'You'll never lock your office': Fired employee gets back at boss by hiding the keys to his office on their last day of the job

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Oct 12, 2026 7:15 AM EDT

Have you ever worked for a boss who knew nothing about their business?

Almost every workplace has that one person who is so "high up" that they have forgotten what it's like to actually run the business. Even though they were there from day one, they have no idea how to operate the cash register, they don't know the prices of anything, and it takes them hours to find even the most common item at the office. At some point, their lack of involvement in their own business becomes almost comical, especially when you compare yourself to them and realize that without you, their business is likely to fall apart. If they weren't making ten times as much as you do, you might have even felt sorry for them.

When the boss below announced he couldn't find the keys to his office, there was one employee who considered helping. They knew of a basket in the back office with random keys, and figured the office keys could be hiding in there. After going through the keys, the employee did find the keys that open the boss's office, but before they could hand them over, the employee was abruptly fired. While there was still time to help the boss with the keys, you can imagine that losing one's job doesn't make them want to help the person who fired them…

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    Keys on a wooden desk.
    via Filip Szalbot

    Keys on a wooden desk.

    Image for illustrative purposes.

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    Fire me? You’ll never get to lock your office.

    This happened a couple of years ago, but I was reminded of it recently. I worked a job at a really tiny company with a boss who was nice to your face, but
    via Bookish_Lish
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    completely incompetent. To the point that he literally said "that's not my job" about running a register that had probably been there as long.
    via Bookish_Lish
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    as he had that he had no idea how to use. When I first started, he had recently moved into his office, which hadn't been used in a while, and mentioned that he
    via Bookish_Lish
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    hadn't found the keys for it yet. Well, this job involved me sitting around by myself for literally hours alone waiting for customers. In the
    via Bookish_Lish

  • There are two ways to handle a boss like that: you either roll your eyes and ignore their incompetence, or you try to help them. Whether or not you actually like them as a boss will determine which course of action you decide to take. 

  • 06
    back office, there was a huge basket of random keys that I started going through one day to find what they went to. Not all were successful,
    via Bookish_Lish
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    but I remembered my boss's lament and decided to try the unknown keys on his door. Lo and behold, I found a match. Unfortunately for
    via Bookish_Lish
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    him, I pretty much only worked on Sundays and never saw him in person, so I put the key on an empty keychain I found laying around and stuck it in the
    via Bookish_Lish
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    back office desk. A couple weeks later, I was fired without notice and without a reason given (technically I was still on probation). I never told my boss I found a
    via Bookish_Lish
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    key to his office, and to my knowledge he still doesn't. know that said key is sitting maybe 50 feet away from the door. I can only hope that he never finds it.
    via Bookish_Lish
  • 11
    Employee at a cash register.
    via Simon Kadula

    Employee at a cash register.

    Models pictured are not representative.

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    EDIT: I had been planning of telling my boss about this key before I left and hadn't had the chance to. I actually really liked this job, but the
    via Bookish_Lish
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    manager in question was bad enough that I had been thinking about quitting anyway. I have a much better job now. The field I work in is really small and local and I
    via Bookish_Lish
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    had a friend recently quit their job at this same place explicitly because this guy was so bad at his job. I don't think about it much, but it
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    made me chuckle knowing that the solution to a minor inconvenience he mentioned is sitting so close and yet so far. Also, I was fired via email
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    on my day off not by my boss, but by a random person in HR I never met before. I called my boss to try to get feedback and arrange a time to turn in the keys I
    via Bookish_Lish
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    did have, and I got the most corporate generic answer via email. I had every intention of telling him about it before I left and had the chance to, but didn't.
    via Bookish_Lish

  • If you were in this employee's shoes, would you have done the same, or would you have taken this “revenge” a step further? Many of us would not want to cause any problems for a business, even after they fired us. But if you had a chance to get a small payback and get away with it, no one would blame you for taking it. 

    There were many things this employee could have done with the keys to the boss's office. They could have locked the room before leaving the keys lying around, or they could have even taken the keys with them on their last shift to really make sure no one would find them. There were plenty of ways to create a major inconvenience for the boss as a little payback for firing the employee without even supplying them with the reason.

    That being said, it wouldn't take long to change the locks, and it is better for this employee to leave without having anything linked back to them, so they did the right thing. They got a little satisfaction without getting in trouble; wouldn't you agree?

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    radiofirey I kinda wish you'd locked his office before you left and threw away the key.
    via radiofirey
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    MikeSchwab63 Should have put them in the cash register.
    via MikeSchwab63

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