Nepo-hire claims 15-page report as her own to impress CEO, coworker ousts her: '[She] took all the credit'

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
May 15, 2025 11:00 AM EDT

Watching a coworker steal your work right in front of you can leave you with your jaw on the floor. Sometimes your boss may take credit for your work, which is irritating, but since they're your boss, you might just have to roll with it. But when it's your coworker, that can be quite frustrating. After spending days making a PowerPoint presentation (or "slide deck" as the professionals call it these days) you want all the credit where it's due!

Sadly, there are plenty of reasons why you might not be able to call your coworker out on their thievery, though. For example, maybe it's technically a group project, and they put in just 2% of the effort. Or maybe you want the boss to know you're a team player, so you bite your tongue instead of tattling. At least this person got some excellently planned petty revenge on their coworker — and the CEO was the first to see their plan in action! In the comments, other people shared their own stories of the ways they've gotten back at their thieving coworkers. Never give up, there's always a way to plot the pettiest revenge possible! 

Next, read about the 22-year-old who infuriated his family by baking a "passive-aggressive" cement gray gender reveal cake: "Just make it neutral." 

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  • 01

    'Co-worker tried to claim my 15-page report as her own work to the CEO, got outed in front of him'

    This was a young woman who only got her job (especially made for her) because her dad was golfing buddies with our CEO. She regularly blamed her team for her numerous mistakes, and took all the credit for their hard work. Let's call her B
    via u/Aiku
  • 02
    I used to do trade shows and after the fall season would be back in the office and create a comprehensive report on the results of the shows, normally 15+ pages. The Veeps always wanted paper reports, not attachments, so I normally printed them out and distributed them personally to the staff.
    via u/Aiku
  • 03
    I handed B her copy as we passed in the corridor, then watched in sheer amazement as she marched straight into the CEO's office and said, I kid you not; "Here Boss, I just put this together for you". Stunning, the report was all about trade shows, and she wasn't even in the same department!
    via u/Aiku
  • 04
    2200 CAT RE
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

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

  • 05
    Cue the revenge, I marched in there right after her, and said "Oh, B, I just realized that my report has some numerical errors, let me have it back and I'll get you a revised one", all the while staring at the CEO with a slightly raised eyebrow.
    via u/Aiku
  • 06
    As I left, I heard the most wonderful words from the CEO: "Aiku, would you please close the door as you leave?" B I came out about five minutes later looking like a ripe tomato. I couldn't resist asking "How was your little tete-a-tete with our Boss?"
    via u/Aiku

    A well-deserved revenge plot! This person did everything right, and no doubt their coworker was feeling embarrassed after getting caught fudging the truth. 

  • 07

    Nepo-hires know they don't have to work hard, so many of them just don't work very much at all!

    Middle_Data_9563 And this is why you don't hire your golfing buddy's daughter Nepotism is the enemy of efficiency
    via u/Middle_Data_9563
  • 08
    Disorderly_Chaos My dad's coworker tried to steal his programming code and take credit. At the meeting concerning the allegations... my dad asked why this guys variables were named after people in our family.
    via u/Disorderly_Chaos
  • 09
    AKA Find Product [INT] $Riker = 9*9 [INT] $Picard = 10*10
    via u/Disorderly_Chaos
  • 10
    punklinux I worked for a place where people were stealing code left and right from various departments. Everyone had their own CVS server, years before DevOps was a thing, and there were actual "code raids" that some managers instructed their coders to steal code from other departments. Really confusing, semi-toxic, and so on. So one manager
    via u/punklinux
  • 11
    decided to do "Open Source" and by that, he meant, "all code goes to my team, and I claim credit for it." Seriously, they had scripts to scrub out all comments, change variables (like "auth_token_new" would be changed to "a"), and put things in a PHP obfuscator (takes your code and converts it into a non- human readable format. He just decided to become "king of code."
    via u/punklinux
  • 12
    Well, he was giving a demo of some application which he claimed his team built, and I knew that it was code my team did. But he had forgotten to remove some variable labels, so when he was showing off the app, it showed on the bottom of every form, "(c) 2010 [company], Development version [version] - [my team], contact [team group alias]." It was in a tiny, tiny
    via u/punklinux
  • 13
    font but I made sure to point it out in the meeting. "No, MY team wrote this!" "Then why does it have our team listed?" "That's the company name. Forgot our company name, already? Ha ha ha..." Patronizing git.
    via u/punklinux
  • 14
    "No, after that. That's our team. That's our application. I can even show you a shortcut to get to FOO through menu BAR. If you'd asked us, we could have helped with your presentation by showing you how to use it."
    via u/punklinux
  • 15
    "Okay, well, it's OPEN SOURCE, so there is no 'my' program, okay? Fall asleep in the meeting much? Remember when we discussed this?" "But you just claimed your team wrote the app, when clearly you didn't. Open Source means we all work on it. Here, wikipedia defines Open Source as..."
    via u/punklinux
  • 16
    "OKAY OKAY OKAY hahaha, great! You can read something someone else wrote! Good for you!" But the damage was already done. Everyone closed off their CVS servers from his team, and he came across like the crook to pretty much everyone.
    via u/punklinux
  • 17
    Icemasta Also why, when someone asks for your power point, you send them a PDF of it, not the powerpoint itself. I've been had a couple times where I took time to make nice slides for projects and then I see it in someone else's presentation.
    via u/Icemasta
  • 18
    0800 OGRIP CAT RE
    via Amy Hirschi on Unsplash+

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

  • 19
    Terrible-Paramedic... Had a coworker who used to do that. So I began to put something unique in the footer. Shared a document with them and sure enough it comes out as hers during a meeting.
    via u/Terrible-Paramedic35
  • 20
    Thats when I asked her what the notation in the footer was. It got really awkward when I pointed out that it just happened to be my initials and employee number.
    via u/Terrible-Paramedic35
  • 21
    matt_mv I sat in a cube next to a guy who was a "lead" in his group. I would hear him talking to the people who did the actual work in his group and then sit in meetings where he said "I did this" and "I did that" when I knew he hadn't done
    via u/matt_mv
  • 22
    the work. Funny thing is I never had to say anything about it because everyone knew he was a liar, but since no one ever told him to his face he thought he was clever.
    via u/matt_mv
  • 23
    verminiusrex Regaining control through such a simple and plausible way was pure genius. Well done.
    via u/verminiusrex

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