Kate Hackett
We’ve got a real theme going today at Ruin My Week about crummy bosses and the employees who get one over on them.
Here we have the story of a crappy CEO and an employee who had YEARS to plot his revenge — it’s satisfying AF. u/WhoSc3w3dDaP00ch recently posted the story over on Reddit’s Malicious Compliance subreddit and I’ve pulled it here for you.
Many years ago, I worked for a little company. CEO was a miser of the first order.
Years ago, OP worked for a miserly CEO who didn’t want to pay for image hosting fees. So OP found a way to host the images for free on Flickr and kept the login information, but told his boss that this wasn’t going to work long-term.
We needed image hosting for a large client account, and CEO was unwilling to pay for maybe $2-3k in annual, image-hosting fees at the time (even though the company made millions off of the deal). Me being an enterprising individual, I figured out a way to host the images on flickr. I saved the login information in a physical notebook and kept informing them that this is a “house of cards” and we really need o switch to a professional service.
OP asked for a promotion and a raise, but the CEO was not having it. So? OP left.
Several months later, I was promoted and asked for a raise to go with my promotion. CEO said no (all promotions and raises required CEO signoff). I tried negotiating, but CEO said no, and to leave if I didn’t like it. So I left.
As he was leaving, the CEO said “forget everything” about the job. OP assured his boss that he was leaving everything in an email, including a notebook that the CEO really needed to keep.
CEO told me to “forget everything related to the job” here and said he’d sue me if I did anything with the client accounts afterwards (i.e. sabotage or steal clients). I told him I’m leaving all my knowledge behind in the notebook in my final email to him, my manager( and bcc’ed my personal email). In this email, a full inventory of what I left behind (invoices, contracts, etc.) including this entry:
“personal notebook – account notes and reference materiel (including image hosting logins) for _________ accounts – KEEP FOR REFERENCE”
OP got a letter from this god-awful CEO demanding help with old accounts “or he’d sue” OP. This is over TEN YEARS LATER.
Recently, I received a “professional networking site” message from CEO, telling me to help them with my old accounts or he’ll sue me… Apparently, Flickr changed their terms of service and the images were deleted. In over 10 years, nobody updated any documentation, or the image hosting… nobody bothered checking the email account either (that was used to log into flickr account).
OP said he couldn’t help. He forgot everything.
I told him that I cannot help. Per his request, I forgot everything I knew about his company and anything I knew was in that notebook I left him over 10 years ago.
Seriously though, I don’t remember what I had for breakfast, technical details from that long ago…I just laugh.
