Employee leaves toxic company, former boss begs him to leave online review: 'He thought we parted on great terms'

Author image for Ally Perry
Ally Perry • Writer and Editor
Jul 8, 2026 7:45 PM EDT

There are advantages to having a good poker face at work.

When you are working for a toxic company, it can be tempting to give them a piece of your mind before making an inevitable swift exit. Truly, it is astonishing how many employers believe that they can treat their employees like garbage and get away with it. The natural reaction is to be outraged and point it out as soon as you possibly can.

However, there is a reason that we are told to keep our friends close and our enemies closer. When dealing with a company like this, it can pay to put up with their behavior just long enough to be able to collect evidence on the unethical practices that they pretend are OK. If you play your cards right, it could be exactly what is needed to expose them and, with any luck, shame them into being better.

This is not a foolproof strategy. Plenty of people suffer through terrible jobs and never get the opportunity to tell it like it is with their former employer. Still, those who do get that opportunity offer an invaluable service, allowing job seekers to avoid disaster and enabling current employees to fight for better.

Add as a preferred
source on Google
Advertisement
  • A man sits in a chair and types on a laptop on his lap
    via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

    A man sits in a chair and types on a laptop on his lap

  • A planning specialist quit his job at a small company after having a bad experience with them. He felt that they were poorly organized, unreliable, and did not give employees the support that they deserved. Despite this, his manager believed that he had a good relationship with him throughout.

    This led his former boss to ask him to leave an online review about his experience working for the company. Noticing several positive, fake reviews, he happily complied to set the record straight. The action that he took had an immediate and obvious effect on the incompetent employer, leaving him feeling like his job there was done.

  • Toxic ex-boss begs me to leave a company review. I give him exactly what he asked for.

    For context: I (29M) recently quit my job as a specialist at a small planning and design firm somewhere in Germany. The place was a mess. The pay was a joke, the leadership was completely unpredictable, and they expected me to do the job of a fully qualified project manager (like
    via Hopplafish
  • planning the entire renovation of a large municipal facility) without the pay or the support. The turnover was crazy. Three of my colleagues quit around the same time and during my 4 years there, my boss went through 5 different assistants. I eventually packed my bags and moved to a different city for a fresh start.
    via Hopplafish
  • A week after my last day, my former boss texted me. He casually asked me to "please leave a review" for the firm. on a popular local job review site (basically our equivalent of Glassdoor). He genuinely thought we parted on great terms and assumed I'd drop a 5- star rating to boost their c py score. I just rolled my eyes and ghosted him.
    via Hopplafish
  • Fast forward to a few days ago. I checked the company's page and saw three brand new 4.5-star reviews posted in the same week. They were so obviously faked by management. They all used the exact same HR buzzwords ("great work-life balance", "amazing
    via Hopplafish
  • health benefits", which was literally just 15 minutes of stretching on Wednesdays, lol) and magically praised all the exact things people usually complained about.
    via Hopplafish
  • At this point, I remembered his text. He wanted a review? Fine. Let's comply.
    via Hopplafish
  • A man sitting with a laptop looks to the side and smiles
    via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

    A man sitting with a laptop looks to the side and smiles

  • I sat down and wrote a brutally honest, mathematically precise review. I kept it completely professional and entirely subjective ("In my experience...", "I felt that...") so they couldn't legally sue me to take it down. I gave them 1 and 2 stars in almost every category, explicitly
    via Hopplafish
  • mentioning the lack of support, the horrible communication, and the heavy workload.
    via Hopplafish
  • But I didn't stop there. While I was at it, I contacted the platform's support team and reported the three new 4.5- star reviews for manipulation, pointing out the identical wording and the fact that they were posted at the exact same time. Less than four hours later,
    via Hopplafish
  • two of the three fake reviews were nuked by the platform. The automatic spam filter probably caught them. because my boss was dumb enough to write them from the same office PC/IP address.
    via Hopplafish
  • With his fake reviews gone and my honest 1-star review dragging the average down even further, panic mode set in. How do I know? Because my ex-boss texted me again. This time the message was full of typos, desperately asking if I could please
    via Hopplafish
  • leave a good review to help them out. He has absolutely no idea that I am the one who tanked his rating and reported his fakes. I left him on read again.
    via Hopplafish
  • The cherry on top: A buddy of mine who still works there texted me yesterday. He said my review perfectly hit the nail on the head. He also mentioned that since the review dropped, management has suddenly been acting super nice and accommodating to everyone out of pure fear that more people will quit.
    via Hopplafish
  • TL;DR: Toxic boss asks me to review his company after I quit. He fakes his own positive reviews to boost the score. I report his fake reviews (getting them deleted) and leave the brutally honest 1-star review he specifically asked for. Boss panics and begs me again, not knowing I'm the one who ruined his score.
    via Hopplafish

Want More? Follow Us and Add Us as a Preferred Source on Google.

Tags

employee review workplace quitting
Scroll Down For The Next Article