Employee copies and sends company documents to competitors after company fires him and demands that he train his replacement before leaving: ‘He brought a USB drive’

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Aug 13, 2026 8:00 AM EDT

Don't do the action if you're not ready for the consequences…

Would you rather be fired and leave the workplace for good on the same day, or be given notice so you have a few weeks to prepare, but you still have to work for a company you know no longer wants you?

Neither option is great, if we're being completely honest. Getting fired is never a fun scenario, and whether you're told to pack up your bags and leave immediately or to go back to your desk and keep working, you lose either way. The option one would prefer probably depends on the attitude of the workplace that is letting you go.

If the company is apologetic and attempts to make it right by making the offboarding process as easy for you as possible, then you might feel okay about staying for a few weeks before leaving for good. If the company is anything like the one below, where they made a fired employee stay on for weeks to train his own replacement, no one should act surprised when that same employee uses the time he has left to plan revenge on the company that wronged him.

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  • Businessman in his office working late.
    via Getty Images

    Businessman in his office working late.

    Subject is a model.

  • My old company fired a guy, made him train his replacement and then acted surprised when things went badly

    (Sorry in advance if my English sounds a bit weird as it's not my first language.) I think notice period is kind of a dilemma.
    via Zetsuji
  • On one side, I think it is absolutely necessary. Firing someone on the same day, telling them not to come to office anymore, making coworkers collect their stuff
    via Zetsuji
  • etc. is just a sh y way to treat people. You basically leave someone unemployed without even giving them. some time to search for another job. But at the same
    via Zetsuji
  • time telling someone months before that you are going to fire them can also create some interesting situations.
    via Zetsuji

  • A scenario with no right or wrong answers.

    I used to work for a company in Japan. There was a coworker who was told a few months before that he was going to be laid
    via Zetsuji
  • off and management also gave him the new guy who was going to replace him and basically told him to train his own replacement.
    via Zetsuji
  • For weeks he taught the new guy everything. How to do each assignment, where the necessary files are, who he should email in which situation, what to do when
    via Zetsuji
  • certain problem happens etc. Basically all the knowledge he got from working there.
    via Zetsuji
  • Hand Inserts a USB Stick into Laptop
    via Mehaniq

    Hand Inserts a USB Stick into Laptop.

    Stock photo unrelated.

  • Then later we found out that during one of his last days, he brought an USB drive and copied a huge amount of company documents from the office PC.
    via Zetsuji

  • What a joke of a company...

    And when I say company PC, I don't mean he sneaked into CEO's office at night and hacked some super secure computer or something. The company
    via Zetsuji
  • was just terrible with IT security. We had shared computers and basically everyone could access almost everything. If you knew where the folder was,
    via Zetsuji
  • you could just directly access it. There wasn't much separating normal employees from a lot of internal documents. So the guy basically had an open buffet in front of him and copied whatever he could.
    via Zetsuji
  • Later apparently he gave some of those documents to a competing company, probably for money.
    via Zetsuji

  • When it comes to how a company should behave after firing someone, this company took the worst route. They could have told the guy to go home the same day and have a clean cut, or they could have let him have a few weeks to figure out his future. Instead, they decided to overwork him in his last weeks while training the guy they hired instead of him.

    No wonder he decided to teach them a lesson.

    While we don't know if anyone should take a risk as big as he did, we were rooting for him when it became clear what lesson he was trying to teach the company. If you don't want to keep an employee around, well, you shouldn't keep them around. Better to have the new guy start with no training than to risk keeping the old guy around for too long.

  • Obviously I'm not defending stealing company information. What he did has its own legal and ethical problems. But what
    via Zetsuji
  • surprised me was how shocked the management was when they found out. You literally told this person "we don't want you here anymore" then you make
    via Zetsuji
  • him spend weeks teaching his replacement everything he knows while still giving him access to basically all of your company files and
    via Zetsuji
  • somehow you expect exactly the same loyalty from him until his final day.
    via Zetsuji

  • This is the way...

    Again, a proper notice period should exist. People shouldn't suddenly lose their income with zero warning just because a
    via Zetsuji
  • company decided they are no longer needed. But if you tell someone months in advance that you're getting rid of them, make them train the person who will
    via Zetsuji
  • replace them and at the same time have almost zero access control on your internal documents, maybe don't act completely surprised when something goes wrong.
    via Zetsuji

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documents boss workplace-stories employee fired manager job tales-from-the-workplace workplace company
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