Employee gets even with petty boss by providing email receipts, gets fired: 'She saw an opportunity'

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Sep 27, 2025 3:00 PM EDT

Sometimes you so badly want to be petty with your boss or coworkers, but I implore you to resist the urge! 

If you've ever worked with a really disorganized team, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Your boss will email you something like, "Why didn't that file go out to our client?" And you reply saying that they told you it was already sent. Great! You now have solid proof. But now you've just annoyed your boss, and possibly made them look bad in front of their own bosses. You may have been polite, and did everything you could to take ownership over the mistake, but if your boss feels humiliated, they could easily take out their frustrations on you. 

This person is just revealing the unfortunate reality of many workplace dynamics. You might love that you got to send a snarky email or Slack message to the boss, but at the end of the day, you're probably going to be the one who pays the cost for it. Your boss and the higher-ups will be in a room together, searching for someone to blame, and they might just choose you as their target. 

Next, read about the story of this bar owner who did the coolest thing possible by winning an iPad in a claw machine for just $5… too bad that they can't get it out of the machine!

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  • 01
    I work for a medical equipment company, specifically in the contracting department. We handle paperwork for million dollar instruments globally, and I handle half of the United States in my territory. It can be challenging, and if a customer fails to sign an agreement it can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars a day if something breaks.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 02
    And if they fail to sign because of ME, then that can come back to bite my company in the al because we might have to pay for the repair ourselves (this hasn't ever happened yet, just a potential consequence. I'll knock on wood now) so I'm fastidious about my work. Half an hour ago I got an email from one of my account managers, we'll call him Hank. Subject line wasn't directly hostile, but it was marked
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 03
    important and listed a bigger account. Hank emailed me wanting to know why a contract hadn't gotten to the customer, basically asking "hey, this is WAY PAST DUE, and it's you're fault, care to explain yourself?" He cc'd his boss and my supervisors so they could all see my big mistake.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 04
    I dug and looked, and he was right: the customer's contract expired 8 months ago. A little more digging and I found out he emailed me about this customer's equipment last September. So I re-read the email chain, it was a conversation from half a year ago, after all. Luckily for me I keep all my emails filed perfectly, account by account (and even color coded in
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 05
    each folder based on info and subject). It's tedious, but it can definitely come in handy if I ever need to look back for any reason. Then I sent him a response: "Hey Hank, These are the two equipment pieces you asked about back on 9/10, correct? The ones that were outside my scope? In the last email I'd seen from you about that (attached), you'd said you
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 06
    were putting together a contract for that equipment, because my team doesn't handle these types of contracts, which I confirmed for you in the attached email from 10/22. If I've let something slip through the cracks here, don't hesitate to ask. Always happy to help." I then attached the email where I'd told him I wouldn't be handling this because it wasn't my job, and also attached the email
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 07
    where he acknowledged I was correct and said he would handle this himself. I kept both of our supervisors cc'd. After all, he'd been the one who added them. I basically told him 'yeah you did ask about that, and we determined it was in no way my job and definitely something you should handle, and you said. you'd handle that 6 months ago, did you not handle it like you said
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 08
    you would?' in front of our bosses. And now Hank's boss can start his day by reading about how Hank promised a customer a contract half a year ago and then never followed through. I suspect that Hank will be meeting with his boss in a few hours to discuss this. It's gonnal be a tough, tough day for Hank.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 09
    Anyone tries to throw me under the bus, I'm ready with a judo flip. I ain't going out like that.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 10

    Here's the update, and sorry to say, but it's not looking good

    Title: Throw me under the bus? It worked. I got fired. Quick tl;dr for those new to the story: an account manager named Hank wasn't doing his job, got in trouble, tried to throw me under the bus and pin it on me, but I'd kept receipts and proved he was the real problem. So, as the title states, I'm now working with a different company. So what happened?
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 11
    Well for that we need background on Mary. Mary was an account manager a few years ago, ambitious, slimy, and willing to cheat. When she saw a woman near retirement making double what she made, she saw an opportunity. Sarah had a team of three under her, and she was old fashioned and very particular. It would've been easy for Sarah to rub people the wrong way. Sadly, she
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 12
    was an easy target. Mary got some friends together and launched a character attack on Sarah, pointing out their "slow meager growth" and saying she could do that whole team's job blindfolded if given the chance. The company listened. Sarah was pushed into early retirement and Mary was given Sarah's job... But they didn't give Mary a team.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 13
    Since Mary said she could do the whole team's job herself, turns out the company took her at her word. Company saw they could fire 4, promote 1, and cut costs. Whoops. Now Mary can't promote the AM buddies she'd conspired with. Not yet anyway. So she buckles down and does her best to stay afloat.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 14
    Mary flounders. After a rough year and a half, she's deep in drs and booze, her numbers are terrible, and she's facing a firing squad because there's an employee in her department, a lower rung contacting guy, who is outpacing her. That's right, if you haven't put it together, Mary was my current boss. (And I sadly didn't know about Mary's rise to her position until after the hammer dropped, talking with her coworkers)
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 15
    Mary was doing the job of my 4 previous managers and DEFINITELY struggling to keep her head above water, having WAY TOO MUCH to do as Sarah's team's replacement. My entire team knew she'd be promoting people into Sarah's team's old roles eventually and we all hoped for a spot. Since I was regularly hitting 200% quota, I was a shoo-in for one of those spots... Or was I?
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 16
    Sadly, it turns out that Mary's position was actually worse than any of us knew. After underperforming for too long, she was secretly facing. termination. And turns out? They were looking to hire me in her spot when they brought me up for training, right after my vacation. Mary was panicked, facing losing her job, and she knew I kept
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 17
    receipts so she couldn't make up a story and write me off like she'd done to get where she was now. Then, the Hank problem happened. I emailed her my receipts, and instead Mary found an ally. She saw an opportunity, to work with Hank, an AM who also wanted me gone now for his own job security, and together they devised a plan. While I was out for a week visiting family down south, they collect
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 18
    several "Account Manager complaints" that no one ever saw, just "stuff she knew" about AMs that didn't want to keep working with me. Hank and Mary worked together while I was out of the office and couldn't defend myself, pressured my weak willed boss, and made their move. She said my emails were unprofessional, citing an email where I asked "I was wondering if
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 19
    you'd had the chance to review the contract I'd sent over a few weeks ago?" As being "pushy, unprofessional, and accusatory." My boss crumpled like a house of cards. No warning. No write up. No training to improve. No days without pay. No demotion. For a trumped up email charge and some vague promises of whispers in the wind (and probably some money or favors
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 20
    to my boss), my boss caved and went from a slap on the wrist to launching the nuke. When I got back on Monday, they met me at the door (so to speak, we all work from home) and let me know they had decided to let me go, no discussion, it was all decided and finalized. I was hired by another company same day, so I'm fine. Making the same money, so the worst thing I'll lose out on is that 200%
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 21
    Man in red shirt folds arms and looks unhappy, behind is woman in front of desk with computers on it, wearing sunglasses and talking on phone
    via Levi Meir Clancy For Unsplash+

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

  • 22
    bonus payout every few months, which does s… k. Be careful. Some times, when you avoid being thrown under a bus, they just get a bigger bus and try again.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 23
    p-d-ball It s ks for OOP, but it also S ks for that company. If they keep allowing incompetent people like Mary - and OOP's boss and former friend - to make these bad decisions, the company is going to have issues, maybe fail. And justifiably so!
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 24
    Daz... This is just so frustrating, it saddens me to no end that you can do everything right, have all the facts and evidence you could ever need and still be stabbed for something not of your doing.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 25
    Woman sits in front of brown desk with large desktop computer and holds phone in hand while touching laptop computer with other hand
    via Aakash Malik For Unsplash+

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

  • 26
    It's the mentality of people. who don't change their minds when shown irrefutable evidence. They just ignore it and keep cooking. I hope OOP know they are in a better place away from that dysfunctional sh show.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 27
    Pavlover2022 As someone who has had the fortune to have been born, brought up and worked in several countries with strong labour laws, I just cannot fathom living your entire working life with absolutely no job security.
    via u/LucyAriaRose
  • 28
    No legal rights, no due process, can be fired on a whim, no recourse. And this is accepted as the norm!! Utterly astonishing to this non-American
    via u/LucyAriaRose

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boss workplace-stories jobs job email bosses work emails workplace
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