had at my last job. One day, while looking over my shoulder at my work as usual, he said: "Can I ask a stupid question"? Since it was my last week at that job anyway, I immediately came back and responded with: "You seem qualified"! I have to say I was pretty proud of myself!
96. A Taste Of Your Own Medicine
When I was in my early 20s, I worked at a supermarket. I should note that I was a pretty reliable employee. I was never late, in fact I often got in early, and I rarely called in sick. At the time this happened, I had not called in sick for nine months, and even then, the manager had sent me home. Anyway this next time, I had been up all night, swinging between burning hot and freezing cold so I was obviously feverish, and I had been throwing up “at both ends” shall we say.
At one point at about 2 am I was on the toilet, with my head in the sink, utterly miserable. I must have passed out because the next thing I knew I was lifting my head off the sink and it was 7 am. I was due to start work at 12 that day but that obviously wasn't going to happen. So I called up the manager. Let's call the manager Steve. Steve was known for being a real jerk.
He never believed anyone who called in sick except his best buds (usually other managers, never lowly staff), but often called in sick himself (a lot of the time we knew it was because he was hungover and not actually sick). The conversation went as follows: Me: Hey Steve, sorry, I can't come in. I'm sick. Steve: With what? Me: I don't know. I think it might be the flu. I've been up all night being sick, and I have a fever.
Steve: Don't be stupid. If you had the flu you'd be completely knocked out. I need you in. Come in or you're fired. Me: I can't. I just told you I can't stop vomiting. I passed out. Steve: (growling angrily) Either come in or bring a doctor’s note, or you're fired! In the UK, you are allowed to self-certify for 5 days. This means you can tell your employer you are sick and you do not need a doctor’s note.
If you're sick for more than 5 days, you then need a note. It is also totally against the law to demand a doctor’s note during the self-certify period. There was just one problem. I knew this, but I was terrified. This was during the recession, and I couldn't afford to lose my job. So I got myself dressed. Almost passed out trying to do so. Then trudged to the doctor’s some 25 minutes’ walk away.
I end up sitting in the doctor's office for a little over an hour, which for walk-in was pretty good. I get in to see the doctor and she is furious at me for coming in. You're not supposed to come to the doctors when you have a cold or flu, and of course I knew I should be able to self-certify. She told me as such, saying I shouldn't be here and should have stayed at home.
I then explained what had happened with Steve and how he had threatened to fire me over this and I couldn't afford to lose my job since I was struggling as it was. My doctor’s anger transformed into something beautiful. She shifted it to my manager, then asked if I got sick pay from the company. I said yes. "He wants a sick note does he," the doctor says. "Okay. I'll give him a sick note”.
Now, my manager just wanted a note confirming I was sick, but instead my doctor wrote something along the lines of this: “[My Name] has come to the surgery because Steve has insisted she come in, in spite of the fact that this against the law and all employees are allowed to self-certify. Due to being forced to make this unnecessary and highly dangerous trip when the patient is ill, has a fever of 39°C, and almost passed out in the waiting room, I am signing [my name] off for two full weeks to recover.
Had [my name] been allowed to self-certify as is the law, they might only have needed a few days, but due to straining themselves, they now require two full weeks. They are not to be permitted to work until [date 2 weeks later]The doctor said she would have signed me off for longer but this was the longest she could do without requiring further evidence.
So basically, instead of just being off for a few days, I was now signed off for a full two weeks, and I'd be paid for it. I went to my place of work, at which point one of the duty managers saw me and asked me what the heck I was doing here, go home, I was obviously very unwell. I explained what happened. They agreed to help me downstairs to Steve's office and went with me inside.
I handed Steve the note. He looked worried and tried to say “I wasn't being serious about firing you”. Well gee, when you angrily growled it down the phone it sure sounded like it. The duty manager then declared that they were going to drive me home. It was clear Steve wanted to argue but had the sense to know he shouldn't. The duty manager then drove me home, made sure I was okay, then went back to work. Then came the best part.
The duty manager then informed our union rep of what had happened. Steve had a disciplinary hearing where he was given a severe reprimand and a warning. Steve tried to argue he never said I'd be fired and I was lying and just decided to go to the doctor's, but the duty manager said they heard him admit to it when he said to me that he really didn't mean it.
I felt better after a few days and enjoyed my two weeks off, fully paid, and enjoyed the nice weather we had. Meanwhile, Steve was forced to work overtime because we were short-staffed. So thanks to the doctor, instead of being off for a few days, I ended up getting a nice two-week paid vacation, and Steve was given a final warning, all because he insisted I get a doctor’s note, and I did.
97. Deserving More Credit
The client let slip how much they were paying for me. I was stunned. In one month, they paid more than my annual salary. I asked my boss for a pay raise and was told there was just no money available. I said I'd give them six weeks to look for it, and she laughed at me as I wasn't, "the type to give ultimatums”. That was the last straw.
I secured a better offer from another company and handed in my notice. That was when my boss's boss offered me a 50% raise to stay.
98. Golden Parachute, or Golden Arches?
I worked in a high-end restaurant that didn’t treat its employees well. One of the cooks gave his two weeks’ notice and, in a passive-aggressive move, they didn’t schedule him for any shifts for what should have been his last week. So, on his final scheduled shift, he showed up in a full McDonald’s uniform. The managers were in shock.
He refused to take it off and they couldn’t tell him to leave, because then they wouldn’t have enough staff for the dinner rush. So he worked for his whole eight-hour shift at this fancy upscale restaurant wearing the McDonald’s uniform, and any time the manager asked or told him anything, no matter what it was, he responded with “Would you like fries with that”?
99. 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.
100. Oh Snap
I started work in a new IT role on the same team as another guy who instantly decided he wanted to make me out to be a pathetic, worthless excuse for a man. This was despite the fact that, while we were both in our mid-20s, I had outranked him in the profession and was happily married while he was single and living with his parents.
He used to try to bait me into arguments, so he could rattle off his well-rehearsed right-wing cliches and boast about how I wasn’t a “real man” because I didn’t drink $80 scotch or have a knife collection or whatever. I just ignored it since I already figured I was winning the game of life. One day, he sent me one of his emails to the whole team saying, “If you don’t drink this, you can kiss your manhood goodbye” with a picture of some expensive scotch or something. At that point, I knew exactly how to make him eat his words.
So I replied to all, saying: “You know what else kisses my manhood goodbye? Your mom”. “Oh snap” replies all around. Six months later, I was promoted to head of the team and he was fired.
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