'No one else can or will do my job... and I'm about to quit with no notice': 15+ Employees who had the pettiest ways of getting back at their bosses

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Nov 2, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

Don't get upset, get even! You can do this in many areas of your life, workplace included. Sometimes, though, getting even means quitting your job or leaving your boss stranded at a critical moment… and it feels so good! 

You'll learn in life that there's a certain type of boss who is particularly helpless, yet they still need their employees for everything. They'll demand perfection while messing everything up themselves. They want their employees to work as much as humanly possible, while they manage the office from a beach in the Caribbean. Or maybe they just constantly breathe down their employees' necks, giving them barely any time to complete their own work as they sit there complaining about how much work they have to do. 

At least leaving your job because you resent your boss is a reasonable thing to do. But leaving a job just because your coworkers annoy you is much less common, even though it can truly ruin your day. Some people talk too loud, others eat the smelliest possible foods without a care in the world for their coworkers. If you're in either of these positions, dealing with bad bosses or bad coworkers, you might get some pleasure out of reading about how these people handled their own terrible office mates. Check out this person's wild story of workplace payback, as well as a handful of other entertaining tales from the depths of r/AskReddit. 

After that, these diners barged into a restaurant 2 minutes before closing, claiming they knew one of the owners, leaving the waiter feeling "very stunned at how entitled they felt." 

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    Cheezburger Image 10423133440
    via Zest Tea on Unsplash+

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 02
    What's the best way you've gotten back at a I'll start. boss/coworker? I've been waiting a while to document this one. Back in my early 20s, I worked as a delivery driver at a bar/pizza joint close to the main college drag. After about 4 months of working there (just enough time to get in good with the rest of the staff), the owner hires a friend of
    via u/[deleted]
  • 03
    his to manage the joint as the current manager had just left. This guy was the epitome of "power trip for no reason ahle" boss. He would call you out for little mistakes, make you stay late to help do his job, throw you under the bus when talking to the owner, always bail early, AND was convinced everybody liked him the real deal. We even - caught him stealing from our tip jars a couple of times but the owner never did anything about
    via u/[deleted]
  • 04
    it. Anyway - I had planned to go out one night with a girl I had just met and wanted to get off work a bit early, go home and wash the pizza smell off me. I asked, we'll call him, Donnie if that was possible and he lost. his. sh . You would have thought I asked for a raise, bonus, and a 6 month vacation. Despite the fact that 3 drivers from the next shift had showed up already, he started shouting "What, are you stupid??
    via u/[deleted]
  • 05
    We have 3 deliveries up!! You can stay until your shift is over." "That's cool", I thought. He is well within his, albeit a h le, right to make me stay until my shift is over with. I sucked it up and started getting the last deliveries together. However, when he saw where I was taking one of the pizzas, he ordered (not asked) me to pick him up a chocolate shake from a drive- through joint close by. I flat out told him "No way. You
    via u/[deleted]
  • 06
    expect me to do you a favor when you wont do me one? it." I grabbed the pizzas and stormed out, Donnie yelling from the kitchen something like "Haha - itsaart getting all political. Awww - i think he's mad..." Granted his past behavior had factored into how angry I was over something pretty minor but, I was furious. The universe had reached its quota and beckoned to me to
    via u/[deleted]
  • 07
    teach this f a lesson. As I was driving away from the last delivery, I called the store, got Donnie on the phone, apologized and said I would get him his milk shake, even pay for it. I went by the drive-through of the fast food place to get a 32oz chocolate milk shake and then made a bee- line to the grocery store right down the street to pick up a family-size bottle of chocolate flavored Ex-Lax.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 08
    I poured half of the shake out (for me to enjoy later, of course) and mixed in 13-15 oz of Ex-Lax. Remember: 2 tbsp (or whatever) will give you a healthy case of the runs. After giving it to him, he said something about it tasting funny but still managed to inhale that son of a b like a true fat boy. He didn't even say thanks... Fast forward three hours or so - date-lady and I are cruising the bars and head into the bar/pizza joint I worked at. Instantly, the
    via u/[deleted]
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    cook makes eye contact with me and comes rushing over, practically falling over patrons. Barely able to contain himself, he tells me, in hysterics, "Donnie is having uncontrollable, violent, blow 1. He's been in the bathroom since you left, has sh his pants already, and is making this place smell like an open sewer." I go back to the kitchen and Donnie is nowhere in sight. Right as I start to talk to a fellow pizza slave, though, he comes rushing from the bathroom, pants
    via u/[deleted]
  • 10
    half on/half off, one hand out in front and one hand holding his balloon knot shut. He had exhausted the entire restaurant's toilet paper supply and was heading to the bar next door. Best part? He lived about 40 miles away and continued himself periodically throughout the trip home.
    via u/[deleted]
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    Despite everybody knowing the true story, though, he never figured it out and blamed the fast food joint for his wild ride on the Hershey Highway. I think the whole ordeal humbled him a bit because he ended up turning into a decent guy. TL;DR: lives a living boss makes our out of sheer enjoyment, I repay him with some a hole trauma...and not the good kind
    via u/[deleted]
  • 12
    quruti I worked as an installer in a remote office. I traveled a lot for work, often spending weekends on site. This was fine under my old boss, who gave me a lot of leeway by letting me work from home, gave me comp time etc. After 4 years, I got a new boss. Also, the company laid off everyone in my office,
    via u/quruti
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    about 100 people. New boss insisted I come in anyway (45 min drive) to sit in an empty office. But I still had to travel Sunday thru Friday, with no overtime and no comp time. When I complained to HR, the HR manager told me that since I'm salaried, if they wanted me to work 80 hours a week, I would work 80 hours and I shouldn't expect
    via u/quruti
  • 14
    any compensation. Everyone I talked to seemed to think this was true. Salaried == get overtime. This didn't make sense to me. I called the local state dept of labor office, told them what I did, what I'd been told. They told me to get a lawyer and if they didn't rectify this, for every dollar they owed me, they would
    via u/quruti
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    have to pay the state 50 cents in penalties. Which is what I did. In a matter of 4 months, I settled out of court, got a new job, got a severance and made my boss do an exit interview where I told her if she'd been halfway considerate and legally complaint, she wouldn't have to scramble to cover for the next 8 scheduled installs by flying. people out from the East
    via u/quruti
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    coast and paying them overtime. TL:DR I sued them for 5 years of overtime. Got 40 grand, severance package, letter of recommendation and told my boss off.
    via u/quruti
  • 17
    DementedPim... I was a typesetter when it was still done on dedicated typesetting machines, not desktop. This is pretty specialized work and demanded pretty good pay. I agreed to take one job at less than my usual hourly pay for six weeks while I learned their system, one I hadn't used before. Well, six weeks came and went ... and
    via u/DementedPimento
  • 18
    I didn't see my promised raise. In the meantime, the horrible shrew of a pasteup "artist" went out sick and I was left doing both type and layout. A very important project came up, and there was only me to do it. Without me, they'd be totally and royally - even if they could find a typesetter who could do pasteup, there was just no time to run the ad, hire
    via u/DementedPimento
  • 19
    and train one. I reminded the owner and manager of the raise I'd been promised when I was hired, and how long ago that was. Then I put all my personal desk tchoksies in a box, and told them they had until end of business to make a decision. I got my raise - retroactive to my hire date- by 5 pm.
    via u/DementedPimento
  • 20
    thatgirl153 Our company was giving us employees an appreciation lunch and had requested a small group of employees to plan and execute the event. On the day of the event upper management got a stick up their butts and decided that the planning committee was using up too much company time. They told us that any of us who worked the luncheon
    via u/thatgirl153
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    (serving and cleaning up) would have to do it on our lunch breaks or stay late to make up the time. We of course found this unacceptable. Prior to the luncheon we had a huge meeting where all the managers and big wigs praised all the workers for a job well done etc and at the end asked if anyone had any questions or comments. I
    via u/thatgirl153
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    stood up and in a very friendly manner said that we needed managers to volunteer to serve the luncheon. All you heard were crickets for about ten seconds and then alot of whispering and scrambling as upper management made lower management raise their hands. It was so awesome to see them all using their lunch hour to serve us! :)
    via u/thatgirl153
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    BiblicalMC I had a bunch of jerkface bosses who were looking all school year for reasons to fire me. It got to the point where I was turning in three times the number of lesson plans, and had less freedom to do my job than any other teacher at that school. It was all personal too. Very unprofessional stuff like "my son is in this guys class and he does it this way, so you
    via u/BiblicalMC
  • 24
    should do it that way also" meanwhile I walk by said teachers class and he is showing the Peanuts Christmas special. They said my lesson plans weren't detailed enough, so I asked for their best lesson plan from any other teacher, and mine were more detailed, a fact which shocked even me. They spent so much time telling me I was a bad teacher that I actually began to believe it, and still kind of
    via u/BiblicalMC
  • 25
    do. Now this school had a free years license to Rosetta Stone, so I switched my language to Korean, and learned Hangul. Almost weekly there would be someone who would say "Korean! Who the knows Korean! What will you ever do with that?" At the end of the year they told me not to come back, and I said "Thank you but, I just got a job in Korea." They had the dean in there to make sure I
    via u/BiblicalMC
  • 26
    didn't make a scene, and I think even he was surprised that I was almost laughing as I walked out of the office and shook hands with everyone with a big sh eating grin on my face. Right now I am sitting here at my desk in Korea, the only native English teacher at my school, and they love me. To tell you the truth, I might have stayed at
    via u/BiblicalMC
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    that job another five or ten years. Getting asked to not come back was the best thing that ever happened to me. :) TL;DR Saw the termination of my contract coming, so I used their Rosetta Stone to learn Korean and move to Korea.
    via u/BiblicalMC
  • 28
    camfunction Company I worked at for many years fired me without warning. My boss was a strange guy, and I had seen him fire other people without warning as well. He always offered to let people stay on for 60 days so they could find new work. But they would have to sign a document stating that they were "voluntarily" walking off the job and waiving all
    via u/camfunction
  • 29
    right to unemployment. When he fired me, he also gave me the option. I did not accept, as it seemed a lot better deal to have unemployment in case I could not find work inside of the 60 days. The company tried to appeal my unemployment, but after several years of loyal service the only black marks on my record were being less than 15 minutes late to work
    via u/camfunction
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    three times. I let the judge in the unemployment hearing know that they offered to keep me on if I had signed away my right to unemployment. She let me know that it was against the law to do so, and ruled in my favor. Every weekly unemployment deposit was like a tiny victory until I found a new job.
    via u/camfunction
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    hobbit6 You guys are crazy. I just crop dust cubicles.
    via u/hobbit6
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    omaca This is not my story, but my father's. He was working hard in an early IT/computer company (back in the late sixties). This is back when IBM were still known as International Business Machines. He was the only one who knew how to support & manage some of the large
    via u/omaca
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    microcomputers that some of the customers had. His boss was giving him shi over my father wanting personal leave; my mother was just about to give birth to her first child, my eldest brother. He didn't even want to allow my father to leave when my mother went into labour. My father lost his temper, told him to get I how incompetent he was, how he was riding on other people's talent, quit
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    right there and then and left for the hospital. I still remember my mother telling me that my father came in, congratulated her on the birth and told her he had just quit his job. She laughs about it now, but you can imagine how she felt!
    via u/omaca
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    A day later, the owner of the company called my father and offered him his old boss's job. The kicker? The old boss now had to report to my dad. That's gotta hurt.
    via u/omaca
  • 36
    theshinepolicy I used to work at a sandwich shop/bakery in Nashville and my shift started at 6 am. The horrible, prissy b manager would call your at 6:01 if you weren't there and flip her sh. I had taken a weekend off to travel to New York to play a show (shameless plug), and when she realized she forgot to take me off the schedule, she tried to get me to cancel
    via u/theshinepolicy
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    my trip. When I said we had already booked a show, she told me my music sucked and the girl singer of our band was "too ugly for country." 1. She's hot (see above) and 2. its not country. Inside I raged but I kept cool on the outside and told her I would work Saturday for her. I flew up to new york, but on friday night, changed my answering message on my cell phone to say "Hey, I'm
    via u/theshinepolicy
  • 38
    so sorry...I'm on my way, I'll be there in one second." | partied hard in NYC on Friday and turned my phone on silent when I went to bed. The next morning I had 6. new messages. The first three were her flipping out, the fourth was just silent, the fifth was my shift leader saying "I think its a message", and the fifth was 2 hours later from the owner laughing but saying I was fired.
    via u/theshinepolicy
  • 39
    316nuts Worked at a company that did phone surveys. Probably 250 worked there at any given time. boss pushed and then tripped me -.a practical joke gone awry. I had worked there many years and ran system back ups on the weekend. Nothing fancy, just babysit the computers after typing in a few lines of unix
    via u/316nuts
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    commands. Thanks in part to this, I had just enough access to the system to crash the entire dialing floor for three hours. 250 sitting,.doing nothing,.being paid on crunch day. Didn't get in trouble. Felt good, man.
    via u/316nuts
  • 41
    beyerch This is a true story, I absolutely swear. It's also past any statue of limitations and probably before any real laws existed in any form so Had a j that started at a failing dot com with me. Within the first week he decided he wanted to fire me even though he had no idea what I did, etc, etc, etc.
    via u/beyerch
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    (I was actually the only IT person at this point and was probably one of the more productive people in the entire building) He told me I had a week to 'turn things around' of I was gone. First of all, there was no explanation as to what needed to be 'turned around' or what in particular was wrong. (My assumption. is that he had his own guy he wanted to bring in, etc)
    via u/beyerch
  • 43
    I basically told him to shove it up his and if he didn't like it, I'd walk right there. He was a bit taken back by that and after another 9 months of being there, he was not quite aj, but still aj Fast forward another 3 months and we decided we were going to fire him. The decision was based on information I had provided to them in regards to his lack
    via u/beyerch
  • 44
    of performance and wasting of company resources. Irony, right. The owners (against my recommendation) gave him. advanced notice of their decision and let him stay for an entire day in his office. without any supervision, etc. As I didn't trust him, I was monitoring his activity very closely. I discovered that he was copying a large amount of data from our servers and
    via u/beyerch
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    deleting it. Additionally, he was cleaning out his contacts and other client related information (not personal). (He was copying all of this to a USB drive) On the final day, the owners took him to lunch right before he was going to leave. I took the opportunity to "return" all of the data he took (I had backups which I was going to restore; however, I didn't want him to
    via u/beyerch
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    walk away with stuff that didn't belong to him) Finally, a couple very very incriminating emails accidentally got forwarded to his wife. He was cheating on her for months and was talking to this other chick about ditching her and her out of hte house and stuff and leave her with the kids..... Not sure how that worked out, but hopefully for the better. Guy
    via u/beyerch
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    was a bit of a scumbag. (In regards to the emails, no I was not snooping his private stuff, they were in his work account and when I was removing the items that he took, they were discovered.....) [One had vacation pics of the happy cheating couple of as well] lol.
    via u/beyerch
  • 48
    [deleted] I used to have to report website usage, ROI and all sort of statistics for a bunch of different sites. I built a bada mother of a spreadsheet in which you only put a few numbers and it would calculate just about everything the company would need. It was a bit too complicated for my boss to understand, yet he would
    via u/[deleted]
  • 49
    take it to clients and brag he made it, which p ed me off. Then, after a while he realised that the spreadsheet was all he needed and could use my paycheck to buy a new house and laid me off. I told him he might need help with the spreadsheet bit he said he was smart enough.
    via u/[deleted]
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    Before I took off I changed a single formula in the spreadsheet and had a good laugh about the reports it spat out, which made no sense at all anymore.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 51
    [deleted] When I was 15 I worked at a cafe in Sydney. The place. had poor business practices and was generally very dirty and poorly managed. I was being paid below minimum wage, but I only realised this after I quit (because they treated all the young employees like slaves). I sent an email to my old boss specifying a dollar
    via u/[deleted]
  • 52
    amount that he owed me, to which he responded saying that he paid me correctly. Long story short I got the workplace ombudsman involved and not only did he have to pay me the money he owed me, along with the other employees and what they were owed - he had to sell the business because while the ombudsman was there he noticed the uncleanliness and sent in a
    via u/[deleted]
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    health inspector. TL;DR Made him sell his business
    via u/[deleted]
  • 54
    ashhole613 Letting them rely on me to fully run ALL aspects of our office/facility except the machinery itself. No one else can or will do my job because it s ks so bad, but it's an absolute necessity for the place to operate. And I'm about to quit with no notice. Bwahahahahahaha
    via u/ashhole613
  • 55
    [deleted] Someone kept stealing my lunch at work, and me being the pacifist that I am decided to just mention it casually to my wife. I didnt think it was a big deal, but these were the sandwiches that SHE made for me every day. She decided to make a special sandwich for me which consisted of Bread and tooth paste. I put it in the fridge and after lunch it
    via u/[deleted]
  • 56
    was gone. I dont know if the sandwich was actually consumed, but I told HR about it and they thought it was so awesome, they gave me a $20 gift card to outback steak house. TLDR Someone ate a toothpaste sandwich and I got 20 bucks.
    via u/[deleted]
  • 57
    xylerium Simple. Posted an ad on Craigslist for an insanely good deal for a 42" Plasma. Left co-worker's office #, cell #, and email as ways to get in touch. Lather, rinse, repeat.
    via u/xylerium
  • 58
    TheSixofSwords Had a nice correspondence with Visa and Mastercard about the filing cabinet containing 3-ring binders full of names, credit card numbers, expiration dates and CV codes that they had written down instead of running securely online when the reservations are
    via u/TheSixofSwords
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    made. They had a manual CC machine in the office. It's still not okay to keep thousands of credit card numbers in a filing cabinet that all employees have access too. Very not okay.
    via u/TheSixofSwords
  • 60
    sphere23 I quit a job in a place I liked in disgust at new management (dishonest, judged people by brown- nosing not competence etc.), I resigned 7 days after my first child was born - that should show you how desperate I was. By total coincidence, my new employer was in the same building, one floor
    via u/sphere23
  • 61
    above. Within 4 years, a total of 8 people have moved from the old to the new company - basically bl ding them dry of talent. The a hole boss of the old place gets very nervous when he sees us talking to any of his remaining employees in the elevator.
    via u/sphere23
  • 62
    Best of all karma-wise - | didn't do this on purpose / out of spite - it just happened.
    via u/sphere23
  • 63
    d 1. Worked same place as mother, she worked there for years. 2. Mother gets laid off out of the blue, no notice given told to pack her sh and get out of the building, no reason given other than "restructure".
    via u/darkrum
  • 64
    3. I am taken to be carefully screened by HR and a director, under the guise of "We just wanted to make sure you heard it first before the talk started getting around the office. We're sending the email later, please don't tell anyone". 4. I play along as though I'm the same sort of corporate scum, don't
    via u/darkrum
  • 65
    say a word until email is sent. Email states that the position my mother held was no longer required and thanked her for her years of service etc, regrettable loss to the company yadda yadda. 5. Quietly p ed off, but just do my job. Tell my direct boss I've got the with the company for doing a low blow
    via u/darkrum
  • 66
    like that to my mother, as he had told me similar feelings prior about past decisions. 6. A week or so later another email is sent around detailing a new position which was created, new title, same actual duties as my mother's old job. 7. Forwarded both emails; copied one to the end of the other - and at
    via u/darkrum
  • 67
    the top, wrote "anyone else see a contradiction here?", emailed it to international CEO, head of HR for the region; both of whom were in other countries. 8. Receive very rapid and very concerned responses from both, as in minutes. 9. Regional HR organises clandestine meeting out of work hours and a
    via u/darkrum
  • 68
    surprise visit and management audit which I am the only one privy to ahead of time. 10. Lots of shouting, nobody clued into who stirred up the 1. 11. Direct boss I had confided in puts in surprise resignation, offered me better paying position with the competition quietly.
    via u/darkrum
  • 69
    12. Give no notice and leave a massive job that the only other guy left in the department (call him the retarded one) has no idea how to start let alone deliver. The ended up paying an external contractor for a week's worth of onsite fuckup fixing, as well as reimbursing the customer for the service charges due to the fuckup.
    via u/darkrum
  • 70
    13. A month or so later after all the auditing, the national GM was bumped back to head of sales. He was the one who made the decision to sack my mother, and apparently it was because he was using her as a fall-guy for a very poor decision he had made extending a massive amount of credit to a customer
    via u/darkrum
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    who eventually went under. I think they didn't fire him because of his "connections" or some shi.
    via u/darkrum

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