Many people with horrible bosses will likely choose to suffer that burden in silence for the sake ofkeeping their jobs. But some will fight back and deliver the coldest dish of revenge, which are always satisfying stories to learn about.
Here are some examples we grabbed from an oldQuora thread. A user asked, “What is thebest revengeyou have gotten on a superior in your workplace?” Some commenters shared how their resignation became their employers’biggest source of regret, while others had their bosses investigated for “pulling some shenanigans.”
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I was an assistant in Orthopedic and Physical Therapy. We had a great boss. There were two other therapists. One was a young guy. The other was a perv. Would not look at me anywhere but in the b**bs. I was in a lab coat and you could not see them but I swear he must have thought he had X-ray vision. He did this to all the women there. I asked him several times to quit staring at my chest but he didn’t stop.Our old boss retired. This tool became the boss. Second day in, he fired me for insubordination for telling him to stop staring at my chest. Made me sign a paper about it too. Next thing I know, I get a call from corporate that I have my job back with back pay and a raise. I come into work, he was fired for being a perv! Idiot had told HR what I had said and when they called him in, he did the same thing to the HR manager! Made my decade!!!
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In the 1970s, I worked as Director of Special Events for a large company. Our sales meetings included industrial theater, where singers/dancers performed on stage, interacting with the corporate execs. After a number of years, my boss told me I would never make it any further because I was too soft … that I didn’t have the “corporate kler instinct.”A few days later, a headhunter called me and said another company had read about me in an industry publication and wanted to talk to me about heading their Special Events group. I interviewed with them and they offered me a job. I took the job and brought my ten singers/dancers with me. They were loyal to me, not the company. I called my old boss and said, “Is that kler enough for you?”
I was working at a daily newspaper and going to law school at night. My immediate boss resented this and kept changing my work schedule to try to mess up my schooling. No matter what he did, I was able to stay in school. When he changed my schedule so that I had to work the hours that I was in school, the school allowed me to stay registered in the evening class but to go to class during the day with the full time students.The best revenge was that I graduated from law school, passed the bar exam and quit my job, holding my head high.
I’ll keep this short. I got hired at a furniture store as a salesman. But I also had to fill in moving furniture and delivering same. I never got to be a salesman and after 6 months I was laid off. 5 years later I’m a court security deputy. My former boss did something that pissed off the judge and I had the pleasure of taking him to jail and slamming the cell door on him. I still smile and giggle when I think of that.
When I had a new job I happened to see a previous supervisor’s resume on my boss’s desk for the open department supervisor position I gasped audibly. When asked about my reaction I explained I did not have a good working relationship with her. The resume, to my astonishment, was promptly tossed into the trash can.
It was my manager and she did not like me, no idea why? Anyway she tried to get me sacked but another manager said I could move to her department, so I did. A couple of years later she got demoted and moved to another store. Meanwhile I got promoted and made a manager. Oh, how I loved shopping in that other store and timing it so she served me. Just loved handing her my management card and getting my management discount.
I scheduled months in advance Friday, Monday, and Tuesday off. (Normally had weekends off.) I made plans to go on vacation (out of town) Friday through Tuesday. My boss mentioned he might need to call me in on Saturday. He was good at ruining people’s time off if he could. Well, Friday night rolled around and he called telling me I had to be at work at 7am, to cover an overtime shift. I told him that since I was 10 hours and 2 states away it would be impossible to cover that shift. He said there was no one else to do it but him, so I said have fun, see you Wednesday!
I was a government employee for 28 years and worked overtime whenever she asked me. I also took no sick leave and cut my vacation time when there was an overload of work. An opening for a promotion came up and I passed the tests with flying colors. However, my supervisor wanted a woman in the position and called in favors to have a female employee from another department transferred to her section. I then went to HR and asked when I could take early retirement with the best employee pension possible given my number of years as an employee. I bided my time and when the time came, I gave exactly 2 weeks notice.How did it hurt her? I had accumulated 2 years and six weeks of vacation, sick leave, and overtime, so for that time, I was paid full salary on early retirement. The best part, she could not have another employee fill my position because I was officially still occupying that position.
I was working for a mom and pop copy center and I was THE employee. I was always there early and willing to learn anything for the job I didn’t already know. After about 6 months, I showed up too early one day and the owners weren’t there to open up yet. I went across the street to grab a soda. By the time I managed to get back across the street, I was 5 whole minutes late. I didn’t think anything of it and filled out my time card as normal.The wife, who ran the books, took my time card and ripped it up while I was on lunch. she then filled out a new one with those 5 minutes marked off. When I did for the rest of the week was keep a separate time card and tracked exactly when I started work, when I went to lunch, when I got back, and when I left for the day. At the end of the week, I gave the husband both time cards and explained why the one with his wife’s writing on it was short 5 minutes and the one with only my writing on it had 45 minutes overtime for the week. He told me I would get my regular pay and not to worry about his wife, he would deal with her. Never had a problem there again and I moved to a better job within about 4 months.
I worked in a horrible call center with draconian micromanagers who would go around and openly dump women’s purses out to look through them. When a round of stomach virus hit the area, they wouldn’t allow the agents to go to the washrooms so people were out at their stations vomiting into wastebasket.One of these managers was a nasty little bigot who oozed out of his mother’s basement into civilized society and said the ugliest things about Jews to the one white person on his team, who he thought would share his hate. Now I knew there was one thing this manager hated more than Jews, Muslims and immigrants and that was garlic. He had the full vampire effect from it. If you were lucky you might have seen that pristine white complexion turn a remarkable shade of green. He wasn’t allergic, he just couldn’t take the smell and the overwhelming flavor from any given dish.I slivered up a few cloves of garlic and on his next off day I decorated his station in the guise of getting files or office supplies. I put some in his file drawer, his keyboard, even in his chair. His cubicle had fabric along its walls; I dropped some garlic into a hole at one corner.For my last three weeks there I took great pleasure in his gagging. Shut his hateful mouth good and proper.
I was supervisor of a grooming crew at a ski area, sitting in a $350,000 machine while directing three other machine operators during an ice storm. The lifts were going to open in less than an hour, and I’d told my people to get a trail down from each lift as soon as possible. My boss, an Australian, stopped me on the trail and was telling me to go slowly and groom the trail I was on properly, and wouldn’t hear me talking about hurrying to make a safe path down for the skiers. I finally said, “I quit, I’m heading for the parking lot and going home.”He said, “No! That’s my machine and you’re not taking it anywhere.” My microphone was open to my other operators for this whole exchange. I said, “Fair enough. Here’s your F’ing machine.” Jumped out, walked the half mile downhill to my car, and left. He was left with an idling machine that he knew nothing about operating and a snowmobile. The boss was fired that morning, and while the ski area rang my phone, I never answered it. Who hires these a******s, anyway? PS all of my operators did the same thing. Just shut down their machines and walked down.
I was a line pilot at a small (3 airplanes) Part 135 company. I was an instructor pilot and was on very good terms with the FAA. The owner promoted me to Chief Pilot and put me on salary, but this resulted in a pay cut. I was not happy with the loss of income and tried to discuss it with him but he just wouldn’t listen. For those that don’t know, in aviation there is a cardinal rule: don’t f**k with my pay!Soon after this, he pulled some shenanigans that the FAA hadn’t seen yet. I asked for a meeting with the FAA in an effort to protect my pilots, and our principal inspector asked me to meet him after hours. The FAA was very interested and started an investigation. Meanwhile, I found a much better job.Six months later, I was called to testify in court. He was soon out of business and his shenanigans got him banned from ever owning an airline again.
She told me to falsify reports. She went on to say that if I told the sales manager that she would deny it. Well, guess what? I did tell the sales manager, and I also told him that I would be willing to pay for a lie detector test. 30 years later, and I’m still laughing, and I congratulate myself for no longer bowing to this horrible person. Three years of threats were enough!
Years ago i was helping my dad build a ethanol plant. We did concrete work from start to finish where they were up an running. Anyway there was a safety guy who was a hard nose **wipe to anyone who wasn’t his drinking buddy.One day he decided to write me up over something small nothing worth writing me up for. The site superintendent was with me when the “ incident” happened. Not wearing a hardhat in a skid steer. I was doing something in a tight area and the site superintendent was watching my blind spot.Later on the site superintendent radioed me in to come to his office and asked me about what happened at lunch.I told him I had seen the safety guy drinking alcohol at lunch everclear was his drink of choice . I showed him my phone and the “safety” guy was fired on the spot for drinking on duty and driving a company vehicle. 550 people on site watched him get arrested on the property and cheered as he left in handcuffs. His bac was 6 times the legal limit. 3 hours after lunch.
I was working in a customer service position. The supervisor was on an ego/power trip who couldn’t work to save her life! Still, I loved the job and many times came in 45+ minutes early — and worked during my lunch break. This one time, she decided the smoker’s couldn’t go out for a smoke break. It wasn’t something we ab*sed, we only had them twice a day. The other staff just b**ched about her — while I asked for a meeting with the manager. I told him how I had worked for a government dept 20 years earlier — that even then, it was decided an employee never work longer than 3 hours without a break — and that was before the eye strain of working with computers! The manager agreed with me — but the supervisor wouldn’t drop it and insisted if someone rang in sick, the breaks were off. Sure enough, that happened a few weeks later. It was a job I could do blindfolded with both hands tied behind my back — this day, I handled the enquiries slowly, giving customers 1,000% customer service. It wasn’t long before the phones were going crazy, so the supervisor had to leave her office and help with the calls — ALL DAY. After that, I came into work on time and stopped working during lunch breaks. I resigned 3 months later.
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I was a lifeguard at a country club. I had to punch a time clock. One day I arrive and before I can punch in I’m told the manager needed to see me. I had to take care of something and it was noon before I remembered I hadn’t punched in. Of course my pay was short that week. I reminded him that I was there to take care of something, surely he remembered?He said we pay for what’s on your time card. No exceptions. So the next week I punched in Tuesday morning and didn’t punch out until Sunday night. I told him they owed me a boatload of overtime. The next paycheck included the lost hours. He also tried to fire me but I refused to be fired. I told him I needed to quit a week early because my college was starting earlier than expected. He said “Why don’t you leave now?”I wanted to work up until school started, and we both knew it was impossible to replace a lifeguard in the middle of the summer. So I just said no, I’m staying until the date I told you. And he just walked away. Now I use my superior problem-solving skills in my career as a stand-up comedian.
I worked for a small company some years ago. I had been there for many years and it was sold. The new owner was ok at first but quickly showed his true colors. (I reported directly to him). I was a one man department and quickly losing my patience. One morning I woke up and decided I didn’t want to go into work. My phone was blowing up all morning as he tried to contact me. Finally at about 2pm I decided to go in. He started to read me the riot act while many of the other employees were right there. I interrupted several times before he let me say what I wanted to say. Once he let me I told him “I didn’t know I had to be in at a specific time to tell you I quit”. A couple of employees stared to laugh and you could see others trying to hold it back. I ten proceeded to tell him to mail my last check to my house and never call me again.
Chocolate. Doesn’t sound like much., but one manager was a total pain. The final straw was that the company needed to save money, so we would all have to make do with the stuff we had. He always kept his office locked because of confidentiality. One Saturday I was putting in a software update onto our computer, always do at a weekend in case it goes wrong and you have to back it out. He must have forgotten because shortly after wrapping up and having a brew to get ready for the trip home a delivery arrived. A very luxurious swivel chair for his office and a nice large couch. Big enough for a bed. It was a fairly open secret about him and his secretary. Both were cloth covered, brown cloth, patterned brown cloth, ideal! I grated some chocolate and a few weeks later scattered the shavings on the seat of the chair and the couch and massaged it gently in. Don’t ask how I got the key, let us just say that the night security guard was partial to a late night takeaway, and I knew where the keys were kept. Next day he left with brown stains on the back of his trousers, of course the chocolate also melted into the seat cover so it could not easily be detected, it worked for two more days. Only petty but I enjoyed it.
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Company I worked for wanted to discipline me for an off-time, off-site issue. Called me into HR to tell me of the disciplinary action. I asked, why, according to policy, I had NOT been interviewed prior to that decision. No real answer. So I quit. No notice. Then and there. My teams generated $1 million a year ABOVE the division average. NOT in sales. NOT in gross revenue. Money IN the BANK, net! Gross sales was $7 million above division average. EBIT was 14%. So after COGS, after payroll, after rent, lights and everything else, it was 14% of $7 million IN THE BANK, with just corporate taxes to be paid. Talking with friends a couple years later, I was informed that my former teams with new management, had fallen back into the “average” category. So, for the next couple or three years, the company lost $2–3 MILLION ! In the bank, NOT just in the “cash register”! Sufficient revenge!
Because I was showing ‘attitude’ during an argument with my boss (and prove that she was so hilariously WRONG!), she decided to put me on a Steps (basically an Action review). At the end of 3 months, depending on that review I would either keep my job or be fired. I elected to have my surgery during that time period and went on disability for almost 4 weeks, then worked half-days for another week. There had had been 2 other people covering my job plus she had a temp; when I came back, everything was so effed up it took me almost 4 months to get things straightened out again; it took me 2 months to get her calendar straightened out and another 3 months for all the reports to start reporting accurately again. At the end of 3 months, my boss called me into her office and told me I was never allowed to either go on vacation or get sick ever again. Roughly around a year after I finally left (she refused to promote me despite me performing the work), her new boss gave her a ‘promotion’. She ‘retired’ rather than take the position.
I had worked for some years as a legal assistant for a Local Council. One of the solicitors (who I shall call Fred because that was not his real name) was not one of the most work-focused people I have ever met. He was also under the impression that he was my line manager, which he wasn’t - both of us reported directly to the Head of Legal Services. Fred would ignore any files that were allocated to him until they became urgent - at which point he would try to offload them onto me, pleading “that’s not my case, Kate’s dealing with it”. He would then claim the file back just before completion in order that it counted towards his file count at his annual assessment.My boss was well aware of what was going on and kept an eye on what was happening: however, sometimes I had to take Fred’s “problem files” (which often only became a problem because he’d ignored them in the first place) in order to get the damn things back on track. After a few years I decided that there was more to life than battling Fred, and left in order to go to university. I soon discovered that Fred had been given all my ongoing work. And how did I discover this? Because he used to phone me in the evenings to ask me how to progress some of the files. He was paid about three times the annual salary that I had been. I started to make notes of how often he phoned me, how long each call lasted and what each file was. Things came to a head when he contacted me to ask advice on a matter which I knew damn well I’d never dealt with. Fred happily admitted that it had only just come in and that he didn’t know what to do. I suggested that he ask the boss, put the phone down and added our conversation to the list: which I then typed up and sent to the boss together with an invoice charged at £100 per hour for “professional advice”. I received an apology from the boss (sadly without payment!) I never heard from Fred again.
I was working as a police inspector on an area where the superintendent was an arrogant bastard who absolutely hated me. Probably because I was a straight talking supervisor who wouldn’t let him bully the officers. Every year we had to undergo officer safety training including getting sprayed with a dilute CS irritant (5% instead of 60%). I had intervened between my OST trainer and the Superintendent and kept him in the job. After a chat with the trainer somehow the Superintendent got sprayed with the 60% irritant. He spent the next 45 minutes vomiting and trying to clear his eyes All highly unlawful but worth it
I rated them poorly on the Supervisor’s evaluation as part of the 360 degree performance process. I especially rated that supervisor who offered me lousy support in terms of no training or travel opportunities while they gave similar opportunities to other staff members who had the same performance rating as I did. Eventually, that supervisor got removed from their job and sent to another part of FEMA where they could do less damage to their subordinates. I never saw them again during the rest of my time at FEMA. I had no regrets for doing what I did.
I had been off of a work for a month and being the only secretary work had really piled up. I came back with a note for reasonable accommodations of getting up and moving once every hour, which it was very reasonable, but my supervisor didn’t see it that way. Her voice of reason was to do filing every hour and I said I don’t think so as sometimes there isn’t enough filing to do. Anyway, I stuck it out for another 2 weeks and to no surprise my back pain worsened to where I was going to be off another month to get my back straightened out again. Only this time, I had enough of this BS and turned in my resignation half way through of being off. I had a whole cabinet full of dictation to transcribe and other stuff. It was overwhelming to say the least. They never did get anyone to help. Now, when I had been off before, they got some temporary help in, but not this time. I have no clue what they did after I left, but I didn’t care as I left them the mess they started. Had they at least tried to help and gave me the requested accommodations and they were realistic because I said I could stand and move within my area to answer the phones and greet clients and that was turned down. So yeah, I stuck it to them good. No, I didn’t have another job lined up, but I did apply for social security disability and was awarded benefits in a few months time. That’s how bad things were for me.
I had a manager who I only got along with some of the time, but during one of the periods when we didn’t get along, I noticed him literally hit one of my co-workers with a slap on the shoulder (NOT a friendly one) and I addressed it with HIS boss.We had consecutive weeks where first I, then he went on mandatory week-long vacations since we worked for a bank and it was a bank regulation. A few days after I came back from mine and during his, one of the senior managers (people directly above him in the food chain) informed us that the company and he “mutually agreed to part ways.”
Got sent home for 2 days because they didn’t like the way I was doing my job. Came back after my 2 day mini vacation, and 50% of the job was still there. Despite 2 guys working on it. I did about 10% in 2 hours, before I departed.
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Gabija Saveiskyte
Justinas Keturka
Indrė Lukošiūtė
Work & Money
