13 Times Employees Gave Awful Bosses A Taste Of Their Own Me…
Article created by: Kotryna Br
There are three types of managers. Awesome ones who inspire you to be the best you can be. Incompetent ones who make you wonder how they got promoted in the first place. And ones that are so astonishingly awful that you can’t help but daydream about putting them in their place. Though many power fantasies will remain just that—fantasies—some superiors do get a taste of karma. At the hands of their own employees, no less!
We’ve collected some of the most impressive tales of revenge from r/pettyrevenge and r/MaliciousCompliance about workers who made sure that their bosses received their just desserts. News flash—being a bad boss is so not worth it! Scroll down for the best stories. But be careful because revenge is a dish best served cold, and these dishes are chilled to absolute zero.
Bored Panda got in touch with Sam Dogen, the founder of Financial Samurai and the author of the bestseller Buy This, Not That: How to Spend Your Way to Wealth and Freedom, with some questions about the mature way to deal with bad managers. He shared his thoughts on letting go of anger and also revealed a powerful way to get back at your boss if they’ve really wronged you. Read on for the full interview.
as I start to work in a general manager position in my actual company, my boss gave me a company smartphone. I was carrying two phones with me all the time. as soon he noticed this he called me and said no personal phones were allowed during work time “because personal life stays outside of the job and not to mix things” and I was there for “work and not to call to my girlfriends or logging into Facebook” and “personal phones are a distraction”. I agreed and complied the next day. the very next day after I started to keep my personal phone in the locker room, he was waiting for me in the lobby in a very bad mood because he called multiple times after work time and I didn’t answer and asked why I ignored him. I said I was at home and my company phone was in the locker room so it was useless to call me after work time because the job should stay outside of personal life and I didn’t want to mix things.
So I had worked really hard to get a job I loved and I was great at and paid decent. My team loved me and everything was going great.
I made the stupid decision to change departments. It was the same job but this department paid 5% more. I went to my first meeting in the new job and knew I had made a mistake. The operations manager made Somone cry, there were only 5 of us in the meeting and he was picking on a junior manager who has made a small mistake on the wording in a presentation he was doing. The rest of the team were great. While I was their I was the lead for a big project that lasted for 2 years. I managed everything and was the go to person. On the final meeting with the director my boss took over and took credit for all my hard work.
So I left the department and started to work somewhere else in the same company. About 6 months later Boss rings me in a Panic and explains he has a big interview but can’t find the project pack. I say I’ll send it across.
I dig out the pack but put in a roles and responsibilities page before I send it across. I had my name as lead on pretty much everything. I get a call later on from a old Coworker who said Boss had gone to his interview explained he ran this project did XY and Z and then went to go through the pack which had the responsibilities and he looked like an Idiot. Which rattled him and impacted the rest of his I interview. Boss was fuming but my Co-worker had backed me up.
Boss didn’t end up getting the promotion and I like to think I played a small part of that.
Boss said I wasn’t using enough Wet Floor signs while mopping
I recently resigned from my job. I was just tired and burnt out and my CEO kept pushing me hard, telling me to drive further and that’s just how it was. I was also moving house, and commuting to work would be another 30 minutes on top of 1.5 hours I’m already doing, so enough was enough, I got so tired that I resigned. I hadn’t got another job lined up, that’s fine, I was ok financially
As soon as I resigned, my CEO called me into the office 20 minutes later, and asked me to leave straight away, escorted me off site like a criminal and wouldn’t even let me say bye to people, touch my laptop, clear my desk – it was like I was being fired. It was so embarrassing. No one from work got in touch to see if I was ok as he went round telling everyone he fired me and saying “it went pear shaped with her at the end so I had to let her go”
Fast forward a few weeks……
Well I did find another job, with one of my ex employers clients that use their services to do their emergency training for them (first aid and fire training) And now I’m in charge of who we use as our contractors. My new boss said “well we normally use your old company at a cost of $37,000 a year, but if you know another company that is better then switch, I have no loyalty to them”
Well switch I have done. Muhahahaha
If my old boss hadn’t treated me so badly I definitely would have used their services, but treat me like that and say goodbye to a client.
When I was an apprentice, mid 1980’s, the drunken owner
wanted the thermostats in the shop set to 62F (16.6 C) in the dead of winter.
Long narrow industrial building, heater and thermostat at each end.
I worked in the middle, near a door. Which really sucked.
Doesn’t sound cold, but when your job requires you to
stand still all day, yes, it sucks.
(I’m sure it was colder in other work places, doesn’t matter.)
Mysteriously, the office was always 72-75F. Strange.
So one day, I took the covers off both the thermostats in the shop,
figured out how they worked, and “recalibrated” them.
After I was done, they ran about 10 degrees F warmer than indicated.
62F (16.6 C) became 72F (22.2C). Big improvement.
More than once I saw him check the thermostat, because it wasn’t cold AF.
Then he wandered off with a puzzled look on his face.
He NEVER figured it out.
Years ago I worked as a Barista for a coffee shop. It was managed by a really awful old woman who was mean spirited and cranky. She criticized my hair, my appearance, my attitude, my work ethic (I always showed up to work EARLY!! and that’s saying something when your shift starts at 6:30am) and never stopped nagging at me for one thing or another – usually in front of customers, which was humiliating. She acted like this to me and most of the girls I worked with. She was sweet as pie to my male co-workers, though, go figure.
Anyway, one day she taped a typewritten sheet of paper to the wall filled with a bunch of new rules regarding point-of-sale behavior. It was riddled with typos. When she was gone for the weekend, I took my pen and corrected every typo on the page. She was so mad and embarrassed when she got back, but because a whole weekend of shifts had passed, she couldn’t pin it on anyone.
We recently launched a project to a select group of beta testers. Late on a Sunday evening (I’m not paid to be on call or work on weekends), I get an email from the boss, cc’ing everyone involved in the project, that the entire site is down, please can I get it sorted urgently, as this makes the company look bad. Complete with screenshot of the problem.
I’m really glad for the screenshot. I didn’t even need to open my laptop to see what the problem was. I’m mildly peeved at the tone of the email and I don’t think including everyone plus the janitor was really necessary. So I reply-all to all, saying that the reason the boss is getting that error is because he has typed the wrong website into his browser.
I get a sheepish mail from him the next day saying that no, it was actually one of the beta testers that had sent him the message about the website not working and screenshot, and he had just forwarded it, and wasn’t he glad it wasn’t actually a problem. Suuuuurrrre, buddy.
Very petty, but I got a kick out of it.
I work with a big company that lets me work 4 – 10 hour shifts a week and have Fridays off. Occasionally at the beginning of this I would get a text on a Friday from my boss. Or a text when I’m off on vacation. These annoyed the hell out of me. Nothing about my job has that level of urgency.
The biggest annoyance to me was when I had the day off so I could move out of my house (just across town) and he texts me that morning. I certainly ignored it. Then he calls me. I ignore it. He calls me again a few minutes later and I answer it. What he wanted to talk about was something that “could wait until Monday” but he called me anyways.
So I decided to start handling things with a little pettiness. Anytime you want to text or call me on a day off, that’s fine. But I won’t respond until after 6pm and I will always ask a question with it which makes him work when he isn’t working.
After a few tries of this, he figured it out (subconsciously or consciously) and never texts me when I’m off anymore.
This was a long time ago but I remember it like it was yesterday. I worked in the regional branch of a bank and was in loans. The district manager had to move the head lender into our branch for observation because he had four processors quit on him within six months. So I was number five. This guy was HATED at our bank… he treated fellow workers incredibly disrespectfully and was a flaming racist ( one of his rants… not kidding) was that the bleeping Jews stole Passover from the Christian’s). So also not so bright.
Well my district manager ended up loving him and he lived to drive me crazy.
One day he had this obnoxious singing tie that he played. I obviously cringed so he decided to play it over. And over. And over. In between customers. In between phone calls. And smiled huge because he knew I was absolutely silently seething. So I finally decided I had enough. I told him if he could go the rest of the day without playing it? I would buy him a case of literally any case of beer of his choosing. Anything.
He immediately jumped on it and then spent the rest of the day musing out loud about what the most expensive beer was…max number of bottles… all the different ways he could gouge me the most… while laughing like it was the funniest thing ever. I silently took it and didn’t say a single word… no matter how outrageous his comments. His constant… constant at my expense comments. After six and a half straight hours of this.. the clock finally hit end of day.
At that point he jumped up and started telling me what he had decided his beer of choice would be.
To which I replied… “ April’s Fools”.
To say he was angry is an understatement. He didn’t speak to me for a month. ( which was awesome). The district manager was equally enraged. Everyone else high fived me for weeks…
I ended up quitting not too long after but I will admit it was sooo satisfying. Petty? Yes. But so deserved.
This was back in the 90’s.
I had a boss, probably in his 80’s. Every morning the man walked past the coffee pot, to come to me to order me to get him a cup of coffee. I hate coffee. I hate everything about it.
This man was also quite rude.
I wasn’t required to get him coffee (nor anyone) he just demanded it of me. So I started brewing coffee for him. Sometimes it was decaf. Sometimes it was 3 bags of coffee in one pot (bitter and full of caffeine!) But I never did it the same way twice.
After 2 weeks he finally stopped demanding coffee from me because “you are too stupid to learn how to make it.”
Lay me off with zero notice because the boss splashed all the cash to impress people but then call back an hour later for a favour…
After ending my contract with zero notice I get a call back an hour later asking me for the backups I kept on disc as they didn’t bother keeping any.
Alas as I’m now no longer under contract, I will have to charge 125 an hour and I keep my backups four hours away. So that’s going to be 1,000, if they transfer over the money I’ll get it to them next week.
They agreed and paid the money.
I opened my drawer, took out the backups I kept there and made a note to drop it in to them across town in a few days.
About 15 years ago I worked as a bartender at a bowling alley/casino. My boss was a mean lady and I’m nice and want to get along. It was difficult seeing morale drop on the team from the garbage she would say or do. It got to a point where I started closing the bar and setting things up for the next day. I would pre-make the coffee and she always asked to make one a little different because it was for her. From that day on if she was ever rude to us I would make her coffee with decaf for the next day. I lost track of how many times I did this, I think it was nearly every shift there towards the end. I still giggle about this
My boss is a nightmare. She’s the head of our department at the school I teach at and we’ve had serious problems with her in the past. A comment someone made on another post I’ve made about her made me realise I should post this here.
So my boss is a coffee addict and absolutely must have her morning coffee. Now for whatever reason she refuses to make it at home and either drink it there or bring it in. Oh no she needs to make it at work using the schools supplies. Fair enough that’s her choice. The thing is she is super picky about her coffee. She adds almost a quarter cup of full cream milk and it has to be full cream.
My boss is awful to a few people and one of the admin girls came up with the perfect way to retaliate in a way we could never get in trouble for. As we always arrive before her if there isn’t much full cream milk we finish it off. She can’t take her coffee black and refuses to use light milk meaning she goes without and is left miserable. There are about 5 of us who do this now and whenever she treats one of us poorly we all use full cream in our coffee to try and make her miss out. It’s petty, she’ll never know it’s us and because she won’t pay for coffee from the cafe or make it herself she’s left miserable all day.
