“Fast forward a few weeks, and I had found another job — with one of my ex-employer’s clients. 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 did. 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.” —u/regan201937
“Meanwhile, the project has descended into chaos because no leader was appointed in our boss’s stead, so we are forced to navigate several layers of bureaucracy in order to accomplish most anything at all. “It did not take long for me to put the pieces together and realize he took extended leave to go on TV and lied about it under the guise of a vicious disease that nearly all of us had lost a loved one to. “I sit and stew with this information, unsure of how to handle it. I slept on it a few nights and then the opportunity fell right in my lap. I got an email from corporate encouraging teams still working remotely to plan ‘virtual social functions’ to keep a collegial culture going and to stay in touch. Among the suggestions were: game night, trivia, and… watch party. “As my boss was introduced, right down to what he did for work, and I could see people register delight and surprise, then go blank — just before sliding into confusion and rage. Perhaps one of the best bonuses is that you could already tell from episode one that the character arc the show assigned to our boss was ‘bumbling idiot’. He had his true colors on in full display and some production-massaging upped them to the 11th degree. “Boss was fired. My good buddy was promoted to his place. I am an office legend now especially since no one is 100% sure whether or not it was intentional. And it was all so satisfying that it was almost worth the dozens of hours of uncompensated overtime that led to it.” —u/granetblanco
“And then he went through the pack which had the responsibilities and he looked like an Idiot. That rattled him and impacted the rest of his interview. Boss was fuming but my coworker backed me up. “Boss didn’t end up getting the promotion and I like to think I played a small part in that.” —u/pinetrees1990
“Two months later, on a Saturday, I’m relaxing at home when I get a call. Guess who? “‘Hey! Listen, I’m sorry about that call during Thanksgiving break, my phone dropped it. We’re trying to get this month’s edition printed, and I can’t keep up with all the mail, the ads, and the phone calls. It’s crazy here, and the other girls quit, can you believe that? When will you be back in the office?’ “Readers, it’s been four years since that Saturday, but even now I can still feel that incredible sense of petty joy. “‘You said I was no longer needed as an intern two months ago. I have already accepted a position elsewhere. My new boss doesn’t call me on weekends and actually pays me. Lose my number.’ Click.” —u/socksandpoptarts
“I’m on slide six, and while he’s buried in his phone, I progress to slide 13 and patiently wait for him. He looks up, oblivious to my trickery. Mind you, he has to present this within a few hours to top-tier business management, and this is a project that we’ve been working on for months. I finish briefing him on the rest of the slides, we take lunch, and the guests arrive for their briefing. “Little does Steve know that I’m about to launch an email war on his psyche that he is ill-prepared for. See, since I’ve been in my office, I’ve been collecting all the emails that came in that needed replies, drafted the replies, and have them sitting on my desktop. I’ve CC’d Steve on every one of them, because I’m just that good of an employee.
“It’s still going on. I have about eight more emails to send, and he has about an hour until he’ll be able to slink away and cower over his phone like Gollum holding the One Ring. “I’m glad I went to work today.” —u/[deleted]
“A quick inspection of the data showed it would quite easily be automated so I knocked up the necessary script and got it over to the CEO. He was super impressed that not only had I gotten it done in a couple of hours but also that it could be updated whenever he needed it. He asked if I could also look at the revenue, churn, and a couple of other reports. Over that afternoon, I automated everything my boss did. “Both Kerry and Stewart were back in the next day but were immediately summoned to the CEO’s office before being suspended and sent home. Turns out the CEO knew they were having an affair. He’d not done anything about it because how important these reports were. Now that they were automated he was able to get them suspended and later fired for gross misconduct for all the time they’d taken off. I also got a nice bonus out of it.” —u/lungbong “Then a ‘vacation request denied’ email comes in from our ’time off’ system. I emailed the manager following up, left voice mails, and after a week he finally replied to an email, ‘Look, we need dedicated people. If you think you can take three weeks off for a vacation, you need to reconsider your position here.’ “I replied with, ‘No consideration needed, my last day will be X. Let me know about transitioning duties.’ I forward this to HR, cc’ing the manager and HR sets up my exit interview, but HR tells my manager to set up transition for my responsibilities. During my notice period, I even replied-all to this email twice, asking about transition plans, since I didn’t get any transition plan. “I hung up and blocked his number, but screenshotted the call log and sent it to the HR contact with an innocent, ‘Should I be worried that he thinks I still work for him?’ “Things went from bad to worse for my old manager. Apparently, I was doing most of his managerial duties, so he actually had to try and get stuff done himself. He also got into some legal issues (Those client golf outings? He played golf…but not with clients) that made his termination with cause, so no severance for him.” —u/WhoSc3w3dDaP00ch
“Some 20 minutes later, I’m summoned to the boss’ office and he’s not looking happy. He tells me that building the team spirit is one of his priorities and that I had to give a lot of focus to this monthly event to keep working there, because it was part of the ‘core culture of the company.’ I really needed the job so I just said, ‘Sure thing, boss.’ “I duly won the race and, as I left the track into the bar, someone told me that the boss had left. At the bar, the topic of the evening was how I had outraced everyone and how the boss, who had won all the races since forever, was livid with my performance. “After that, I was always courteously invited but never again required to show up to his events. I went a few times but arrived late on purpose so I would just take part in the bar thing and not the race.” —u/tee_ran_mee_sue “I get a sheepish email 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 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.” —u/dominyza
“Needless to say, the policy didn’t last very long.” —u/jake_nomistake
—u/thepettiest
—u/digitalassassin-00 “I happened to know that their air conditioning was ridiculously dirty. They had not done anything about it, and when given the opportunity to get a new system at a VERY discounted price, they just laughed and said it was too expensive. “Guess who anonymously tipped off the health department. And guess who had to close for a week while their AC got replaced and got a pretty hefty fine?” —u/getthosecats
“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 6 p.m. and I will always ask a question with it — to make 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.” —u/annual_mushrooms
“I jokingly asked if i could show up to my last shift with a mullet. The bossman quickly agreed, not believing I would go through with it. Saturday night, the place was packed. The look of horror on my manager’s face when he saw me was absolutely priceless. Customers were asking their servers if this was real life or some kind of joke/prank. “Even my manager from my new job had come in and was at the bar laughing her ass off. They tried to keep me in the kitchen, I refused. They tried to send me home, but I had followed every rule in the employee handbook so they literally couldn’t even find a reason to. It was fucking glorious.” —u/justafleshtip Note: stories have been edited for length and clarity.
