Fired employee gets payback by deleting thousands of hours of work after discovering his team was still using his folder: 'This is my drive and my work'

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Mar 15, 2025 2:00 PM EDT

Asking for a raise takes a lot of courage, but sometimes, it's the only way to ensure that you're not being taken for granted. This is especially true for employees of smaller companies who are tasked with completing the work of multiple individuals. 

For this videographer, he knew that he was being sorely underpaid, and although he needed the job, he figured that he had proven himself well enough at this point. Unfortunately, he found himself employed at a company by individuals who thrived at making people work harder for less. Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from folks in the comments section. 

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    elete Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete Delete Deley
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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • This overworked employee was working on a contract as a videographer for a large company and was tasked with completing approximately 50 videos per day despite the fact that they were also getting paid barely above minimum wage. It goes without saying, but this was an abnormal amount of work, especially for such a low salary. After proving himself over time, he asked for a well-deserved raise, which he was then denied. And don''t worry, it gets worse from there…

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    About 3 years ago I used to work as a videographer doing social media content for a 7 figure company. I was paid roughly just better than minimum wage and was cranking out (at one point)
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    50 videos a day. I was freelancing and was on a loose contract. I was desperate for the money.
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    It was an insane amount of work and however I managed to do it for 6 months is beyond me, especially for how I was paid.
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    The office was an incredibly bitter and snide place and it was clear that management would purpolsely stir sh to watch staff fight as a form of entertainment. I kept well away from it but it was incredibly stressful on top of video work.
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    After about six months I pitch to the higher ups that my videos are making an insanely positive difference to their sales (I
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    showed them graphs of interactions and direct links to sales on the website via my content) and asked for a pay rise. I compared my ideal salary to others in the industry and made a big deal about how it would still
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    be less than I should be paid however I still wanted to continue working for them. I was fired hours later for, and I sh you not, not "pulling my weight" as well as not having the desired effect they wanted on social media.
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    I was fuming and now unemployed. I struggled for months to find any other job.
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  • As the now former employee mentioned, it was difficult to get another opportunity lined up, and he spent months without employment. So you can imagine his frustration when he discovered that they were still using his drive (and, therefore, his work). Talk about shameless! Thankfully, the videographer was not going to let them walk all over him yet again, so he backed up everything that was important to him and promptly deleted the folder. Good luck to the folks at the company when they wake up the next day, only to discover that all their files are gone!

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    Today (years later) whilst browsing a very old Google drive account, I found that said company was still using a folder I created and owned. They were mostly active in the files containing templates, adjustment
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    layers, presets, and even video that I all created. Over 18 people were actively using it daily to continue with their social media campaigns. This was a cloud service that I was paying monthly for as I wanted extra space for my work.
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    This is my drive and my work. I own it. So I copied the file as a local version for myself and then deleted the online version.
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    Tomorrow they will wake up with none of their video assets (including things they were working on). F them.
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    taylors Unfortunately both Google Drive and Dropbox keep files around for 30 days so you can easily undelete stuff.
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    If you're the owner and not them, maybe they won't have access to the undelete functionality. I'm not sure there.
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    I actually think you could have just removed their access and it would have had the same effect. Just make the whole drive private, since you're the owner. Good stuff!
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    TeoN72 Oh God, now you need to update us, I can't wait to hear the follow up
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    ZachGeorge had something similar happen on one of the first video editing gigs I booked years ago, it was a church outreach program that wanted me to edit some footage that they had another videographer sh
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    (should've been a red flag that they weren't using the guy who shot it). So I did the work delivered a final video and they shorted my check.
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    It was supposed to be $500 but they only gave me $400. When I asked them about it they said "Well, I'd be willing to pay more if you were a professional editor" So I was
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    pretty p ed. Every now and then for the next few months I would check around to see if they had posted the video. When I finally found it on their website I went to flag it for
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    copyright infringement on youtube because the video had an original song of mine in it and if they weren't going to pay what they owed they weren't going to get to use the video. I went through the entire flagging
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    process on youtube and when I got to the end it said I couldn't flag the video because I owned it. They were still using the upload to youtube that I had sent them
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    for approval. So I took it down and left them with a broken link and I have never seen that video on the internet again.
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getting fired workplace-stories employee fired work stories toxic-workplace job fired story work toxic-boss overworked-employees Horrible Bosses company toxic-work-environment
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