 If you fire me, I'll have your job by the end of the month. 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 an unethical manager, who forces his employees to do illegal stuff. So he can get paid more. But when an employee refused, he simply fired him. Unfortunately for the manager, it came back to bite him, in an ethically correct fashion. Found by a story about a new incoming manager, who likes to belittle, bully and be the alpha dog. He forgot the fact, that he just came in as a newbie, and is about to turn his welcome dinner, into a farewell party. Lastly, a big shot manager flies in to straighten out an office. But they forgot to tell him, that whatever he does, he shouldn't, mess, with Sandra. When he does, the entire project team schemes, to give him a dose of humble pie. Before we start, tell the like button that he can learn to whistle, when he starts eating more dry breadcrumbs. Let's dive in. Naturally, viewer discretion is advised. These revenge acts, might be disturbing to bad managers. I was working for an advertising agency, a pretty big one. When I started out, I had a manager who was one of the most unethical managers I've ever dealt with. He'd order his sales reps to do things that would increase his bonuses, which are based on margins. Say a client decided to buy product XYZ, and their spend was $2,000 a month, he would instruct the agent to put up products ABC and keep the spend at $2,000, even though the client didn't agree to that. The clients generally wouldn't notice, but if they did, it could cost you your job. I was the guy that refused his demands, he would tell me to cheat the client and I would refuse. He would get mad. I wouldn't care, and this went on for quite a while. There is something I don't tell people very often, though. I live in a one-party consent state, which means, so long as I'm aware a conversation is being recorded, I can record it without informing the other party. I had just upsold my largest client, making him even larger. But I didn't sell the products my boss wanted me to sell. He demanded I switch things around. I refused. I told him I sold the client XYZ, because that's what we agreed to. And I'm not going to change that without the customer's permission. His exact words were... Frig the customer, this is your largest client and I need him on ABC, or I'm not going to make my number. I refused and apologized by saying, I'm sorry, but you and I both know ABC isn't right for this client and that's why he didn't buy it. The manager blatantly answered with... You're fired, if you can't follow instructions. You're fired. After confirming he was dead serious I said, if you do that, I'll have your job by the end of the month. I went home, I didn't think he'd go through with it. Sure as hell, next morning I'm locked out of all our systems. I call tech support and get told I've been fired. So who do I call? I call our regional vice president and tell him I have several recordings I think he should listen to. Remember my boss ordering me to do unethical things? Well, this wasn't uncommon. So I meet up with my RVP and play six different recordings that I had saved, showing my manager was pushing his agents to break the law. To which my RVP leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh, knowing he had to fire my manager. At which point I asked for my job back. Having a sales manager that is forcing his reps to break the law is just bad business. He agreed that I would get my job back and asked me to take the week off and call him on Monday. He told me he'd talk to payroll and make sure I got paid for this week as well. That Monday, I come into our Monday morning meeting and see that my RVP was there too. He informed the entire team that my boss had been fired and explained why. He also mentioned that if anyone wanted to apply for his job, that there was an opening now. So I applied for and after three rounds of interview, I got my promotion. Surely I was right, I did have my boss's job by the end of the month. It was glorious the first day, walking into his office and sitting in his nice, big, comfy chair. Back in the day, I worked as an independent IT consultant and was hired along with another independent to subcontract on a team. For a major consulting house, we'll call it CH. Everyone else on the team was a CH employee. The two of us were not supposed to tell the client that we weren't part of CH. But the client figured it out pretty fast because we independents were doing most of the work. While CH's code monkeys were busy filling out spreadsheets all day and going on team building exercises. But I digress. The project ran past its initial deadline and my contract expired. I stayed on a week-to-week basis as a professional courtesy get the project finished because I liked the client if not the team. Unfortunately, the CH project manager was booked somewhere else for his next gig and they brought in a new guy to replace him. Let's call him David Stress. David flew in on a Monday morning to get the project handed off to him and immediately started pissing on everything to mark his territory. He was derogatory and belittling to the team and like to raise his voice. I was working in my office and didn't hear what he was saying out in the main room, but I could sure hear his tone. Then he burst into the office and demanded. How are we doing this specific parallel related conversion task? I said, we're using Program X. He waved his hand dismissively and scoffed. That's stupid. Program X won't work for this. You need to do something else. The other indie was in the room at the time and she saw me coming up out of my chair. She told me later she thought I was going to Deccan. I knew he was full of shit because I wrote Program X. It was custom code for this project and he had no way of knowing what it would or wouldn't do. He was just trying to bully me and be the alpha dog. I did not Deccan. Instead, I went to the client's payroll manager, with whom I'd been working closely for months and who was driving the client side of the project. I laid it on the line. I said, look, I know you know I don't work for CH. I'm here on an independent contract. That contract is up and I've been working here week to week just to get you guys through. She confirmed and me she was aware of this. Okay. This new guy, David Stress, is a bully and a blowhard and I won't work with him. I have no contract at this point and with him running the project I won't be back next week. I'm not asking you to do anything specific about it. I'm just letting you know as a courtesy, so you can plan to transition my work to someone else. She sat back in her chair, thought a moment, and said, Okay. Thanks for letting me know. Two hours later, David Stress was removed from his new position. The payroll manager, faced with losing the one technical guy on the team, who actually knew what was going on with a very complicated payroll system, called CH and said, We don't want this new guy. Take him away. CH rearranged some things to keep the original project manager with the project. The funniest part of the whole thing was that CH had scheduled a welcome dinner for David at a posh steakhouse that evening. Rather than create the further embarrassment of canceling the dinner, they actually went ahead with it as a farewell dinner for David, who had been on the project for less than one day. It was fun to watch him try to put on a brave face for that. Yes, I did stay with the project to the end after that. And yes, they went live successfully. This tale was told to me as a warning when I started my first post college job. I am relating it exactly as it was told to me. This occurred in the early 80s. So those of you who've grown up with the internet, you may not understand how we did things in the olden days. There were no smartphone apps to show Q codes for airline tickets. They were paper with red carbon mess. Reservations were done by phone. It was primitive by today's standards. This occurred in Salt Lake City, which if you don't know, family was a huge part of culture. Even at work, family matters took precedence, and local management knew this and allowed for it. Well, Big Shot's office minions in another corporate location noticed some slight irregularities in time cards, like days off without pre-approved vacation requests. So he got himself transferred to the Salt Lake City office to straighten things out. He was pushy, and naturally, he was quickly hated. He had a strict by the book mentality and was a bully. Big Shot ended up as a middle manager between Tom, who was the top guy, and our district manager, Fred. One morning, the beloved secretary of the office, Sandra, got a call from her daughter, who was unexpectedly in town and wanted to have lunch. Naturally, Fred and Tom gave her the okay. Big Shot didn't like that, although it wasn't explained why. Maybe it wasn't by the book, but it's possible he got his panties in a bunch, because the request went over his head. In any event, he decided to stick his nose in, even though this wasn't part of his job. Rather than just say no, he dropped a last-minute urgent travel request on Sandra's desk, and it had to be done, because he expected to fly out that afternoon. Sandra was heartbroken that she wouldn't get to see her daughter, but she had her work responsibilities. Stopping by to drop off some paperwork, another coworker, named Timmy, noticed that Sandra looked a little down, a huge change from her normal chipper mood. He naturally asked why, and Sandra explained. Timmy, who didn't have any authority, told her to go have lunch and added, will take care of it. Big Shot got his travel packet, got on the plane that afternoon, and flew off to his meeting. That's when things started to go wrong. The rental car reservation was invalid, and there were no cars available at any of the agencies, all had a hold on them, pending confirmation from some clients. So, Big Shot ended up getting a rent or rec. For those two young or not in the US, there really was a discount auto rental agency by that name. When Big Shot got to the hotel, he found that his reservation was no good. He had to wait around until after the tentative reservations expired, which was after 6 p.m. Getting suspicious, Big Shot looked at his tickets and found they were one way. He had no flight home. To say Big Shot was enraged, was probably an understatement. The next morning, Tom flew in to join him, and he gave Big Shot a packet that was marked, extremely urgent, that had been left on his desk with a note to take it to Big Shot. It was Big Shot's return ticket. On the way back, Big Shot detoured by the corporate head office and got a very senior executive to come with him, because of some very serious personnel problems. The next morning, Big Shot led the senior executive and Tom into a meeting with all of Fred's department, and began publicly berating Sandra for incompetence and so on. When he got to the part about the tickets, Fred interrupted and told the senior executive that Sandra couldn't have done that, she was on approved time off having lunch with her daughter. This raised the senior exec's eyebrows and got Big Shot even angrier. The senior executive said, if Sandra didn't mess up the tickets, who did? Fred stepped forward. Then Jimmy. And one by one, every single member of Fred's team stepped forward to take responsibility to protect Sandra from Big Shot's wrath. Tom and the senior exec knew instantly what had happened. Everyone on Fred's team had burned up the phones, making tentative reservations for rental cars and hotel rooms, leaving Big Shot stuck with a one-way ticket, worthless reservations, and no alternatives. Within the hour, Big Shot's desk was empty and his badge had been turned in. It was never explained if Big Shot was fired or if he was just quickly relocated. The senior exec stuck around to get to know the team. He was very impressed with how the whole team stuck together and protected their own. After he finished telling me the tale, the engineer said bluntly, don't mess with Sandra. We love her, and we will make you pay if you upset her. Message received loud and clear. As I worked with Fred's team, I got to understand why everyone loved Sandra. She was an absolute gem in the organization. She was efficient, super friendly, just an all-around wonderful person. 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.