Former employee wipes data from his work computer after discovering his replacement was offered the salary he wanted

Author image for Ben Weiss
Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Apr 18, 2026 8:00 AM EDT

Replacing this employee has just gotten a lot more expensive for the company.

When employees have proven that they can put in the work and have presented the case for a higher salary that they clearly deserve, upper management had better have a good reason to deny their request outright. The only justifiable explanation in this instance would be if the employee was delusional and there was substantial evidence that he was not meeting his expectations.

Of course, it would be hard for management to make that argument here, given the fact that all the employee was asking for was a fair rate that reflected his role in the market. When that rate was dismissed without so much as a decent explanation, the employee promptly submitted his resignation letter.

Somehow, leadership was taken aback by this move, as if they genuinely thought they could keep manipulating this employee year after year. It turns out that they vastly underestimated him. In fact, they also underestimated the trick this now former employee had up his sleeve when he learned that the new person they hired to replace him was making the salary he had been requesting for years. 

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  • An employee looks at his resignation letter as he packs up his desk supplies at work.
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    An employee looks at his resignation letter as he packs up his desk supplies at work.

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

  • I deleted all data from my old work MAC, now current employee cannot use it

    Won't beat around the bush too much. I used to work at this bank in my country as a graphic. designer, they payed me very little for the position, so much so, I had two jobs at the same time. I
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  • expressed this to my supervisor who assured me in the next new year salaries would be re- assessed and I'd be getting a raise. Ofc I was played, what I
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  • asked for, I didn't get. I decide to quit. One of my ex coworkers inform me that they had hired someone new, with the exact salary I was asking. That felt like a slap in the face. This was in 2025.
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  • Something tells me that upper management wishes they had accepted this guy's request for a raise way back when. Now, not only did they have to pay his replacement that same salary, but they were also dealing with wiped data from the former employee's laptop. This data would have been particularly useful for training the new hire and maintaining organization across the ex-employee's team. 

    The moral of the story is not only to know your worth as an employee, but also, if you're a team leader, you should consider validating your employees with decent pay before relying too much on their data and organization skills.

  • An employee runs a program on his laptop while sitting at his desk.
    via Unsplash+ (Behnam Norouzi)

    An employee runs a program on his laptop while sitting at his desk.

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

  • Fast forward pretty much a year later, Im looking through my find my Iphone devices and I see that old MacBook, from when I used to work there. As my personal
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  • form of revenge, I decide to delete all the data and lock the MacBook. Because it's been a year, most people in the company
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  • I used to work with are gone, no one has the credentials and it has simply been too long ago. They are desperately texting me now asking what the passwords or credentials could have been. I give them wrong information.
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  • These people belittled my work, they always were accusing me of things, I was always an outcast, one of my supervisors, who was the only one I genuinely cared for, quit not long after I did, and has never spoken to them since.
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  • I just wish I could get some insight of what is happening right now with the mac and my crazy supervisors.
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  • A man types on a black laptop next to another computer at his desk.
    via freestocks

    A man types on a black laptop next to another computer at his desk.

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

  • BananaJelloxlii That's on them. Our IT dept. would have wiped it, reimaged it and blocked any acces by prior employees. The fact that it was still refistered to you is like a huge failing on their part.
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  • kasigiomi1600 Managerially, this is on them (specifically your manager and the IT dept). It's absolutely outrageous to allow a company controlled mac to remain tied to a previous employees appleID. In many orgs heads would roll for this.
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  • It also sounds deeply satisfying and socially appropraite revenge. But let's put this another way:
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  • You access a computer that you do not own and destroyed data on it that you no longer legally had a right to in order to cause harm to an organization.
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  • Whether they deserved the problem or not, it's a criminal act. What's worse, if all the people you knew were gone, you took vengeance on folks who had no connection to you.
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  • pdxpete144 I've worked for 3 major banks and every single laptop I've ever had has been wiped immediately. How you still have access is the reddest of red flags
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salary employee toxic-workplace i quit satisfying quitting story bad bosses graphic design money
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