 You're firing me? Sure, I like getting paid for a two-year vacation. With a promotion. These revenge stories might be upsetting to some audiences. To others, you found the best place for your vengeful needs. New ownership of the company introduced disciplinarian rules. But one worker smirks and decides to go on a well-deserved two-year vacation while getting paid. Karen fakes injury and bosses her coworkers around, like they're her personal servants. Her reign didn't last long. Next, a spineless commander walks away from his responsibilities. But a vengeful soldier gives him a back bone. Tell the like button that it's the reason why shampoo has instructions. A family friend was working at the same company, since he was 26, up to when he was 64 when the below started. Let's call him Peter. I did get his approval to retell the story, just not include anything specific. So I'm keeping it anonymous and quite general on the specific details. Part of the problem, was the laws in the country increasing the retirement age from 62 to 65 when Peter was in his early mid-50s, and then again from 65 to 67 when he was about 63. But luckily, the old owners were a family and family-oriented business and ran it with benefits to the employees. From everything I have heard, I think they were giving an extra vacation week after every six years at the company. So on top of the standard four weeks, he had an extra six weeks at the time of the events. Also, people had access to two weeks of working home office, when the job allowed them to. For those that couldn't or didn't use it, they got an extra week off. So he was getting 11 weeks off each year. As a bonus, the family owners were allowing people above 55 to use their vacation time as they desired. How the employees used their weeks, was totally up to them. It could be all at once with a courtesy of a two weeks notice, segmented, or even saved up to pile up free weeks for when retirement came. Another issue we have at our country, is that when you submit retirement paperwork to the government, they take ages upon ages. So it is often the case, that they may take over two years to calculate what to pay you. After that, it could take so long before starting to pay out, that they had to pay back in time. This delayed payment would be calculated as the minimum amount. So you would be duped multiple times. But Peter had already about 44 years of experience and a bit more ahead of him as an engineer, and a well paid one, which meant a great retirement amount. So the owners allowed for people to gather up their weeks of time off at the end of it, and take 20 to 30 weeks off while submitting their retirement paperwork. So the money being paid would last them longer into the calculation period. Some used it, some didn't. Change came, when the owners had to redirect their company mission and future plans. They concluded that the way they were running their business, the profiting wouldn't last more than six to seven years. On top of that, the owners were getting older. So they decided they wanted to sell the company. So when they found a buyer, the company was sold. New ownership, part of some Coca-Cola subsidiary, takes over and starts removing previous rules. Peter shared his position with two other men. All three shared the shifts and job. Peter, a second colleague, and a third one. This is what happened to them. They push out the second colleague by firing him. The third one has a heart attack literally a week later. They also go and dock his pay by 15% because. For a simple engineer, you're making way too much money. The three of them held a patent for the machinery used on something specific, a second one on how to make that machinery, and a third one on the process of the production of a small but significant part. The old owner had allowed them to put the patents on their names when they invented the way of production years ago. It made the production 30% cheaper and 75% faster. So back to Peter's situation. He's alone in his position, lost two colleagues in his 64. Then company hired six people for him to train on that position. At the same time, they tell all the workers of the company that they have till the end of the year before their saved up weeks will expire. So for all the piled up vacation time to be claimed. Notice the wording claimed not used. So Peter had used between one to five weeks for the past decade. So he had gathered 87 weeks of time off and apparently they hadn't looked at specific cases. So they instruct him to train the six new people and command them that he needs to have them trained in six months. At this point, he still has around two and a half years until retirement. So what do you think Peter did? I won't leave you guessing for long. He just goes and takes 87 weeks of vacation time with a three hours notice on a Friday evening starting the upcoming Monday. Still no advanced notifying is required. The new managers don't pay attention to it until the next Thursday when the CEO notices the six people sitting around all day and nobody is training them. The phone calls start. Then emails. Then letters get added to the mix. This doesn't work. So they bump it up by making low ranking secretaries visit his home personally to deliver the letters by hand. Doesn't work. So they had to up their game. This is when management start visiting his home by week seven. The CEO has visited three times, but the door hasn't been open once. Peter's mother-in-law lives literally across the street. She's a very old woman and he takes care of her with his wife. So most of the time they are over there and can see everybody visiting their house. He obviously has a lot of friends inside and is getting constant updates. The production is actually running on itself, but no upkeep is done on that critical part of it. The problems start in week 11. A birdie told him that line one out of the two breaks down. They start visiting his house three to four times a day. Two weeks later, the second line breaks down. At that point they have only four weeks of backstop to keep the rest of production running. It's December, right before Christmas and he goes in during week 13. Peter is spotted by the CEO who stampedes towards him. Peter says he's only there because he needs to take some things from his locker room and the CEO starts yelling at him. You are stopping your time off right now. You are coming back to work to fix everything. So Peter offers to come back for three days under the agreement that the entire week will be returned to him to use for more time off. The CEO reluctantly agrees and tries to push him also for the training. There's no budging Peter so he only fixes things up and goes on vacation again. By Saturday everything is fixed and even leaves a couple of basic instructions on what needs greasing every week. A few weeks pass, New Year has come around and a line is broken again. He gets called back and CEO pretends like the previous deal will be used again. He goes in for two days and fixes everything. He explains couple more things to the team of six, who by now have other duties, not to be sitting around all day. And when he is about to leave, the CEO says I'm expecting you here tomorrow at 8am. Peter says, what? And the CEO explains you had the chance to claim your time off by the end of last year. So the gigs up. You just ended your claim time off so you are losing the remaining 69 weeks. Peter is furious and he just leaves and reports the company to workers rights. They are actually dumbfounded by the time off he has amounted and the lady serving him asked if she could let her colleagues listen in. Which was fine by Peter, so he explained his situation again. They laugh and giggle like schoolgirls while they listen. And they actually issue a verdict the next day. It usually takes weeks, but apparently they had too much fun with this one. He is to get all of his time off, under the previous rule, for the time accrued up before the rules changed. So he has his 69 weeks, but he also acquired six more weeks from the new year. So he goes in with the verdict, and gives it personally to a fuming CEO. According to Peter, steam was coming out of his ears. The CEO unwillingly accepts the deal Peter offers him. Which meant he'd be on the job for three days, every five weeks off. If he is needed during his time off, tough luck. They should work to produce back stock. A full year goes by and Peter is 66 at this point. He has been training the six slowly every five weeks, and he is on his last visit before he takes the last five weeks off. The CEO had his own plans. As the CEO wanted to see him before he left. So when Peter walks by his office, the CEO smiles and personally hands him a firing notice. Peter played being shocked and left for another five weeks. By doing this, the CEO created a serious problem for Peter. Because if you apply for retirement, even with half a year early, you are losing significantly more than just that small period. And Peter still had 10 months ahead of him before retirement. But Peter was no fool. When these five weeks ended, he went back and went to gather his personal belongings. Only a coffee cup remained, because he knew this would eventually come and he had collected his stuff before, over time. The firing was without cause, so Peter received a very nice and big compensation payout. He gets an extremely big payout for the firing with no cause. But the CEO and managers overplayed the hand. And Peter wasn't fulfilled with the pile of cash he received. His vengeful brainwave took over. Next day he sends a cease and desist letter to the company, for the use of his patents. Not one, not two. But three patents he had the shared rights to. He had talked with the fired guy, who had agreed with this revenge plan. He had also talked with the widow of the now past friend and colleague as well, and had both of them on board. She was willing to help, because apparently, Peter had helped her with the formalities surrounding the patent rights, and supported her to get her fair share. So now the company has to stop using those machines and the special method, with zero notice. All the competitors have found and built, and even patented their own versions of this kind of production. If the company doesn't find a solution, it's going to cost 40% more and take out double time to produce the same part of the procedure. Meaning, they would need to double the lines either way, using the old method, until they find a new way or innovate with Elon Musk's speed. After just three weeks of looking to license the method of one of the competitors, and eventually not getting anywhere. Stock dropped to extremely low levels by that point. In the end, the company had to go back to their original way of production, and contacted Peter and the co-patent holders. And they struck a deal. A deal with the devil. As stopping the production would be considered taboo. But Peter added to the negotiation, Don't forget that I need at least three days to fix both lines. So you already need to shut the factory down for three days, and every minute you delay this deal, it's another minute of the entire factory being down. Peter will be hired as an external contractor, who obviously keeps the patents to his name. He will be doing the maintenance on his own and he will be on call for maintenance, while he also provides someone to be there during shifts for upkeep. When they hire Peter for his services, he is to be paid by the hour. The hourly rate is coincidentally the same, as what he made in a full days work previously. The roles of the six new employees changed, because the company had no plans for them directly. But Peter could use a team because now he had to fill the shifts, so he hired the people to work for him. So they stopped working for the company, but later went back there to work for Peter, while being paid almost double to what they were receiving. Keep in mind they were making minimum wages as all six were starters, now, they made as much Peter was making with the old owner in charge. Under his wing, he trained them consequently and properly, creating a team of qualified workers and getting paid a nice check for it. What about the CEO? The factory actually shut down for almost four days. And the CEO decided they didn't need to pay the workers for those four days that they were not working. Which ended up a class action from over 800 workers at the workers rights office. Which of course, led to a fine and forcing the factory to pay them anyway and that was the last drop. The news got to management from outside the country and ended up costing the CEO his job. By the threat of bringing the production to a full halt for more days, which eventually had to happen to restock anyway. This deal had to be accepted, after the company was desperately low on back stock, and the full halt was way worse and more costly. At the funeral of the old owner, many of the old employees met up and told their different stories. Apparently, there were three more similar cases with patent holders, because the old owner treated his team extremely well. But Peter, was the only one to string them on for almost two years, by being out on vacation time, while getting paid. All of them had a great laugh, including the widow of the owner and his sister, who were the other two partners in the factory before it got sold. Why didn't the new owner find out who owned what, before buying the company? There was an agreement with all the patent holders, that as long as they work for the company, the company can use the patents. And nobody had never had a reason to leave before, at least from the older very experienced staff, that were at a level to invent something that could get patented. Why they didn't catch it as a potential issue is besides me. But all the rest patent holders came to the new management to get deals pretty quickly after the acquisition. I asked Peter, and he told me that he didn't sold his rights and just held out, because he saw the writing at the wall immediately when they fired the second guy, and wouldn't even rehire him when the third one in the team passed away. There was a coworker at our store, who always seemed to find a way to avoid completing her tasks. Let's call her Karen. Despite being employed at the store for over a decade and a half, she had developed a reputation for shirking her responsibilities. The managers, who had known Karen for many years, were aware of her behavior, but they chose to turn a blind eye. They knew that if they pushed her too hard, she would likely create a big fuss or even take legal action. Karen walked into work one day, hobbling on a supposed sprained ankle. She announced to her coworkers, that she would now require a chair to sit on in between helping customers at the register. Despite the skepticism of her colleagues, she was given the chair without question. Worth to mention, she did not have a doctor's note for her supposed injury. Her behavior greatly irritated all the employees, as they couldn't believe she would get away with such a ridiculous excuse. It also meant that she could no longer assist restocking shelves on truck day, nor participate in removing sales tags and putting up the new sales tags, which are huge, time-consuming tasks for the entire staff. She'd just sit on her throne as we called it, and read her trashy romance novels all day long, when she didn't have customers to ring up. Pretty cozy setup, right? The rest of us were out on the floor working our tails off, while Karen just sat there reading and munching on whatever snacks she brought with her that day. Her throne sat too low to run the register from a seated position, so she had to stand to ring customers out. Karen could have used her throne to help us out by at least restocking candy at the register counter, but she refused, saying it was too much for her to move her throne around like that. We offered to move it for her, but she claimed she didn't want to disrupt our work. She enjoyed dictating orders from her throne. She would constantly call us to the front, like we were her personal servants, knowing she was disrupting our work. I'm thirsty. Get me a coke out of the cooler. I'm hungry. Grab me a bag of chips and a couple slim gyms. I'm bored. Go see if the new people magazine came in yet. No not there, on the magazine rack. If anyone found some tasks she could do while sitting, she would drag the task out all day, and still never finish it. Now mind you, these were extremely simple tasks that a normal person could have completed them in 10 to 15 minutes, but not Karen. The Karen queen, sitting all day on her throne wasn't the real issue here. We were more than accommodating with her constant disrupting demands, it was her flat out refusal to do any work at all. After about two and a half weeks of her whining about her still sore ankle, one day her husband was really late in picking her up after her shift, so she just gathered up her handbag and books, and put away her throne so others couldn't use it. As she is walking to the door to leave, she casually states to me, I'm tired of waiting around. So, just tell my husband that I walked down to McDonald's. I'm hungry, so he can just pick me up there. McDonald's is about three blocks down the road. Quite a distance for a person with a bad ankle to walk. 20 minutes later, her husband arrived and asked the store manager where she is. The store manager had no idea, so he asked me. I told him the truth. She said she was hungry, so she walked down to McDonald's to get something to eat. She told me to tell you, to pick her up there. As the husband exits the store, the store manager turns around and furiously grabs her throne, throws it in his office, locks it and announces. We're done, playing this game. She never got her throne back after that incident. She had a royal hissy fit the next day over losing her throne, and we all rejoiced, when she finally quit a month later. The manager put her on a 90-day probation period for this stunt. I wasn't at work when the doodoo hit the fan, but my coworkers all said they could hear her screaming from inside the manager's office and they were all laughing. When she finally emerged from her tongue lashing in the manager's office, she was very quiet and moped all day, trying to gain sympathy from the customers until the manager stopped her by stating, in front of the customers. If you're healthy enough to walk three blocks to McDonald's, you're healthy enough to do your job standing like everyone else. Any more comments on this, and I'm sending you home? She was so furious that she called in sick for the rest of the week. Finally, the store manager called and told her that if she didn't report to work for her next shift, he'd demand a doctor's note for her four-day absence, or fire her. He also reminded her that she was on probation, so she better heals real quick. She came to work the next day, miraculously healed. It was a miracle. Next, the store manager assigned her to work some closing shifts, with me, because she always refused them before. The manager told me in confidence that he did this, because he knew I wouldn't allow her to slack off on the closing shift duties. He was correct. During the entire shift, I kept reminding her of the duties she had to complete before she left, and of course Karen kept telling me that she's just going to leave as soon as her husband comes to get her. I told her, fine. But only if you've completed your tasks. We can both stay here all night, if that's what it takes. The choice is yours. I'm not the one on probation. When she realized that she wasn't going to get around me, she finally got busy and again. Another miracle. She completed all her tasks before closing. Two weeks later, she gave notice. The royal Karen finally gave up her throne. Just so we're clear, the queen's throne was a simple folding chair. I was in the army. While away on a four-day pass, my barracks room was broken into, and a significant amount of my military equipment was stolen. I lost my helmet, backpack, weapons, belt ammo carrier and more. In total to the tune of approximately $800, in 1984 dollars. When I returned, there were tool marks on the locked room door and it was clearly a break in. I notified my platoon sergeant and first sergeant, and they said to call the military police. Then the company commanding officer, who outranked us, called me and stated he didn't want the break in being reported to the military police, because then our company would show up in the higher level, division, police blotter and this would make him, the company commander, look bad. So he told me to do a report of survey, a form used to be reimbursed for lost equipment, and L wouldn't have to pay for the stolen equipment, whose replacement costs were a month's pay. While I submitted the paperwork. But it didn't went the way he told me. Without the police report, my request to be reimbursed was denied, and L was told L would have to pay for all the stolen equipment. I was shocked, because it was a lot of money and I was just about to leave the army to go back to college. I needed that money to make ends meet and survive. I went back to the commander. He told me, tough break. There's nothing I can do about it to help you. Even though it was his orders, I had followed. Not the worst as it turns out, just a week before we found out that the division would not replace my stolen equipment. I had led our company through a nuclear biological and chemical weapons evaluation exercise that was my specialty in the army and the spineless commander sat out the exercise and just observed this placed me in a leadership position to do his job while a captain from our division headquarters graded our actions. I was a junior sergeant who had to maneuver, lead and direct the whole company of 120 men, including senior lieutenants, to a staging area five miles away through the security procedures to secure the decontamination site and then lead the cleaning of our men, tanks and equipment from the simulated chemical attack. I had never maneuvered an armored company before, but I did it. And the other sergeants and lieutenants in the unit were shocked that the commander hadn't helped me during the exercise. The process went well and at the end, a captain from division who was evaluating us congratulated me on doing a good job. In front of the company, this captain then explained what our next steps would be. He made a mistake and told the troops wrong information that in combat would get them killed. I was leaving the army, but I cared enough about my fellow soldiers to want them to be combat proficient. So politely and respectfully, I corrected what the captain had said, but he clearly resented me for making him look silly. I guess he was embarrassed a lower ranking soldier corrected him. And if that made him noticeably embarrassed. At the end of the debriefing, I was walking back to my armored vehicle to radio our HQ that now we had completed our decontamination. A requirement of the exercise, and we're operational again. And this captain followed me away from the other soldiers. He asked what I was going to do. And I told him I was about to make the radio call to HQ. He told me that wouldn't be necessary. I could just tell him what I would say. I told him, and he told me our unit had passed the evaluation. Luckily for me, my first sergeant overheard him say this to me. Now fast forward to where I find out that my equipment would not be replaced. And a couple days later, I was called into the commander's office with my first sergeant and told our company had flunked the training evaluation because I hadn't made that radio call. I was getting out of the army, so didn't really care, but it was bad news for my commander. I was shocked. Because the other captain, who outranked me, told me not to make the radio call and that our unit was decontaminated and operational again. Turns out, that the captain was immature and mad at me, since I had embarrassed him in front of all the soldiers in my unit. I still was angry at the commander for ordering me not to call the police about my barracks room break in. And how he didn't care that I would now have to pay a lot of money to replace my stolen equipment. So I didn't defend myself, or tell the commander what really happened with the evaluation or that captain. When I left the commander's office, the first sergeant told me he heard the other captain tell me not to make that radio call, but not to say anything. Our commander was a jerk who would get us all killed in a war, and his unit flunking the evaluation made him look really bad. So he asked me to keep my mouth shut. A couple weeks later, the commander was rude to a sick soldier in our unit, while I was out processing to leave the army. Everyone hated him even more for this. So our supply sergeant, who was retiring from the army, and after the commander signed for all the military equipment in the supply room, told me he couldn't believe the commander had screwed me over on my stolen equipment, and that he would help me. So he handed me the keys to the supply room that the commander hadn't collected, and told me to take whatever military equipment I would need to replace my stolen equipment, since the commander was now responsible to replace everything in the supply room, with his own money. He also apologized that some of the replacement equipment I would need, was not in the supply room, and he felt bad I would still have to pay a couple hundred dollars out of pocket to replace some of the stolen equipment. The supply sergeant also answered my questions, about where all the backup training logs for our unit's weapons and physical training tests were kept. We were about to be inspected by higher headquarters, and these records were super important for the commander to pass the inspection and be promoted. Not having those would be taboo, and would be the end of his career in the army. The day before I got out of the army with him, honorable discharge, and just a couple days before this huge important inspection, it was discovered that the whole company's years worth of weapons training records, the backup records and electronic records, were missing or wiped clean. The commander had to explain this embarrassing situation to his bosses, who were not happy with him. His unit had already flunked the NBC evaluation, and now his unit had failed to properly maintain training records. Even worse, his unit's training budget was completely over budget, with costs off the charts, and the division had to come up with a lot of money to cover the ammo costs, to re-qualify the whole company on all our weapons, plus time from other duties to redo our physical tests, PT, of running, push-ups and more. Just as bad, advanced training would have to be canceled to redo all the basic weapons qualification training, that had to be completed once again. There was no way the commander could avoid receiving a bad performance appraisal, which would end any chance of him getting promoted, thus effectively ending his military career. Meanwhile, my fellow soldiers loved it, because they liked to shoot machine guns, throw grenades and shoot cannons. My last day in the army, at morning formation, as everyone was getting ready to redo the PT test and later all day redoing weapon qualifications for several more days. My awesome first sergeant told me that the disappearing records was the best ETS, and term of service, prank he had ever seen. I of course replied, that I didn't know what he was talking about. He laughed, winked at me and told me I was a good soldier, and that he would miss me. He then shook my hand and wished me well. There is nothing more detrimental to Morale, than a bad commander. Did you hear what happened to him, if anything? I am not sure, but pretty sure his performance appraisal was bad and ended his career. I think one of the most satisfying things about this story, is that I always thoroughly enjoyed physical training tests. I hated them when I first joined, then I realized that it was the least amount of PT I would do on any given day. I would have bought you a beer for that alone. Thank you. The funny thing is, the commander hated PT, nice. Wouldn't destroying all of the records and stealing equipment frick over the supply sergeant, as much as the commander? No, the captain had signed for and accepted responsibility of all the equipment in the supply room. The supply sergeant was no longer responsible for it, and by the time any inventory noted was missing, he would long be retired. The lost records reflected on the commander and perhaps the first sergeant, but the first sergeant was already a high rank and was eligible to retire, so he could care less. The commander is ultimately responsible for his unit. You stayed till the end, which means you're the one I make these episodes for. Thank you for your support, I really appreciate you. Subscribe, so you don't miss out on future episodes and show your vengeful devotion, by tickling the like button without mercy. Do you have any experiences surrounding the topic of this episode? Share yours below, I'll join the conversation. I'll be seeing you, in the next one. Remember that these stories are shared for your entertainment. This content is to be taken as such, and nothing else. Royal AI, rejects advocation or instigation of illegal actions.