‘How firing me backfired for my boss’: Textile company tries to dodge severance by dragging out a firing, but boss's own delays and paperwork mistakes force him to pay two months of unworked salary plus full severance and a 10% penalty.

Author image for Etai Eshet
Etai Eshet • Editor
Sep 15, 2026 7:15 AM EDT

Just like there are people who see the law as advice, there are bosses who treat employment law like a suggestion box and wonder why it bites them later, you know where. 

This one spent years yelling at staff, denying it on camera, and assuming nobody would ever push back. Then he met an employee who understood the rules well enough to turn a firing into a slow-motion financial trap.

The plan started simple enough: put the worker on a special government leave, stretch it with extensions, and hope they found another job so the company could dodge severance. It worked for a while, until paperwork due dates did what paperwork due dates do. An extension request arrived late, gov said no, and suddenly two months of paid leave became two months of paid nothing, billed directly to the boss.

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  • How firing me backfired for my boss

    Man holds a large roll of floral fabric inside a textile warehouse filled with colorful fabric rolls
    via dotshock

    Textile worker carrying a fabric roll

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

  • I used to work for a big textile company that shipped internationally. My boss was a literal sociopath and cared about no one but himself, and making money. I was treated
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  • extremely poorly to say the least, him being the literal reason why I deal with constant anxiety nowadays. To give just one example, I remember a
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  • girl quitting because he yelled at her and made her have panic attack, forcing her to go back to work while she was still having the attack. Later
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  • he denied doing it or being the reason for it, all this while the footage of him yelling at her was being playing in the room.
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  • Man holds a large black fabric roll in a textile warehouse surrounded by colorful bolts of fabric as he examines a rack of fabric rolls.
    via dotshock

    Textile company employee on the job

    Representative only.

  • Anyway, I had wanted to leave for years, but in my country you get paid when you're fired (both by the government, and the company, a sum
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  • increasing with every subsequent year of work at the place). So I just kept waiting and hoping I would get fired.
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  • One day it finally happens. I'm told by boss, in a nonchalant manner that I'm too expensive and not needed. However, he will not fire me yet! He
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  • will put me on a special gov. status which is a sort of paid leave, which can last a certain amount of months. It's a time for the company to prepare
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  • finances to fire you or to find out if they want to keep you after all, while not having to pay you (the government pays you a percentage of your salary while it lasts.)
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  • Now, there are guardrails so you can't ab e this as a company, but extensions are a thing if all parties involved want them. Anyway, i'm put on leave and for 2 months get paid by the government. Cool.
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  • As the 2 months are about to be over, I'm contacted by boss and given a paper to sign, where it says that alongside him we ask for an extension
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  • of the special leave. Clearly he wanted to ab e the system as much as possible, since he wasn't lacking money to pay me a salary or fire me.
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  • But more than that, he hoped (as well as the government, which is partly why this special leave exists) that I would get another job, at which point I would be considered to have left
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  • At that point, the only legal moves were to keep the employee or fire them properly. He chose fire, then tried to negotiate the severance like a car sale. His stunning offers were Full pay over six months. Less money faster. Even less money with a recommendation letter. A tiny fraction of what was owed, plus a promise to lie to future employers about how the job ended. How generous can one man be??

  • voluntarily and get no money from any party. Not happening. So I sign the paperwork and enjoy two more months of doing nothing while getting paid.
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  • All the same, in his incompetence, I would soon find out that he messed up...
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  • Another 2 months of extension go by, and he calls me to the office. Once there, he looks ped. I try to be cheery since I know it will him off even more, and ask how's everything?
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  • Turns out, not fine. Since he took so long to send the request for an extension, the extension was not approved, and he found out
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  • yesterday. Meaning, these last two months will have to be paid fully by him, while I didn't work a single day. Lovely.
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  • At this point he has no choice but to either keep me or let me go right now, and he says he will fire me. Great. However, I see him being a bit too elaborate and verbose in the way he's phrasing it, so I expect some ploy of his coming.
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  • Indeed, he says that he has worked out a few options for my sake as to how the process of paying me will go. He offers me the following options:
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  • Oh and did I mention the tiny itty bitty problem that is that ALL of it ignored the basic fact that once someone is fired, the clock starts ticking? Pretty impersive to thing to ignore when you are an employer. And, you know, employ employees.

  • . • I can take the full mandatory payment I'm entitled to, but he'll pay it over the course of 6 months. ⚫ I can take 80% of the payment, but paid over the course of only 3 months.
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  • • I can take 60% of the payment, but he'll pay it all immediately today. •⚫ I can take 40% of the payment, paid today, and he'll add a recommendation letter on top. • I can take 20% of the payment, paid today, he'll add a recommendation letter on top, and he'll say I willing quit and wasn't fired.
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  • I'm keeping a poker face as he says all this and writes it down. He looks at me and smiles, and says to "take my time", and "think about this carefully, because so many employers care
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  • about whether you quit or not, and a recommendation letter does wonders!". I nod as if I was being enlightened.
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  • To say his offers were disrespectful would be a big understatement. This is no small amount of money we're talking about. I've worked for almost 20 years with this company and the
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  • mandatory payment is HUGE - and well deserved. He's trying to get me to voluntarily give up 80% of my compensation.
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  • I say I'll think about it, and go home. Then I do what you should always do, which is to text him asking a few questions while clearly outlining that
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  • he has just fired me, so as to put in paper that this is definitive. Once it's clear I'm fired, I take a few days to "think" about it.
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  • You see, once you're fired in my country, the employer has 7 days to legally pay you what they must, otherwise they're forced to pay you by the government, with a 10% extra
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  • on top for your troubles. Meaning that even in his "options", the full payment must be done 7 days from the time he texted me I'm fired,
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  • regardless of his preference - unless, of course, I agree to a deal with him, which I haven't.
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  • Either way, boss forgets to text back asking me whether I made my choice, and I'm just biding my time.
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  • By the time he texts, it's been over 2 weeks. I tell him that I'm not comfortable with any of the options
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  • So the system in our guy’s south american country says the company has seven days to pay what is owed. Miss that time limit, and gov steps in, pays the worker, and adds a penalty on top. Our guy waited, confirmed the firing in writing, let the days pass, and then asked a simple question: where is the payment, and where is the extra ten percent for the delay?

  • he presented me, and that I believe it's been over 7 days from the moment I was fired, so where was my payment?
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  • He goes silent for a couple hours, checking legal guidelines no doubt. By the time he texts back, he just sends one line: "The payment is
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  • done." I check my bank, and lo and behold, he's missing the 10%. I smirk. "I believe I'm missing an extra 10% for the delay", I say. He goes silent. An
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  • hour later I get a simple "Done" from him and the payment. Props to him for not raging on a written medium | could use against him later. I send a thank you and it doesn't register as sent, seems he immediately blocked me.
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  • Funny to add that If he had waited a couple more days to text me there would have been an additional 10% on top, but didn't happen.
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  • And that's the story. I'm sure other employees got fed by him in the past for not knowing their rights, but at least I got my petty revenge for all those years.
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  • Silence, then a bank transfer, then another transfer after the penalty was mentioned. No need for angry rants or threats, just a block button hit as soon as the money was sent. The boss learned that intimidation works only until someone reads the contract, knows the timeline, and refuses to sign away their rights for a nice letter.

    How do you say “show me the money” in textile?

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