'I armed a multi-million dollar financial nuke': Worker quits and goes full scorched earth on the way out

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Jul 18, 2023 12:00 PM EDT

It's always a good policy in life to take the high road, but when that's not an option, the low road will do just fine—just make sure to set fire to every metaphorical bridge you might cross along the way. 

This full scorched earth policy isn't the way you should normally go about doing business; for one thing, it's (usually) unethical, and it's not going to make you many friends or get you very far. For that reason, you should always aim to leave things on good terms when you leave a job—you never know where the road might lead in the future. Even if you don't need the reference—and will never return to that company—you never know when your reputation for being difficult to work with might precede you.

Still, sometimes you're left with no option, like in the case of this worker who learned they were making half the market rate for their job, which prompted them to go full "Oppenheimer" on the company on their way out the door by arming "a multi-million dollar financial nuke." They shared their experience on Reddit's r/antiwork subreddit, telling in a very lengthy post how they managed to enact one last act of revenge on their employer.

Once you have finished here, check out this client who refused to pay a developer that proceeded to dismantle their entire life.

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  • 01
    Water - "larmed a multi-million dollar financial nuke on the way out"
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  • 02
    Font - Posted by u/CG_Ops After years of making (HR confirmed) half-market rate for my job, I armed a multi-million dollar financial nuke on the way out
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  • 03
    Font - I quit a job that egregiously took advantage of my situation during a desperate time in my life. It was in an industry I loved but had started fresh out of ~2 years of unemployment, following a severe accident that severed my arm and, ultimately, ended my prior (much loved) career after just 4 years. I was at the new job for about 3 years. I was a fairly fresh college grad that with 4 years of experience as an analyst, reporting directly to (and mentored by) executive management at a fort
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  • 04
    Font - Within a month, they had me doing the job of the recently retired ops manager. As the scope of my work increased I began asking for raises that would keep my pay in-line with my increasing responsibilities and job scope. Almost all requests were flat-out rejected. ~1 year in, after the first couple of rejections, I said, "ok, send me back to the store, I'll make more $ with the sales commission store associates get" Knowing that they were getting MUCH more value than than they were paying
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  • 05
    Font - Now, many of my growing responsibilities were well above my title & pay rate. Things like: • (This bullet was added to this post, but was not in my original comment. It provides more context the f*ckery that happened) At about 1.5 years in, after running all kinds of HR support analytics, I was asked by the HR director to join their team as an HR analyst. The transition started, again compounding my total work load, but would've come with a large bump in pay. A few days before the finaliz
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  • 06
    Font - immediately maneuvered to fire me. They came up with a BS list of 10+ reasons (coming to work drunk, frequently late, bad attitude, poor performance, lying, lack of ethics by using my knowledge of salary info to "blackmail them" into raises, etc), stating that these issues had been ongoing and long standing. The CEO/founder was the only reason I wasn't fired. He challenged them, asking "wait, wait... I've only heard amazing things about CG. If these have been endemic, why has he never bee
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  • 07
    Font - ● Things were borderline hostile with HR over the next 6 months. But in that time, they saw that EVERYTHING that happened was a lie by the COO to save face and/or punish me. Eventually, they stared to protect me, going as far as to have me hang out in their office to chat/chill, and if asked, I was "explaining the meaning of data I'd provided". The relationship went from good, to horrible, to amazingly awesome, especially with the HR director herself, who grew to LOATHE the COO.
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  • 08
    Font - Working closely with HR to assist with analytics, including reviewing pay and benefits analysis for director-level and up. I had a great relationship with the HR team and, towards the end of my tenure, they revealed that after a few of my rejected "demands" for raises, they did a market review and found that MY market rate was close to 2-3x the "raise" I'd been given when put on salary. They told me that when they provided the report to the COO (my boss's boss, the devil, and who had requ
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  • 09
    Font - • Within my first three months I was maintaining the company PTO accrual tracker (in Excel, we had software that could do that in ADP... WTF??) for every employee, showing hourly pay rate (salary equivalent) from the lowly janitors all the way up to the CEO. So, I knew how much everyone's was making. It was the basis for many of my (rejected) requests for raises. The other ops coordinator, an equivalent peer in terms of title and "official" responsibilities was hired 1 month after me....
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  • 10
    Font - • Over the course of a year, I built a key metrics dashboard/tracker for real-time retail performance analysis. I was running the monthly sales competitions for the stores; they competed to see who could have the highest stats in a particular metric each month. The month's winner got a couple hundred bucks. This report allowed me to run the competitions and provide current/historic metrics, ranking the stores/employees in each. The Excel file was connected directly to our ERP and showed m
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  • 11
    Font - • AS A PET PROJECT, and as a favor to the warehouse manager, I created a Time And Scheduling/attendance tool for warehouse staff. It mirrored the functionality of the dedicated TAS software we used in the retail stores. It could handle 5x8 or 4x10 hour shift structures and accurately calculated OT and break/lunch stats. In comparing my tool's figures to the software app's database records, I found tons of 1-hr variances. Turns out the store-level TAS system was calculating California's lu
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  • 12
    Font - Needless to say, I put up with too much shOfor far too long. My (boomer, of course) parents had instilled the notion that if you work hard, you'll be rewarded. Nope - I've since learned (realized) to work as hard as I'm valued, rewarded, and treated/respected. Eventually I found my next jok, paying 2x more, all-in, and now, 10 years since, I'm making much more. But I digress...
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  • 13
    Font - Knowing I was going to be leaving, I had started replacing all my badass files/tools with new "dumb" versions. The user functionality remained but the bread and butter of it was in how it automatically retrieved, stored, and referenced the new data. I did this months in advance of giving my 2-weeks, so that there'd be no backups of the old, self-driving files (I also worked closely with IT and knew their systems, thanks to being in charge of the intranet communication websites as part of
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  • 14
    Font - Stage 1: Attempt to retain me. End of week 1 of my 2 weeks The company had a widely known no-retention- effort policy for departing employees. No counter offers, no exit interviews, nothing. Some were allowed to stay their 2 weeks, most were shown to the door immediately.
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  • 15
    Font - The CEO (who was a good guy but, as the founder, was largely checked out of the day-to-day operations) asked to meet with me. He asked why I was leaving and what it would take to keep me. I reminded him that I had mentioned to him my struggles (with my manager and the COO) in the past, giving the example of the HR fiasco. He apologized for not taking it more seriously and said if I stayed I'd report directly to him, never having to interact with my s manager or COO in any official capacit
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  • 16
    Font - The next day, he got pulled into a big meeting in SF, so his head/personal analyst had the meeting in his place. His analyst, Chuck, was older than me and liked to talk up his time spent "as an analyst for Macy's leadership". His pitch was largely around his assertion that "I could learn a lot from him and his experience as an analyst for a huge, respected corporation". I told him, "that's nice, but I'm here for the pay, especially given the under- market rate I'd been making up to that p
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  • 17
    Font - like everyone else I was dealing with at the time, went on to pull BS card of, "The % increase in your pay, since starting, is very unusual in the company. And to give you ANOTHER raise within 3 years is unheard of". After trying and failing with various "softer" tactics (like covering how a percentage increase is meaningless if the dollars were bullshit to begin with), I decided it was time for Napalm. I said,
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  • 18
    Font - Alright, so, let me get this straight, I got hired here for a simple coordinator job, one that I was ok with doing at the rate I started at - low pay but very low stress. Just a few weeks after starting, seeing my skillset in action, the company had me, a coordinator, doing the work of a senior analyst/manager, requiring lots of OT to do my 'official' responsibilities in addition to the technical work of the old manager. It was 6 months before I asked for a raise and had to fight tooth an
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  • 19
    Font - Chuck replies, "Yes, but if you stay, you don't need to worry about the COO being all over your back and I will show you the skills and tricks I learned as a Macy's analyst. Ok, Chuck. Just tell me this. Would you say that (name) in marketing has similar education, skill sets, and responsibilities as I do? "Yeah, I'd say that's a fair comparison"
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  • 20
    Font - You were an analyst at corporate Macy's, cool. But I should remind you that I, too, was an analyst for "big guns". I reported directly to the customer insights VP at Citrix Systems. After all the BS I've been through, and how valuable I seem to be, given this "unheard of" retention effort... why the f*ck would I stay for less money than my other offer, especially when (name) is making $30k+ MORE THAN YOUR RETENTION ATEMPT for, as you just acknowledged, the same level of criteria? With ano
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  • 21
    Font - Stage 2: Training (name) & consulting: For the first time since my first request for a raise, the achat COO, and her Igor-esque stooge, my direct manager, were nice to me. They asked me to train my higher-paid counterpart in the more technical files I'd created. He was a good dude, I liked him. But I was honest with him about the situation, except for one bit... I'd removed all the formulas that powered my files. I told him that I'd hard coded only the most basic functions that had automa
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  • 22
    Font - The COO sent me an email asking if I would be willing to contract for a few weeks to polish up some things and train various people. It was one of the most satisfying email replies I've ever sent; Hi Tracy, No problem! I'd be happy to continue helping as a consultant. I'm willing to help with a minimum of 40 hours of training, up to any limit, billed in full hour increments at $144.27 per hour, paid in advance" Sincerely, CG_Ooops $144.27 was her hourly rate. This was sent on Monday of my
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  • 23
    Font - Final Stage: Arming the Nuke: As a my final (and only 'real') act of "you f*cked around, time to find out", on my last day, I reported to the Ca DOL all of the various pay violations I'd witnessed during my (unofficial and official) time in HR. The investigation lasted months. Hundreds of current and past employees received checks, ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. The company faced fines totaling well over 2-million dollars for a multitude of wage, overtime, and lunch-hour v
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  • 24
    Font - As final vindication of what I felt I was worth, and what the HR analysis had confirmed, 6mo after I'd left, my director friend in HR forwarded the job posting for my role, titled Operations and Finance analyst (the responsibility list being 95% of the same responsibilities held as of when I left). The salary range was $80-95k. It's expensive to be a dick employer.
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  • 25
    Font - Edit, forgot to add: The company was purchased a couple years later by one of the most well known/popular/respected brands in the industry. At the completion of the merger they came in and interviewed all the staff, asking about the culture, people, etc. Not one single employee, at any level, had a good thing to say about Tracy. She was the only person, director-level and up, that was let go... and it happened in the first week. No severance. Hearing THAT, even years later, was pure schad
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  • 26
    Font - Edit² TLDR: • Situation: Employer knowingly, maliciously underpaid me. • Context: I had responsibilities/visibility in HR including documentation of knowingly underpaying me and others. • Reaction: I got upset. • Action: Gave 2 week notice. • Vindication: (2 weeks hence) Dept of Labor received notice of plethora of documented wage violations. • Results: $2+ million in fines later, schadenfreude. ● Regrets (Addendum): Did not pursue disability discrimination lawsuit that (as an employment-
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  • 27
    Font - they admitted to equivalent employee compensation disparity (marketing guy making 2x+ my salary) they couldn't point to any valid reasons for not paying, or increasing my rate to fair market wages (above-average to outstanding annual reviews, increasing scope of work, posting the job after departure for 2x+ my salary) they illegally put me on salary exempt and demanded I continue to work OT without fair compensation they retaliated by reneging on an in-process advancement opportunity for
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  • 28
    Font - AsymptotesMcGotes They should make a show with you. A sort of anti undercover boss where you get hired entry level at sloy workplaces and fathem up. I'd watch every episode like 100 times. Feels like it could be on Vice 1.2k Reply Share Slamtilt Windmills I would 100% watch a show of bitter quitting sh jobs 210 Reply Share
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  • 29
    Font - Di Majestic_Plane_1656 You didn't cost them anything. The vindictive COO that made it their personal mission to make your life hell to save the company a few dollars in the short term did all the damage. Great story. Thanks. or 1.1k CG_Ops OP Reply Share ●●● The company was purchased a couple years later by one of the most well known/popular/respected brands in the industry. At the completion of the merger they came in and interviewed all the staff, asking about the culture, people, etc.
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  • 30
    Font - SpookyWah What the literal fx are they teaching in business schools? 96 CG_Ops OP From my experience: Teach: Break-even analysis, accounting, econ, stats, history, chem/physics, electives Reply Share Don't teach: Business ethics 101+ Reply Share 150 oldaliumfarmer They still teach business ethics but just before strategic bankruptcy. 32 Reply Share
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  • 31
    Font - LAKnightYEAH2023 Beautiful saga. Thanks for sharing. You did the right thing - you were being taken advantage of, you stood up for yourself, and now that company is suffering the consequences of their poor decisions. 180 Reply Share
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  • 32
    Font - Cumberbatchland Long and satisfying read. 120 MissFred I concur. 10 Reply Share Reply Share
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  • 33
    Font - the-shady-norwegian This is beautiful. As an aspiring code monkey with some proficiency in statistical analysis, I bow in your presence. ↑ 30 30 Reply Share
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antiwork workplace-stories hr toxic-workplace workplace-story tales-from-the-workplace work i quit quit human resources quitting employment pro revenge revenge nuclear revenge
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