Arrogant coworker takes credit for project, demands a promotion and gets fired instead: 'Sometimes the trash takes itself out!'

It's always remarkable when a coworker proves to be so completely out of touch with their own output.

At every company, certain employees manage to prove themselves to be indispensable. Oftentimes, doing so entails going above and beyond one's core responsibilities, which, quite frankly, is a whole other problematic workplace issue. After all, one shouldn't have to take on extra unpaid work to negotiate a higher salary, but that is unfortunately still commonplace across numerous industries.

In a more ideal world, it should be that employees who excel at their contracted job requirements and want to take on more work should be able to negotiate higher salaries right then and there, rather than the other way around. However, most folks in the workforce in 2026 know all too well at this point that this is far from an ideal world.

It should be noted that this overworked employee was not the person dealing with a salary increase, though we think they deserve one. He was just trying to get credit for his current workload, which another arrogant coworker was claiming as his own time and time again. This was the kind of dude who was perhaps slightly senior solely because he had been working there longer, but for whatever reason, he felt that he was in charge of the author, despite the fact that he most certainly was not.

Keep scrolling below to see what happened when the arrogant coworker failed to convince his manager this time that he had done all the work on a team project. Then, when he demanded a raise, well… let's just say it didn't exactly work out in his favor.

This coworker had a habit of shirking his responsibilities during team projects and assuming the role of proofreading everyone else's work before sending something off to clients. This, of course, is something a manager would do, but once again, this dude was not the manager. He just wanted to be one!
After a few instances of taking credit for work that he didn't do, the author couldn't take it anymore and made sure that the coworker's lack of effort was ultimately revealed to upper management. That meant that his simultaneous demands to be promoted were not well-received.
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"My coworker tried to strong-arm my manager. The plan blew up in his face."

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_{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}
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via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

_{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}