Working in an office, or really any workplace, can be a tricky place full of inter-office politics. Honestly, it makes me really relieved to be able to work for myself and not deal with any of it. But not everyone has that ability and when things go wrong at work, they’re doubtlessly going to feel extra-wronged. And who wouldn’t cheer these folks on a little from the sides as they get their revenge?
Check out some of Reddit’s greatest hits of people who are making workplace revenge the pettiest thing they can make it.
1. Artichokes
“I worked for an architect who never attended to detail and had a load of failures as a result. On the day I refused to give the go-ahead on a design that I knew would fail — because of problems in the ‘unimportant’ detail — I was fired.”
“The last thing I had to do was supervise the printing of company letterheads, business cards, and A0 drawing sheets. They were supposed to say, ‘McDonald, Sweet, and Partners, Chartered Architects’. At the last minute, I altered the proofs to say ‘McDonald, Sweet, and Partners, Chartered Artichokes.'”
“Of course, not being a ‘detail’ person he approved the proofs and 1,000s got printed.” — u/prustage
2. Took him to court
“I worked 70-hour weeks as a salary employee, even though I couldn’t technically be classified as such. After things didn’t work out for whatever reason (because he was a prick), he canceled one of my paychecks right after I put it in the bank I ended up contacting the US Department of Labor for the overtime, the State Department of Labor over a canceled paycheck, and a litigious corporation whose software he was using illegally.”
“The litigious company was none too pleased to learn that he was using multiple instances of cracked software supplied by his shady IT guy. One day while traveling to my new job, I literally watched a team of US Marshals walking into his business,” they continued.
“I ended up getting a large amount of money through court for the overtime I worked (although not all of it), plus the amount of the canceled paycheck.”
“The best part was that he had an account with the deli across the street: the entire time the BS was going on and my money was tied up, I could go to the deli, mention their name, and walk away with free food and coffee. They supplied the food and coffee for an entire wake once.” — u/iam_sancho2
3. Clothing
“I worked for Playboy clothing for a four-day runway show. We were told we could have a number of clothing items in addition to our pay. I had my eye on one shirt in particular that I really liked. I wasn’t too fond of most of the other clothing
“After the second day they told a few of us they didn’t need us the last two days, which meant we were out of a lot of money. And it was now too late to work for another company for the same show, so we were pissed.”
“They still said we could choose ONE article of clothing before leaving. They had our options on a small rack and it was the ugliest s—t I’ve ever seen. I saw another rack that said, ‘DO NOT TOUCH.’ The original shirt I wanted was there, so I walked up, took it off the hanger, and put it in my bag.” — u/PM_ME_AMAZON_DOLLARS
4. Mailed to his wife
“[I] waitressed for the summer in NYC [in the ’80s]. The owner was an overbearing prick who treated his employees horribly.
“Most people put up with it because the money was so good … you could count on $200-$250 on any Thursday–Sunday shift. One girl asked weeks in advance for a particular weekend off (her friend was getting married out of state). [On] her last shift before that weekend, the owner cancels her request.”
“She’s in tears, he threatens to fire her if she doesn’t work that weekend. … I only had a few weeks left before my new job was going to start, so I march into his office and demand he let her have the weekend off or I’ll quit that moment. He fires us both on the spot. [I] went home, called up a former waitress who for some reason had an affair with this asshole a year or so earlier. I got a bunch of polaroids she still had [of] him in various stages of undress … mailed them to his wife.” — u/miss_trixie
5. Deleted everything
“I deleted the documents containing login details for all the marketing strategy files, social media, webservers, and my documents. Excluding those deleted files, my brain is the only other place all those passwords are saved,” another scorned employee revealed.
“The company lost 40% of annual profits in the next 4 weeks. You sack me for nothing, you will pay with everything.”
“They threatened to sue for this. I threatened to sue them back if they sued me for discriminating … They quickly backed off. A loss of £45 million in a month, no marketing team, no passwords, no graphics team, and two months pay, I think that’s a win for the fired employee!”
6. Left the fans on
“[I] was laid off as warehouse supervisor because they were paying me too much to keep me around. They had a secretary escort me out. So on my way out, I made sure to shut all the bay doors. Told her since I was the only one out there, people might sneak in.
“But I didn’t turn off the overhead fans (five huge ones), so they were trying to suck air in from doors that must remain open to get airflow. They stayed on all day, and I found out a week later they had to replace three out of seven giant windows from the front because of the fans pulling on them so hard.” — u/[deleted]
7. Sold so much
“I worked at a furniture store for a while and was the assistant manager. There was a weekend where I was the only person there from open to close. We had a truck delivery I managed to get all put away and sold about $20,000 on top of it.
“The manager had always been an asshole, thinking he was some big shit. Anyways I come in on Monday expecting praise for what I did over the weekend. Instead, I get completely chewed out for a broken lamp that was in the warehouse. This was my tipping point. Didn’t do anything crazy, just said I was going to lunch and never came back. It was such a relief to never have to go back.”
8. Still not fixed.
“I still have access to some [of] my company’s social accounts even after I told my boss how to prevent your account [from] being ‘hacked’ after you change your password. Every so often, I post things on their page that makes them look like they shared it on accident, change their links, or run ads designed to fail that get no traction and eat up their marketing budget. It’s been months and they still haven’t fixed it.” — u/rumlowsss
9. This one’s psychotic
“My boss was an overall douche to me and my co-workers all the time, and she also happened to live a couple of blocks away from me. One summer, I would get up bright and early at 2 a.m. every morning, go over to her house, and take a nice shit on her walkway.
“At work, she started complaining about how big her dog’s poops were getting and had him taken to the vet to get checked out numerous times. I found out later that she had spent over $3,000 on visits to the vet while also having to clean up my shit every morning for three months. Revenge is sweet.” — u/demsbeansinyajeans
10. Fired for inactivity
“Eric fired me for ‘being inactive for too long during the day and another reason which isn’t important here. So I was REALLY active for my last three days with deleting EVERYTHING I had created for the company. It was all ‘above and beyond’ work, so since I didn’t ever go ‘above and beyond’, they didn’t deserve to keep it.
“It was signs for products, pictures gathered for advertising, vendor contact information, a program I designed to keep organized and on time for invoices, and a manual I had typed up on how to do my job.” — u/NaughtyCat890
11. Roaches
“I worked a factory job in the food industry for 6 years. My manager fired me for ‘not meeting company standards,’ when the real reason was because he wanted his son to work for the company, and by firing me, he would take my job. Fuck that. Luckily for me, our health inspection was 2 days before my last day on the job. So the day before, I brought in a box. My manager asked what it was for, and I told him I needed it to pack up some things at the end of my shift that were left in my locker during my years at the job.”
“Luckily he didn’t check the box because there were roaches inside. When I went to ‘pack up my things’ when my shift ended, I made sure there was nobody in the locker room as I opened up the box, let the roaches out, put things from my locker in the box, and walked out. The Health inspector comes in the next morning and the first thing he notices are the roaches. The factory got shut the fuck down.” — u/FakeStoryBot
12. No passwords
“I was responsible for all customer-facing emails and support cases for my department. When I took over that role I had to get ahold of the company that actually ran the support case database and have the password changed because the last person left and didn’t tell anyone what that was. I made sure to tell my boss and team lead what I had changed the password to so they could keep it in case something were to happen. About a year later I was fired.”
“Roughly a week afterward I get a text from one of my old co-workers asking what the passwords to those systems were. I told her under no circumstances was I going to tell her what they are, that I gave that information to my boss and the lead, and if they couldn’t find it then they can figure out how to reset it like I had to.” — u/wheregoodideasgotodi
13. Horrible boss, horrible prank
“Had a horrible boss at one of my tech support jobs, very rude, misogynistic, demanding. So one day [I] took a printed screen picture capture .jpg of his background, then moved all his icons and shortcuts on his desktop to an innocuous folder and put the print screen .jpg up as his background. So the shortcuts and the links that appeared to be on the desktop were just a picture and were not clickable. He messed around with his computer for hours unable to get it to function normally.”
14. Rival hopping
“Worked for a garage with massive rivals around the corner. The two bosses hated each other with a passion, but every now and again they had to do work for the other one, like fitting a couple of tires or buying parts because nowhere else was available. I was sacked because I turned 19 (wages legally went up) and the next day started working for the rival.”
15. Bomb in a spreadsheet
“I put a bomb in the estimating spreadsheet I completely wrote from scratch, a spreadsheet that completely automated the estimates for materials for a project. The spreadsheet checked that not more than three months had passed since a date deeply hidden in a page of detailed data. If too much time had passed the links to outside data were dropped and any recalculation wouldn’t include the latest data. That meant it seemingly randomly may or may not give the right answer, there’s no way to tell without a ton of manual checking.”
“My employer became really awful. Just before they laid me off they had me train an idiot guy how to use my spreadsheet. Oops, I sorta forgot to tell him about the hidden date. I never really heard anything but after three months the bomb had to kick in and I bet that guy looked like the total moron he was.” — u/picksandchooses
16. Not upselling
“I got ‘let go’ from a pretty decent job in my trade (decent hourly rate plus good commission at 10% of anything on the service ticket for the job) for not upselling as much as the other techs.
“I was still salty about it a few months later, and I knew where my manager lived so I tossed a cup full of drywall screws down his driveway. I drove past the next day and his truck was sitting on two flats and he was combing his driveway with a magnet.”
17. Cutting costs? Good luck
“Didn’t get a chance to pass on any of my tribal knowledge and while my knowledge base articles and drawings were up to date none of it included idiosyncrasies in nearly every location that you’d need to know about. I got brought back as a consultant at 40% above what I was paid previously. They were trying to cut costs and went after the person that was paid the most in the department, without realizing WHY I was paid the most in the department.” — u/amalgamas