'The factory chief laughed in my face': Irreplaceable employee creates a program to aid factory operations, gets fired and takes his intellectual property with him

Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor

Oct 12, 2023 1:00 PM EDT

Innovation is never rewarded in the workplace. For some reason, bosses, managers, and supervisors feel entitled to the intellectual property of their employees when they're on the clock, but when an irreplaceable worker creates something invaluable to the company, suddenly it's like we're on the recess blacktop again and the school bully is trying to steal your jump rope because 'they saw it first'. The rebellious child in all of us would love to stamp our foot down and stand up to the bullies in the workplace, claiming what's ours, but it's not always so simple.

However, in this case, one heroic employee created a program to help his company's factory floor run smoothly and decided that he was going to stand his ground against his boss when asked for 'takesies backsies'. Scroll for the full story of how one guy got laughed at when offering to sell his program to his bosses and decided to take the entire code with him on the way out, leaving the company in shambles in his wake. Afterwards, read on about a mother-in-law who audaciously expected to be reimbursed hundreds of dollars for cleaning her pregnant daughter's house without asking.