'I turned off every automated task I had ever set up': Dude gets pro-level revenge against an entire company just by taking an unplanned vacation

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
May 19, 2023 1:00 AM EDT

If it ain't broke, don't fix it! It's common saying that this office place has clearly never heard of. After hiring a secret employee to find the weak parts of this business, the higher-ups made a huge mistake. 

The OP shared their story to r/pettyrevenge, but in my opinion, this is definitely pro-level revenge. They had the opportunity of a lifetime to show their office place exactly how important they were. Even the strategy the OP had – take 2 weeks vacation ASAP, let the pieces fall where they may – is an exceptionally good way to demonstrate the weight they pull around the office. 

In the comments, people shared their own funny work revenge/bad boss stories. Sometimes higher ups just don't know how an office functions, and then their interference just makes a smoothly oiled machine start clanking and falling apart. 

Up next, get the inside scoop on people's anonymous secrets and embarrassing admissions, such as, "I bought a 5 pack of cheap Polish sausages from Sainsbury's to eat on my way home and it wasn't until I had completely finished the first one that I realized they were individually wrapped in plastic." Yikes!

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  • 01
    Purple - _Alternate_Throwaway Some people refuse to believe the building is on fire till they get too hot. Classic "It's not my problem until it's my problem." thinking.
    via Israel Andrade on Unsplash
  • 02
    Font - r/pettyrevenge Posted by u/Frostytoes99 2 3 11 17 2 11 17 5 10 About 5 years ago my company brought in an individual to see if my position was "no longer needed". I passed with flying colors...
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 03
    Font - Not to give too much info away, I was hired at an organization as a job title of basically "helper". Well for someone who is supposed to just be helping, I had a ridiculous amount of work. Almost all of my coworkers were huge technologically illiterate boomers. So I actually sort of thrived this as a very useful person. For example, one guy would spend half his day copying items and passing them into another program we use. HE DIDN'T EVEN USE CTRL C CTRL V he would right click then copy t
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 04
    Font - We are having a team meeting when he shows up. White hair combed okayish, a scrunched face, glasses. He just sort of just showed up one day and took notes during our morning meeting. At one point someone brought up a name of one of our customers. I said, oh is that the 300 lb guy with a big beard? Sort of as a joke because I mostly do back end stuff. There was a guy like this I recently did some entrance stuff for. But I was wrong and my boss said no it's blah blah some other person.. oka
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 05
    Font - As i looked for this file I ended up deep on our file structure and the search returned a personal folder structure within one of the drives. I clicked out of curiosity and there it was "Sgt ff's notes". I opened it and there was a whole section about me. This guy basically goes from location to location getting people fired to save the CEOs money. And he was working on me now. I scrolled through his notes and at the very top I saw "Frosty thought a 4'10 24 year old female patient was a 3
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 06
    Font - I set up 3 email configurations. 1. To my boss letting him know I will be taking 2 weeks of vacation time. To be sent at 10pm tonight. 2. To the company letting them know I will not be present for 2 weeks so whatever work they currently need me to do they will need to do themselves. To be sent Monday morning at 4 AM. 3. For any emails that came in, I set an auto response that said "I will be out for an unknown amount of time, for any routine, emergency, or even occasional items, it is imp
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 07
    Font - On Wednesday I had a little anxiety about it but I stayed as strong as i could. I thought about the tasks that needed a 2 day turnaround... there's no way some of the guys were keeping up with their normal duties. Guaranteed at least 2 people were no longer doing their normal jobs just to keep up with my automated tasks. I got a long email to my personal account (I guess from my resume or when I interviewed) from my boss on Thursday night of the first week! It went something like this: "F
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 08
    Font - I am sure you are probably looking at other jobs at this point, or maybe you have even started one. I hope not. If you could please reach back to me I would like to offer you a raise. It has become very apparent how useful you are around here. I hear about it every day, believe me." So I came back on Monday with a 10,000 dollar raise and Sgt f I face out of my face. My boss apologized again in person and said he didn't get a say in it. I think it's a little weird he could have a say after
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 09
    Human body - That's the way it works and that's how we get more bicycle lanes and a more sustainable earth where our friends and family can prosper.
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 10
    Font - BaronIbelin With jobs that involve 'helping' or 'fixing problems', your work is often difficult to show on paper- which is why a ticketing system might help! That being said, my own company has a decent ticketing system, but most of my clients don't open a ticket, and my life is filled with shoulder-taps.
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 11
    Font - JerusalemAll Same, I have just started blaming management telling me to not move without a ticket, 60% of the time it works 100% of the time.
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 12
    Font - Dogbowlthirst An executive told my boss to stop confirming appointments because we had too many staff members supporting that responsibility and they wanted to trim the fat. My boss warned to anyone who would listen and got no traction. Welp, only 10% of the trucks rolled out were received. Company lost at least 100k in a month. Executive had to publicly apologize.
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 13
    Font - 9bjames Upper management when told things will fall apart: "Nah, they're probably exaggerating. It'll be fine!" Upper management after things fall apart: "What?? Why is this all happening?! Who's responsible for this? I swear I'll fire them so fast that-.... Wait, what do you mean I'm responsible?... ...Whoopsie! Let's just do things your way and pretend this never happened, hahaha..."
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 14
    Font - Bubugacz This is the most frustrating thing. It's happened time and time again at my job, to the point where I literally have to bite my tongue in meetings to stop myself from saying "I told you so." At one point I got so fed up I sent a desperate email to the leadership team practically begging them to reconsider a bad decision they'd made, and I ended up getting written up for it. Time to start the job search!
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 15
    Smile - ElectronicKangaroo41 "Everything is on fire and you're trying to layoff our only firefighter!"
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 16
    Font - jenamac Our shop supervisor told the higher ups that we were going to get fd if we did not increase our spending budget to get the tools we needed. They didn't listen. We got fu d. They got pl and blamed us. ??
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 17
    Font - spryfigure I fully believe your boss. Only after s really hits the fan will the C- suite listen. (S 6.8k Reply Share ziapelta I do too. For executives, there's a big difference between a lower level manager saying things will fall apart and everything is on fire right now
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 18
    Font - HomeBrewed Back in the days before SSD drives I was responsible for data transformations. It would take something like 4-6 hrs to finish some of the jobs I worked on and so I proposed that the company purchase myself and my partner SSDs for our machines. They refused so I found a cheap one, Installed it and demonstrated how a 4hr job now took me 15 minutes. I was reprimanded for installing non company hardware and accused of theft. I was eventually laid off. The modern world finally caugh
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 19
    Font - sarabeara12345678910 One of my constant sayings to my boss is "if only someone had warned them this would happen. Oh wait. We did". Then I get to fix the issue that shouldn't have happened in the first place.
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 20
    Font - [deleted] A few months ago my boss was in a meeting with all the other supervisors in the department, working on revamping the schedule. She (the only female sup) warned the others that if we went with the schedule as they want it, we would be horribly understaffed on Sundays. They didn't listen. She told me that she knew they wouldn't listen to her until everything was on fire. I don't know exactly what happened, but I got an email that went out to the department on Monday the week after
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 21
    Font - Olde94 I have a potential upcomming dumster fire and i have said to my boss that i will only put my name on it, if i get in writting from C-level that we are aware of this beforehand. We'll see what happens. I doubt i'll get that paper, but then they will have to find a willing colleague i guess...
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 22
    Font - [deleted] I'm in the midst of letting a government program fail by following the organization's rules and using only the resources we have to the best of our ability. Not leaning on superstar workers to make up the difference or ignoring the rules to make our jobs simpler. When it breaks down, we will get attention, and hopefully funding.
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 23
    Font - Jaymzkerten Sounds very similar to my situation also at a government organization, just finished up this "super important" inspection where all actual work was put on hold for most of the past year. Now that we have it in the rear-view, leadership is wondering, "Why are we having all these problems and why are we so far behind on everything???" I don't know, maybe because you wouldn't let us do any actually meaningful work to keep up with everything?
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 24
    Font - Embarrassed_Falcon54 S Literally, this. So often I have seen people working themselves to death trying to keep up with a broken process. They come to me complaining that they can't keep up. My response: "But you are keeping up. And as long as you continue to, there's no issue." After letting that soak in for a couple seconds, I follow up with: "If you want to see a change to the system, you have to let the system fail. As long as you're willing to sacrifice yourself to save it, they will
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 25
    Font - _Alternate_Throwaway Some people refuse to believe the building is on fire till they get too hot. Classic "It's not my problem until it's my problem." thinking.
    via r/pettyrevenge
  • 26
    Font - fullmetaldagger This is why i struggle to show any respect to any of the managers above my own line manager and the 2 above him (y'know the people that actually do something.) I am amazed at the ignorance of people the higher up the pyramid you go.
    via r/pettyrevenge

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toxic-workplace petty revenge employees Office workplace bad bosses
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