'Finally, I would be rid of him': Guy deletes all disrespectful coworker's contributions to the company as long-awaited payback

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  • 01
    "Disrespect me and constantly annoy the whole office? I erase you from existence."
  • 02
    r/pettyrevenge. Posted by u/Laser_defenestrator 15 hours ago Disrespect me and constantly annoy the whole office? I erase you from existence. This story is from around 2018ish, though the roots of it stretch back about 10 years before that.
  • 03
    The company I worked for at the time was one I started working at back in ~2006. I was hired at the bottom level and one of my first assignments was to work on a certain assembly machine we had.
  • 04
    I was the first person to run it in production (after engineering had spent a few months getting it ready for production) and I did well at it, being permanently assigned to it on the swing shift where there wasn't much technical help around, so I learned how to do pretty much everything on it myself.
  • 05
    Fast forward a year and the future target of my pettiness, "Jay", is hired, replacing the engineer who set up the machine (who had resigned). I was by far the most experienced user of the machine still at the company so he leaned on me pretty heavily to get up on how it worked. I spent a few weeks meeting with Jay regularly to go over its quirks and the like. He'd call me "the guru" and other things like that. Quite frequently I would come in on my shift to discover that the machine had failed o
  • 06
    Fast forward about a year and I've been reassigned to another area. Then I get asked if I can cover the old machine for about a week when someone is on vacation and nobody trained in the area is able to cover for them, and I'm fine with this (I preferred the work in the old area,
  • 07
    though I didn't know I would when I agreed to the transfer...). I come back and check out the area for changes and I find that one of the changes is that there is now a full manual on how to run the machine available (previously there was only a partial one and left out a lot of details). I started looking through it and found a couple of small mistakes. They weren't anything critical, i.e. not safety issues or anything that would cause failed product, but they would cause each product to take a
  • 08
    I had just started to get the manual open to go to the first small error and before I could even finish my explanation Jay interrupted me and told me to turn to the very first page. I did so, and on the first page was the list of all the signatures of everyone who approved the manual as-is. It was him and a few people from various other departments (facilities, QA, management, etc.)
  • 09
    but nobody else who had actually run the machine. "See all these signatures?", he said. "All these people approved the manual, and the machine has been running fine since you left. There's nothing that needs to be fixed." And he walked off. Wouldn't let me show him the wrong part, wouldn't let me show him the machine where it has problems, nothing. I went from being "the guru" on the machine to someone not worthy of listening to for 5 minutes. Seeing that nothing could be done, I just kept my he
  • 10
    Fast forward to roughly 2014. I've been promoted twice and get to have a desk in the cube farm. And wouldn't you know it, but two cubes down from my assigned cube is Jay. And it's horrible.
  • 11
    Some people can type; some just hunt and peck. Jay can't type, but he also doesn't hunt and peck... he hunts and SLAMS. Whenever he types an email or whatever, it's just WHAM... whamwhamwham WHAM WHAM WHAM... WHAM! Extraordinarily distracting to be near.
  • 12
    He's also one of those guys who just has to be making noise constantly. Sometimes it's just quiet humming, other times he clearly has a song stuck in his head and he's mouthing out the melody ("Dee dah, di dit dah doo.... bah bah bah BAH..."), or worse, sometimes he'll just start whistling it badly and rather loudly.
  • 13
    It's not just me who is clearly annoyed by this. Everyone around him is desperately trying to drop subtle hints that he should quiet down. "You can always tell when Jay's writing an email, you can hear it across the building, haha", "I could ask IT to get you a new keyboard,
  • 14
    the new models are a lot quieter", or "You can always tell when Jay's at his desk!". And he does hear these complaints, and just shrugs, and says he likes his keyboard, and he's too old to change his habits and he's been singing so long that he doesn't even notice that he does it. I asked multiple times to be transferred to a different cube where it would be quieter but was denied. I finally just gave in and bought a nice pair of over-the-ear headphones that drowned him out, though it still woul
  • 15
    Finally, around 2018 he announces he's leaving because he was retiring. Talked all about his plans to get an RV, drive around the country, and so on. Finally I would be rid of him.
  • 16
    Now, the place I worked was oversized for the staff we had... it was only at maybe 75% of capacity. So when people left, there was never any need to reclaim their cube, or their locker space, or their assigned space in the coat rack. In fact, there was a sort of an unofficial tradition that long-time employees would have their areas preserved for quite a while after they left, and with him having worked there for 10 years, he certainly qualified. You could walk around the cube farm and see namep
  • 17
    So now here's where the petty revenge actually comes in. I didn't want to be reminded of this guy one minute longer than I had to. So on his last day, I stayed late (I usually was one of the last people to leave the cubes, if not the very last, so this wasn't abnormal). Once everyone was left, I acted. I removed his nameplate from his desk. Returned everything on it except the PC to the office supply cabinet or threw it away if it wasn't reusable. Took his nametag off of his coat rack spot and h
  • 18
    My most recent promotion had also granted me a few sysadmin privileges on some company systems. Normally when an employee leaves their account is deactivated and that's it. This is mainly because if an employee comes back after leaving all of their files and access is preserved; it's happened enough that a deactivation is all that is needed.
  • 19
    But I even was petty enough to use what access I had to remove him from what I could. A half dozen mentions on the internal company web site, gone. Special permissions on certain IT systems, removed. Membership on some email distribution lists, revoked. Probably nobody even noticed this stuff... but I was being petty! I had to erase him from existence as much as I could (without hurting the company... I didn't remove his name from documents he wrote or delete any useful files).
  • 20
    About 3 months later he did drop by briefly. Parked his RV in the lot, came in to say hello to a few people. I avoided talking to him. I thought I saw him looking at his completely stripped cubicle, and his spot on the coat rack missing even though the guy who left a month before him still had his spot... but I was probably imagining it.
  • 21
    SharpieInTheUrethra 11 hr. ago Reminds me of the "in 20 years no one will remember you worked here except your children" photo
  • 22
    DynkoFromTheNorth 6 hr. ago But did you get the manual updated in the end?
  • 23
    Lex_pert 10 hr. ago If anything your level of petty was A+ certified good systems security practices, so it's almost like vengefully picking up litter. I love it! I would do exactly the same for my own vengeance

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