 I'm not the boss because I'm always right. I'm always right, because I'm the boss. If you like true revenge stories, you found the best place for your vengeful needs. I create them with fleaky visuals, dipped in artificial love. We start off with a story, in which the manager expected to finance his luxurious lifestyle, by paying out incomplete wages. Until one fed up employee, catfished him, into doing the right thing. Second story, imagine you have the job you absolutely love, but the manager is so toxic, that you'd rather wear a gas mask to work. Or, you could listen to the devil on your shoulder, and force the whole company to reorganize the chain of command. Lastly, a felon manager with questionable tattoos, and daddy issues, steals tips from his employees and pays below minimum wage. His shenanigans could have lasted longer, if he didn't unjustly fire the guy, with a small notebook. After you subscribed for future uploads, make sure to smite vengeance on the like button, by hiring a group of professional mimes, and let them do unspeakable things. You get it? Unspeakable, because they cannot speak. Let's dive in. Naturally, viewer discretion is advised. These revenge acts, might be disturbing to bad managers. I used to work for a married couple, Billy and Gigi. They owned a business services agency. It lasted for around a year. They seemed nice and humble but in reality, they were shady and untruthful. The company began to falter, because of poor management and zero intention to prioritize. Billy was your baby-faced next-door neighbor type. He looked about 10 years younger and had a kind smile. He was soft-spoken and had an artistic and creative flair to him. Gigi looked matronly with a mother-earth incarnate attitude towards her children. She prided herself on being ruthless when it came to giving her family only the best. She could be really nice when she wanted to, but I found out early on that she was an expert at gossip and being two-faced. The company's constant changes were a red flag. They went from business services plus PR agency to IT provider, to a business incubator, to indie beer partners. What I'm trying to say is that they tried to dip their doughnut in everyone's coffee, figuratively. Some of us had no real way to escape. The lady working next to me was already 67 years old and scared that no one would hire her. I wasn't in a great place either. But that's a story for another time. We were eight employees in total. They wouldn't lay anyone off, because they believed that the employees should quit. The real problem, was that they paid us only a portion of our salaries, in incomplete weekly payments. Because of this, employees would run for the hills once they found a better job. Some of us were stuck in a rut. So we stayed, which was horrible. Sometimes they would inspire hope and pay the normal rate for a month, but then would immediately go back to holding on pay, without giving it to the employees. They never cut down on their luxury expenses, so the wife would poster shopping sprees or rive in a new car like it was nothing. They had zero empathy and were very insensitive. The husband was obsessed with making it big time. So much, that he sometimes failed to see an opportunity right in front of him. He said he was Coca-Cola's brand manager. I looked it up and could never find any reference. Gigi had a display full of small local magazines, mostly about design and architecture. They were very proud to be a team member of those magazines, but in reality, they just helped them print two issues. They wanted big business only, but in the meantime, looked down upon tangible potential clients that were smaller. Like the young Latino couple who showed up trying to learn more about their services. They seemed lost, because they wanted someone to help them set up a coffee business, and had no idea how it was done. I talked to them and helped them into the waiting room. They even showed up with their baby in a stroller. That means they must have driven by and decided to come in. An impulsive client should be retained, surely. The guy said his grandpa had a farm and he wanted to create an import slash exports company. Once Billy showed up, he listened for a bit, and gave them an abrupt dismissal. Which was a dick move, because that couple opened their own business with someone else and even set up their online business profile successfully. They were really serious. It could have been Billy though. But he wanted the big shiny companies only. He lined his office walls with posters of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, comparing himself to their level. His wife, the chief enabling officer, put up signs on each room. The main employee area was called, the machine room, Billy's office was, the chamber, the conference room was, a meeting of the minds. Every time an employee disagreed with Billy during a brainstorming session, Gigi would call them aside and tell them that. Billy is your boss. You need to know that he is brilliant and a genius. I had that weird experience first hand. I also hated brainstorming, because that was never on my job description. They just wanted to pick everyone's brains. In the meantime, we had to see the Pandora jewelry, the expensive macovers for their daughters, and the weekend at the spa updates. Gigi's captions on Facebook were usually about rewarding herself after a hard week or because she deserved it. If an employee ever got angry over anything, Gigi would tell them. Remember, the one who gets angry is the one who ends up losing. For anyone who's been in this situation, you may understand how frustrating it can be. You cannot leave the job because you have no other job waiting for you and pathetic as it may sound to some, some income is better than no income at all. This is an involuntary compromise and it's abusive. Why were we expected to pay for their luxuries via incomplete wages? A friend of mine was into coding and programming and he agreed to help. If it didn't work out, at least we would have something to laugh about. We created a kick-ass fake website with a matching LinkedIn and the whole nine yards. To make a long story short, this was supposed to be an investment company and my friend would be a casual investor, looking for opportunities. Nothing too eager. He would emphasize the casual part and started by liking my employer's Facebook page, then would drop a casual comment. Before we knew, my boss took the bait and was actively engaging. They exchanged emails and he was eager to share all his dreamy projects and ambitious bamboozle. On the other side, the investor sent him a list of requirements, like proof of concept, EIN number, etc. The investor agreed to work with them, only if they could prove they were legit and up to date. Which doesn't sound unfair at all. No confidential information, like bank accounts, was asked about that would compromise any worker. Within three weeks, Billy and Gigi paid the workers to fill in the gaps of salaries they created. I was paid the equivalent of two and a half months worth of salary. The investor did an about face and never contacted him again. I left the job as soon as I could. My friend, who remained until she got paid, told me our boss seemed off and a bit down after he announced big things are coming, but it all seemed to deflate. I never disclosed what was really going on. In the end, nobody was really harmed. He was catfished, inagating up to date with employee salaries that he owed. Nothing was stolen, but each worker was paid like they should have been. Balance restored. This story is told, from the female perspective. I am a professional attorney wrangler for a big legal firm. If you've watched suits, I'm Donna if she was wound tighter than a child's music box. As a legal admin, I have to keep a tremendous amount of information straight. Every county in every U.S. state has their own court system, their own rules, and their own idiosyncrasies. I have five attorneys on my team. Despite the TV shows, it's pretty unusual for a lawyer to have a special secretary all their own unless they are very important, so five is a solid number. Because of the nameless death that took over the world, a secretary that left in January 2020 has not been replaced yet, and I've been babysitting one of the business partners in the meantime, his name is Bingley. It's been a fun learning opportunity, as Bingley works for an entirely different region and type of law than the rest of my team. My manager, Lady Catherine, is the worst. You know the type, she plays favorites, her best loved word is no, she must be involved in every conversation, because she is just that important and necessary. We don't get along, because I am a stubborn no at all, who's been proven right a few too many times. Highlights include forbidding me from using the same resources other admins had access to, on her orders, including backup admins when my workload was too big and then denying my overtime requests. I literally had no way to do my job some days. It's worth noting that the reason Bingley's secretary left, was specifically because of Lady Catherine. In fact, four additional admins quit over the year explicitly because of her. Anyway, at this point, I've been working with Bingley for almost a year. It was November 2020, and we'd settled into a pretty good routine. I'd gotten used to filing pleadings in a different state, and no longer needed to double-check all my work for nuance. Because law still operates in the Stone Ages, a few U.S. states still require hard copy filing. Anything we want the judge to read has to be sent by actual mail, on actual paper, to arrive in the judge's actual hands. It's a pain, most states let you file electronically, but whatever. Bingley mostly only has cases in one of the hard copy states. Lady Catherine, in her excessive wisdom, bided in uninvited and instructed me to include a cover letter when mailing a new filing. This confused me, as I had been filing for almost a year and no one, including the admin who originally trained me, had mentioned a cover letter. I told her this, and she basically told me to suck it up. I called the court admin, to make sure I wasn't crazy and that I hadn't ruined a year's worth of filings, and the court admin literally laughed, and said to please not include a cover letter, ever. So I didn't. Imagine my surprise when Lady Catherine called me, writing me up for insubordination. Even knowing the court rules and the judge, and the court admin explicitly said to not send a damn letter, she was right, because she is always right and I am, and I quote, a disrespectful little shit and she was tired of me. A warning went into my employee file, pending disciplinary measures. The next day, she emailed my team telling them to reduce my score on my yearly review, as she knew I had been rated too highly for what my abilities really are. It fell to me like she was preparing to fire me, by creating a history of poor performance. Well, if you're so tired of me, Madam Manager, I can leave. Within a week of looking, I found a new position. Now, here's the issue, I freaking love my team. This is the best team I've ever been on. We take each other seriously, and we genuinely love each other. A lot of times admins get pushed around because we don't have fancy degrees, but not here. Calling in to quit, I cried. I cried a lot. I cried to the point that one of the partners, Bennett, asked if I wanted a counter-offer. I said no, because that wouldn't solve anything. He asked what I meant. So I told him. I told him about the write-up. I told him how she was trying to falsify my employee review after it had been submitted. I told him the reason five admins had left. I told him about how I wasn't allowed to ask for help. At this point, I had given myself hiccups from weeping, and one of the partners on my team, Gardner, was calling him asking if he and his workload were the reasons I was leaving. So Bennett let me go to other things, like day-drink and create a shrine out of legal forms. I thought it was the end of it, until a friend in another office, Charlotte, called me asking, what the fuck I was doing. She doesn't have time to train someone into being the new me, and I was the only admin she actually trusts in my office, so why was I leaving her all alone? I told her, and she told Gardner. And together they plotted. First, Charlotte is the manager in her office, so she is on equal footing with Lady Catherine. They also report to the same person. Charlotte called the district manager and told him that Lady Catherine was driving admins away and that the most recent quitter, me, was the only person who knows how to do a lot of the work on my teams, and my loss would be a serious blow. Apparently this is true, which is both heartwarming and terrifying. Meanwhile, Gardner called up a fellow partner and told her that his world would collapse in on itself if I left. He would go to the nearest bridge and jump off it, which would be pretty impressive in a landlocked state. They had to do something. I gotta call the next day from Bennett, saying they had a counter-offer they were really hoping I'd take. Basically, instead of Lady Catherine, I would report directly to Gardner. Lady Catherine would be forbidden from interfering with me without first asking Gardner for his permission. This solved the issue and I got to stay with my team, so I happily accepted. I thought the debacle was over. The debacle was not over. Unbeknownst to me, after looking at the evidence, eggs at interviews, emails, memos, Bennett put Lady Catherine on a performance improvement plan and she did not get an end of year bonus or raise. Turns out, I had been absolutely correct. Lady Catherine's behavior and treatment had been the explicit cause that six secretaries quit in less than a year. I got a call last week from Charlotte. I figured she wanted to gossip about coworkers or rant about how a shared client is a big old headache, but it was actually to give me a heads up. Lady Catherine had been stripped of her management duties. I didn't have contact with her, which was great, but it also meant I didn't see that her behavior had actually doubled down on the admins, unfortunate enough to still be under her thumb. She had missed every single one of the benchmarks on her performance improvement plan. Charlotte had called me to ask my opinion on who should be the new manager, as I know everyone and she was helping to cover some things as an outside manager. Now, I know some of you are thinking, yes, become the manager and fire Lady Catherine, but I am not a sadist. I want to stay on my team and do what I do best, which is being a cheerfully annoying, respectful little shit. I told her one of the more senior admins would probably need some guidance, but would be amazing at it. No one has to deal with Lady Catherine anymore. She is now a mere paralegal and not anyone's manager at all. If she had just left me alone and not interfered where she wasn't needed, none of this would have happened. All she had to do was nothing. This all happened years ago when I was still in college. I worked for a delivery joint. The company seemed super cool because they provided vehicles instead of forcing you to beat down your own car. Huge perk, right? Well, in this case, not. The owner of the company used this as justification to take a percentage of the driver's tips. Often, this would result in an employee making below minimum wage. If you made below minimum wage, you would have to come and pick up your check-in person and sign a document attesting that. You did make minimum wage due to undocumented cash tips or some such nonsense. Now this was a problem for two reasons. Number one, in this state I was in, employee tips belonged to the employee and less part of an employee tip pooling agreement. This was plain as day on the Department of Labor website. So that 20% gouge was already crossing a line. Number two, you cannot just force employees to say they made above minimum wage, when in reality, they did not. So pretty shady, right? Now, most people would see this situation and run for the hills, which probably explained the delivery driver turnover being so high. I on the other hand, saw the potential. See, I am pretty well versed in labor law and decided that I was gonna ride it out. I wanted to see how long they would keep these shenanigans up. Here and there, it would make comments to the managers about the legality of their practices and was often told. Our lawyer said it's okay, so it's okay. I would think to myself, would love to meet these lawyers one day. So I patiently waited for a year, documenting every red scent they took from me and encouraging the other drivers to do so. Every new driver that came through that door got a little pow wow with me, and I would give them the skinny. Unfortunately, my plan must have leaked because sooner than later, the joint decided to fire me after making up three bogus infractions. It struck me how fast they actively tried to get rid of me. First bogus infraction, the way this joint worked, was you as a driver got an insulated box that was supposed to contain the order. You weren't supposed to check the box or confirm the order was accurate. That was another guy's job. So the order checker swapped the addresses on two orders I was taking. I called in that the second one was delivered. They simply told me, I delivered the boxes to the wrong places, strike one. Second time they freaked me over, they literally just put empty boxes in my delivery boxes with a phone book and accused me of taking the food. Didn't expect that one, very inventive though. After this, I made sure to get permission to start checking the orders after this, and they couldn't get me for a while. Strike three incoming. We drove cars with the company name, phone number, and a vehicle number on the car. They claimed someone called in and said that I had flipped off another driver. I would have to have the world's worst concussion to actually think I could get away with that. No matter what I said though, they took the call ins as word as law. They used that to fire me as my third infraction. I had some choice words for the manager, he looked ready to pop. It was truly amazing. For context, the manager is the store owner's loser son who couldn't get a job anywhere else due to criminal history and questionable tattoo choices. I got a call and was told to come back to the shop. When I get there, the following conversation begins. Hand in your kiss boy, you're done. Why, what happened? We got a call from a driver on the road saying you flipped them off. That's strike three, you're done. He kept saying those exact words, saying you're done over and over again. For some reason, it really weirded me out. The car has the shop's number name and a fricking identifier on it. Do you think I'm literally ass on head stupid enough to flip someone off in the company car? It doesn't matter, you're done. I would like to speak to the owner then. I think you and your judgment are fricked in the head. Old man doesn't wanna talk to you, you're done. I consider my options at this point and decide I'm out of fricks to give. So I said, I assume he doesn't wanna talk to you either. Is that why he is never here? Is that why he avoids you like the plague when he is here? Is he ashamed that his oldest son's highest aspiration in life is to be a middle manager in his dad's business? You're done. You can go now. Do you sexy time your waitresses because it's the only way to fill the hole in your heart where your father's love is supposed to go? Is sexy timing the scabby waitresses the reason you're not allowed to see your son? Or is it because you're a former felon with swastika tattoos? Leave now or I am calling the cops. You have no Venuschnitzel and you look like God actually spilled a person. The conversation ended, I leave. Firing me wasn't a problem though as my plan was already in action. In this state, unpaid wages collect interest. So what was 20 to $40 a night, five nights a week over one year quickly became a decent sum. So I began collecting the names of current and previous employees whom had been screwed over by the company and collected their documented data then send it off to the Department of Labor. At the end of the day, it took a couple months but the company was eventually required to pay a decent chunk of change to all parties and a pretty hefty fine on top. Overall, I believe it came out to a little under 100K. Wasn't enough for me though, I wasn't done yet. Those shady little documents, they had a sign claiming we made over minimum wage affected how the company was reporting its payroll tax. The IRS eventually came in and hit them for a ton of back taxes and I received a small portion of the settlement. The IRS used to pay people who tip them off, don't know if they still do. Finally, I was increasingly aware of the companies under the table agreement with their health inspector which I decided to go ahead and tip off to the health department. This resulted in even more fines and a temporary closure for the joint. Altogether, it ended up costing this dumb little delivery joint a ton of money just to stay open, all cause they wanted 20% of their driver's tips. The moral here is this, know your labor laws, it's degenerates like these whom profit of the ignorance or fear of a workforce. The more you know about your rights, the less crappy toxic managers like these will be able to survive in the wild. If you are in a situation that does not seem right, document everything, keep a little black notebook and write down everything. The most important thing you can do to protect yourself from nonsense in the workplace is document, document and document. Thanks for enjoying my TED talk. You stay till the end, which means you're the one I make these episodes for. I wanna take this moment to thank you, I really appreciate you because you bring me a great amount of joy. Subscribe for future uploads 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 and I'll be seeing you in the next one.