Revenge is best served cold and the colder the better when it comes to terrible bosses. These stories are the coldest of the cold!
(Content edited for clarity)
Making A Person Go Mad!
“I won’t go into the details of my terrible boss, but, suffice to say, she was a nightmare — an incompetent micromanager with an additional side-order of petty evil.
Anyway, I got myself a small toy that makes a random ‘BLEEP!’ at odd intervals, between a minute and ten minutes; you know, the sort of ‘battery is almost dead’ bleep. I hid it where I knew she wouldn’t find it and watched over the course of a few weeks as her sanity and temper both got frayed beyond belief. She replaced her phone twice, her computer once, and never at any point stood a chance of finding the thing…because I’d hidden it inside her monitor.”
That’s Gotta Hurt
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“My father was working hard in an early IT/computer company (back in the late sixties). This is back when IBM was still known as International Business Machines.
He was the only one who knew how to support and he managed some of the large microcomputers that some of the customers had. His boss was giving him crap over my father wanting personal leave; my mother was just about to give birth to her first child, my eldest brother. He didn’t even want to allow my father to leave when my mother went into labor. My father lost his temper and told him off, saying how incompetent he was and how he was riding on other people’s talent. He quit right there and then and left for the hospital.
I still remember my mother telling me that my father came in, congratulated her on the birth and told her he had just quit his job. She laughs about it now, but you can imagine how she felt!
A day later, the owner of the company called my father and offered him his old boss’s job. The kicker? The old boss now had to report to my dad.
That’s gotta hurt.”
Dating His Daughter
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“I had a picture of my mom and me on my desktop (I know corny). This manager, Pat, kept commenting on how hot my mom was (he was about the same age as her). So after about a month of this, I asked my mom to jokingly call him and tell him he is a misogynist and a bad influence and whatnot. She did this, but they ended up talking for 30 minutes, and after that, he told everyone at the office that my mom was trying to pick him up. For the next year every time he saw me, he asked about my mom. At my five-year pinning ceremony, he told the story to a bunch of strangers and my bosses.
Fast forward a year, and I had just gone through a bad breakup of my longtime girlfriend, and this Pat guy kept coming in my office and telling me I needed to get out and start hooking up. He did this for about a month, so finally I asked a coworker what Pat’s daughter’s name was (she is around the same age as me). I found her on Facebook and asked her if she would help play a prank on her dad. I went out on a ‘date’ with Pat’s daughter and took a picture of the two of us drinking out of the same drink with two straws, then proceeded to put it in a heart-shaped frame on my desk. Then I got another manager to tell Pat that I got a new girl and I was head over heels for her. He came straight to my office and I didn’t say a word and all I heard from behind me was, ‘What are you doing with my daughter?’ To this day he hasn’t asked when my mom is calling next!”
Turnabout Is Fair Play
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“I had the worst boss when I worked for a logistics company (we will call him ‘David’). This particular company did not hire directly for dock workers, you had to go through a temp-to-hire service, and the Logistics Company had a 90-day window in which the dock supervisor, David, could call your temp agency and tell them your stint is over. The temp would be called into the office where David would look at them and say would a large, sadistic grin: ‘IT’S JUST NOT WORKING OUT.’
This prick would ridicule new temps about the way they dressed (industrial temp workers usually are quite poor), talked, mannerisms, you name it, in front of everyone at shift meetings. When a new batch of temps would start, he would pick an unlucky one out and ride him or her until they quit or made some minor mistake that he would chalk up to the temp agency as the reason this person is not working out.
David was married to some big-shot at a hospital in town; she was the breadwinner, so he had no problems with keeping some low-level job. To top it all off, David was also the only minority with a supervisory position, so the company didn’t want to fire him. David was simply a shift super for the dock, had no desires to be promoted because he had absolutely no responsibilities except to post an end-of-shift report, which he had one of the receivers do for him (that was my job). For two years I typed this jerk’s nightly reports, knowing full well he never witnessed any of it going on; he just sat in his office eating or riding the dock on a golf cart looking for reasons to fire new people.
Anyway, I got hired in as a temp, kept my head down through David’s nonsense and eventually got promoted to head of a different department away from him. Three years later the company decided that receiving (David’s department) was lacking direction, and decided to hire a department head for them. I got the job. I was now David’s boss.
He turned pale when it was announced the next day at work. I thought he was going to die on the spot. He knew that for years I witnessed every bit of the terrible things he had said and done to the temps. I showed up nightly for three months on his shifts to ‘monitor’ how David ran his shifts, watching him make stupid mistakes one after another; any one of these things I could have easily terminated him for, but held out and documented everything.
When it finally came time, I called him into my office, armed with months (years, really) of dirt to fire him for, but I simply looked at him and told him ‘David, it’s just not working out.'”
The Humbling Milkshake
“Back in my early 20s, I worked as a delivery driver at a bar/pizza joint close to the main college drag. After about 4 months of working there (just enough time to get in good with the rest of the staff), the owner hires a friend of his to manage the joint as the current manager had just left.
This guy was the epitome o the ‘power trip for no reason’ boss. He would call you out for little mistakes, make you stay late to help do his job, throw you under the bus when talking to the owner, always bail early, AND was convinced everybody liked him – the real deal. We even caught him stealing from our tip jars a couple of times but the owner never did anything about it.
Anyway – I had planned to go out one night with a girl I had just met and wanted to get off work a bit early, go home and wash the pizza smell off me. I asked, we’ll call him Donnie, if that was possible and he lost. his. cool. You would have thought I asked for a raise, bonus, and a 6-month vacation. Despite the fact that 3 drivers from the next shift had shown up already, he started shouting, ‘What, are you stupid?? We have 3 deliveries up!! You can stay until your shift is over.’
‘That’s cool,’ I thought. He is well within his, albeit jerkish, right to make me stay until my shift is over with. I sucked it up and started getting the last deliveries together. However, when he saw where I was taking one of the pizzas, he ordered (not asked) me to pick him up a chocolate shake from a drive-through joint close by. I flat out told him ‘No freaking way. You expect me to do you a favor when you won’t do me one? Suck it.’ I grabbed the pizzas and stormed out, Donnie yelling from the kitchen something like ‘Haha – [my name] is getting all political. Awww – I think he’s mad…’
Granted his past behavior had factored into how angry I was over something pretty minor but, I was freaking furious. The universe had reached its idiot quota and beckoned to me to teach this prick a lesson. As I was driving away from the last delivery, I called the store, got Donnie on the phone, apologized and said I would get him his milkshake, even pay for it. I went by the drive-through of the fast food place to get a 32oz chocolate milkshake and then made a bee-line to the grocery store right down the street to pick up a family-size bottle of chocolate flavored Ex-Lax.
I poured half of the shake out (for me to enjoy later, of course) and mixed in 13-15 oz of Ex-Lax. Remember: 2 tbsp will give you a healthy case of the runs. After giving it to him, he said something about it tasting funny but still managed to inhale it like a true fat boy. He didn’t even say thanks…
Fast forward three hours or so – date-lady and I are cruising the bars and head into the bar/pizza joint I worked at. Instantly, the cook makes eye contact with me and comes rushing over, practically falling over patrons. Barely able to contain himself, he tells me, in hysterics, ‘Donnie is having uncontrollable, violent, craps. He’s been in the bathroom since you left, has pooped his pants already, and is making this place smell like an open sewer.’ I go back to the kitchen and Donnie is nowhere in sight. Right as I start to talk to a fellow pizza slave, though, he comes rushing from the bathroom, pants half on/half off, one hand out in front and one hand holding his balloon knot shut. He had exhausted the ENTIRE RESTAURANT’S toilet paper supply and was heading to the bar next door.
Best part? He lived about 40 miles away and continued crapping himself periodically throughout the trip home.
Despite everybody knowing the true story, though, he never figured it out and blamed the fast food joint for his wild ride on the Hershey Highway. I think the whole ordeal humbled him a bit because he ended up turning into a decent guy.”
Calling Them Out
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“I worked as an installer in a remote office.
I traveled a lot for work, often spending weekends on site. This was fine with my old boss, who gave me a lot of leeway by letting me work from home, gave me comp time, etc.
After four years, I got a new boss. Also, the company laid off everyone in my office, about 100 people.
New boss insisted I come in any way (45-minute drive) to sit in an empty office, but I still had to travel Sunday through Friday, with no overtime and no comp time.
When I complained to HR, the HR manager told me that since I’m salaried, if they wanted me to work 80 hours a week, I would work 80 hours and I shouldn’t expect any compensation.
Everyone I talked to seemed to think this was true. Salaried does not get overtime. This didn’t make sense to me.
I called the local state department of labor office, told them what I did, what I’d been told. They told me to get a lawyer, and if they didn’t rectify this, for every dollar they owed me, they would have to pay the state 50 cents in penalties. Which is what I did.
In a matter of four months, I settled out of court, got a new job, got a severance, and made my boss do an exit interview where I told her if she’d been considerate and legally compliant, she wouldn’t have to scramble to cover for the next eight scheduled installs by flying people out from the East Coast and paying them overtime.”
The Queen Of Mean
“I had a verbally abusive boss who would make physically impossible demands and thought she was the queen of the workplace… which she was because her supervisors let her do whatever she wanted, even after I reported all this. So during one of her tantrums, in which about 12 hours of work is being laid on me at 4 p.m. that has to be done by tomorrow, I tell her, fine, I quit.
She exploded, ‘YOU CAN’T QUIT! YOU HAVE TO GIVE TWO WEEKS NOTICE.’
I responded, ‘What? No, I don’t, goodbye and good luck with all that work that needs to be done before tomorrow.’
Very satisfying.”
Distrust From The Start
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“My boss was a sad jerkwad that started at a failing dotcom at the same time as me. Within the first week, he decided he wanted to fire me even though he had no idea what I did (I was the only IT person at this point and was probably one of the more productive people in the entire building).
He told me I had a week to ‘turn things around’ or I was gone. First of all, there was no explanation as to what needed to be ‘turned around’ or what in particular was wrong.
I told him to shove it up his behind, and if he didn’t like it, I’d walk right there. He was a bit taken back by that, and after another nine months of being there, he was not quite as big a jerk, but still a jerk.
Fast forward another three months, and they decided they were going to fire him. The decision was based on information I had provided to them in regards to his lack of performance and wasting of company resources. The irony, right? The owners (against my recommendation) gave him advanced notice of their decision and let him stay for an entire day in his office without any supervision.
As I didn’t trust him, I was monitoring his activity very closely. I discovered that he was copying a large amount of data from our servers and deleting it. Additionally, he was cleaning out his contacts and other client-related information and copying all of this to a USB drive.
On the final day, the owners took him to lunch right before he was going to leave. I took the opportunity to ‘return’ all of the data he took (I had backups which I was going to restore; however, I didn’t want him to walk away with stuff that didn’t belong to him).
Finally, a couple of very incriminating emails ‘accidentally’ got forwarded to his wife. They were in his work account, and when I was removing the items that he took, they were discovered. He was cheating on her for months and was talking to this other chick about ditching his wife and scamming her out of the house and stuff and leave her with the kids. One had vacation pics of the happy cheating couple of as well. Not sure how that worked out, but hopefully for the better as the guy was a bit of a scumbag.”
Napping On The Job
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“I work nights in a group home for mentally disabled people, and I couldn’t stand one of my old coworkers. When I had to work with her, it felt like I was working with one of the residents, she was straight up dumb. Every single thing she did, she did poorly. Cleaning, medical care, cooking (she burnt Jello!), everything. I took to doing all of the direct care work with our residents because I didn’t trust her to care for them safely.
Anyway, she had a habit of sleeping on the job. A lot. Over the course of an eight-hour shift, she’d be asleep on the couch for five hours. At first, I didn’t even say anything because I was glad that I didn’t have to listen to her idiotic banter, but after a while, I started mentioning it to other coworkers, and my manager. She got a warning for it, but that’s it since it couldn’t be proven.
One night one of my residents got sick and had been taken to the hospital. She was released in the middle of the night, so my manager was bringing her back to the home at around 4 a.m. He called the house to let us know that they were on their way, and somehow the phone ringing didn’t wake up my dumb co-worker. I told him that she was sleeping, and he told me to let her sleep so he could catch her in the act. Just for fun, and to make the point that she wasn’t just ‘resting her eyes,’ I balanced a throw pillow on top of her head. He walked in, and I took our resident to her room to put her to bed. As I walked back out into the living room, he was staring at her, shaking his head. Finally, he jumped up and stomps both feet on the floor as hard as he can and yelled her name. She bolted awake and realized the deep doo-doo she was in. I lost it, and couldn’t stop laughing.
She was fired shortly after that, and a coworker told me that she had been moaning and complaining, saying that she was going to sue the company for discrimination. Apparently, she wasn’t ‘sleeping,’ she was ‘having seizures.’ Seizures that happened on a nightly basis lasted for 3-4 hours at a time, and that she didn’t bother to mention to anyone. Yeah, she tried to pull that crap on a company full of people that take care of folks with seizure disorders. Stupid idiot.”
The Old Toothpaste Trick
“Someone kept stealing my lunch at work, and me being the pacifist that I am, decided to mention it casually to my wife. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but these were the sandwiches that SHE made for me every day. She decided to make a special sandwich for me which consisted of bread and toothpaste. I put it in the fridge, and after lunch, it was gone. I don’t know if the sandwich was consumed, but I told HR about it, and they thought it was awesome. They gave me a $20 gift card to Outback Steakhouse.”
Getting Revenge Early
“I used to work as a developer for a company that makes EDI software. My boss was a paranoid, penny pinching, micromanaging dolt.
‘I know your contract says you can take an hour for lunch, but most people take just 15 minutes, and I think you should too’ and ‘I don’t see any reason why you should not make a habit of coming in 30 minutes early and leaving 30 minutes later.’
My main beef with him is that he refused to give me time off to be with my wife when her mother had only a few days left to live.
Our office was in a converted factory that was split into several units, my boss’ brother owned the building. Within that building, there was us, a karate studio and a nursery.
I had noticed that the fire alarm panel at the main door to the building never had any lights lit on it. It looked like there was no power going into it.
So I called the fire brigade.
The surprise inspection came 30 minutes later because there was a nursery in the building. I should point out just how beautiful it was to watch the inspection. The fire brigade sent round two young ladies, who looked more like salespeople and nothing like fire safety inspectors. They came into our office and asked to speak the building manager. My boss came out of his room with a big grin on his face to greet them. ‘Hi, I manage the building for my brother.’ ‘Great, we’re from the Dublin Fire Brigade and we are here to have a look at your fire safety systems.’ His jaw dropped.
The building owner got himself a conviction and a €10k fine and had to pay a crap load to get a new fire alarm system installed.
A few months later, when I was made redundant in questionable circumstances, I told my boss who called the fire brigade. It was a lovely feeling watching the color drain from his face.
I then launched a legal claim against him for unfair dismissal. I have enjoyed punishing him for the boorish way he treated me.”
Holding Them Hostage
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“I was a typesetter when it was still done on dedicated typesetting machines, not desktop. This was pretty specialized work and demanded pretty good pay.
I agreed to take one job at less than my usual hourly pay for six weeks while I learned their system, one I hadn’t used before. Well, six weeks came and went, and I didn’t see my promised raise.
In the meantime, the horrible shrew of a paste-up ‘artist’ went out sick, and I was left doing both type and layout. A critical project came up, and there was only me to do it. Without me, they’d be totally and royally messed up – even if they could find a typesetter who could do paste-up, there was just no time to run the ad, hire and train one.
I reminded the owner and manager of the raise I’d been promised when I was hired, and how long ago that was. Then I put all my personal desk items in a box and told them they had until the end of the business to make a decision.
I got my raise – retroactive to my hire date – by 5 p.m.”
Bringing In The Law
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“I used to have a boss who was a total jerk. He was the manager of the clothing store where I worked with six or so employees. He tried to hire young girls under legal working age, they were usually 13 or 14, so he could try and sleep with them. He harassed every girl he employed. I ended up having to phone our head office several times to stop him from hiring underage girls, and from harassing the employees. And by harassing, I mean groping, talking about all the dirty things he wanted to do to girls, etc.
He used to take two-hour breaks when we were short staffed/busy, paid himself overtime every week, and often would not show up for shifts, forcing the person who was already on staff to work overtime (which we wouldn’t be paid for, because he would modify all our time cards on the computer) until he decided to show up.
I also knew while he was working during his shifts, he would put on merchandise to ‘try it on for size,’ and would conveniently forget he had put it on and would leave with it.
It took a long time of planning to get my story straight with how I was going to catch him, but eventually, I got him to text me, admitting to having not paid for something he’d taken. One week later I used the texts as evidence to have him fired. Then I took him to court for all the threats/harassment he’d been doing over the last ten months of working with him.”
Winning The Unemployment Checks
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“The company I worked at for many years fired me without warning. My boss was a strange guy, and I had witnessed him fire other people without warning as well. He always offered to let people stay on for 60 days so they could find new work, but they would have to sign a document stating that they were ‘voluntarily’ walking off the job and waiving all right to unemployment.
When he fired me, he also gave me the option. I did not accept, as it seemed a lot better deal to have unemployment in case I could not find work inside of the 60 days. The company tried to appeal my unemployment, but after several years of loyal service, the only black marks on my record were from being less than 15 minutes late to work three times.
I let the judge in the unemployment hearing know that they offered to keep me on if I had signed away my right to unemployment. She let me know that it was against the law to do so and ruled in my favor.
Every weekly unemployment deposit was like a tiny victory until I found a new job.”
Catching The Managers Off Guard
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“Our company was giving employees an appreciation lunch and had requested a small group of employees to plan and execute the event.
On the day of the event, upper management got a stick up their butts and decided that the planning committee was using up too much company time. They told us that any of us who worked the luncheon (serving and cleaning up) would have to do it on our lunch breaks or stay late to make up the time. We, of course, found this unacceptable.
Prior to the luncheon, we had a huge meeting where all the managers and big wigs praised all the workers for a job well done and at the end asked if anyone had any questions or comments. I stood up and in a friendly manner said that we needed managers to volunteer to serve the luncheon. All you heard were crickets for about ten seconds and then a lot of whispering and scrambling as upper management made lower management raise their hands. It was so awesome to see them all using their lunch hour to serve us!”