‘Don’t be toxic to your colleagues. You never know when you might need them in the future’: Ex‑coworker applies for a job and lists former colleague as a referral without asking, only for the employee to shut it down immediately

Some people spend their careers mastering workplace survival skills, and others master delusion. This former coworker chose both. Once the corporate main character of someone else's misery, they now roam LinkedIn like a ghost haunting the living, casually tossing around old names to open new doors. One of those names happened to belong to the person they treated like office lint.

Now, years later, the performance artist of burnout has returned. Laid off, still orbiting the same industry, they've decided to use the name of the very coworker they treated like garbage as a referral. Didn't ask permission. Just listed it, as if reputations were a public utility. The notification appears, asking for a yes or no on whether they'd recommend this person. The answer is quick, clinical, deeply satisfying: no. The kind of no that tastes like justice with a side of HR policy. 

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