rSlash - r/Prorevenge I Killed My Own Boss

Episode Date: January 28, 2024

0:00 Intro 0:09 Work bully 10:30 Timeshare scam Visit BetterHelp.com/RSLASH today to get 10% off your first month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Rob Gronkowski and last year I missed a fan duel kick of Destiny during the Super Bowl I spent the last year reflecting Meditating hanging out in Himalayan salt caves anything to get the image of that hook kick out of my head So when Fan Duel called and asked if I give it another go I jumped at the chance to lace them up for a shot at redemption. What's this? He's going to try again. And this year, I won't miss. The kick of Destiny 2 is here.

This time, you get to pick if Gronk will make it or miss. Make your free pick now in the FanDuel Sportsbook Gap and watch the FanDuel Kick of Destiny live on Super Bowl Sunday. Make every moment more with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to

you, please contact Connex Ontario at 866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge or go to connexontario.ca. Please play responsible. Welcome to r slash pro revenge, where a guy literally dies because he decided to mess with the IT guy. Our next Reddit post is from deleted. I work in the UK for a large technology company doing software support. I'm part of a team that has members all over the world. I've been in this job for about 10 years and other than the major issues I've had with this guy, I truly enjoy my job.

When I started with this company, I wouldn't say that I was green. I had about seven years of industry experience under my belt. I was definitely inexperienced with the company, but the job that I'd been hired to do used technologies that I was more than comfortable with. The point I'm trying to convey here is that I wasn't completely oblivious to all the applications supported by our company. Everyone in my team, around 30 of us, were very nice and were very keen to help, except for Shane. Shane is probably what most people would call the team guru.

About five years from retirement, part of the office furniture, metaphorically, we all worked from home. And he'd been with the company for nearly 40 years. Everyone labeled Shane as the only guy to go to when you were truly in a bind. When I was initially starting out, I did indeed find that Shane was highly knowledgeable and more often than not had the answers to whatever obscure questions you might have. Things were

great and our team ticked over nicely. I got to know the rest of the team well over time too, and my best friend was a woman named Mel. She was a similar age and experience level to Shane, and in my opinion was just woman named Mel. She was a similar age and experience level to Shane, and in my opinion was just as knowledgeable as Shane was. One day, Mel and I were on a brief call chatting about a work issue when we got to shooting the breeze for a while. We talked about ourselves and also the team. I said that I hadn't met anyone face to face yet, and that was when she told me that she once met Shane in person a couple of years ago. They're both based in the US, I'm in the UK, and they both got invited to a tech conference in New York.

She told me that he has serious health issues due to his weight, about 450 pounds. And when he was home, he was often on oxygen and medication. His plan was to ride things out until he was able to take early retirement so that he didn't need to worry about paying for his medical insurance anymore.

That sounded like a reasonable enough plan to me, and we were soon talking about something else. The issue started about two years into my tenure with the company. We started moving in a new direction with what applications we were going to be offering to customers, and to that end, we got trained on a bunch of new stuff. I saw this as a great opportunity and equalizer. If no one on our team had any experience with this new software, then I would be on equal footing with everyone.

This went really well for me, and I put a lot of time and effort into learning as much as possible. Shane didn't show much interest in the new stuff. He continued to spend most of his time with the legacy tools. In team meetings, you could clearly tell that he was getting pissed off that his status as a guru was gradually becoming more and more meaningless. This wasn't anything personal. We work in software, you have to adapt in order to remain competitive.

As time went on, it was becoming clear to the team how much work I was putting in, and I was well on the way to becoming the go-to guy for the new software. During this time, Shane would start sniping at me for anything he could possibly manage. For example, if I was late to a team meeting because a customer call overran, he'd make sure to interrupt whatever was being said to comment something like, Oh look, OP has bothered to grace us with his presence, even though he'd been guilty of the same thing in the past. Things like email chains too. Almost anything I sent out that included him

and our boss on an email, he would reply with some unrelated complaint or observation, completely irrelevant to what was actually being discussed. One day, Mel called me and asked me what my beef with Shane was. I truthfully told her that I didn't have any beef at all with them, and he just seemed to have it out for me. Mel said that if she managed to find anything out,

she'd let me know. Things continued like this for a couple of years. I continued to be the go-to guy, and he continued to try to discredit me, and generally paint me in as bad a light as possible. One day, we had a major incident. One that literally could have cost the company millions in government fines if it wasn't solved quickly. Our manager split us into teams at troubleshoot specific areas and she paired me up with Shane. I wasn't happy about it, but whatever, I was a professional. We got on the call and started working through the issue. As our call progressed, it became abundantly clear why he didn't like me.

He knew nothing about the software we were using. He hadn't done any work on it at all. Everything I asked him to check, he needed handholding, even for the most basic of tasks. Eventually, I just shared my screen and said for him to watch me. I went into the guts of the system through so many logs, explaining to him what I was doing the whole time. And eventually, I found the problem was with the recent patch that we had installed. At this point, he dropped the call.

I didn't think anything of it at the time. We used Skype for business and it can be flaky, so I just continued what I was doing. Our process was to not roll back any changes until it had been approved by the senior manager. Since I was the only one responsible for deploying and rolling back patches, I made some notes about what we needed to do and then rejoined the main call. I wasn't worried at all because bad patches happened every so often. They just didn't usually have this level of impact. As soon as I joined the call, I got absolutely destroyed by the incident manager.

Apparently, Shane had returned to the group call and told everyone present that the outage was caused by an error that I had made in the deployment process, and that Shane had told me what the correct fix was and I refused to implement it then and there. I was furious. He had accurately told them the cause of the problem because it was me who literally demonstrated to him how to find it. I even foolishly mentioned to him what I thought would fix the problem. Because of how long Shane had been with the company compared to me, only our immediate

team knew the truth about who was really the better skilled person in this situation. Shane's historical reputation still carried a lot of weight with people who didn't work day to day with him. Because this incident was so major, over 100 people were on this call. Several of them, two or three levels of management above our team. He made me out to be a reckless, incompetent idiot, and he was believed. Despite my manager's protestations, I was disciplined and given a verbal warning. Meanwhile, Shane was congratulated for steering the company away from a potential disaster

and given a commendation. I was so angry and a while later, Mel gave me a call. Apparently, Shane had been bragging to her about putting that smart-ass punk in his place. She was shocked and asked him what he was talking about. His real beef was that he thought that I had disrespected him by trying to take over his role as the go-to guy for the new software. That wasn't my intention at all. I didn't see it as my fault that he was too lazy to do the work again. I lamented with Mel that she should have recorded the call. She laughed and said that Skype shows when you're recording a call and he'd never

have spilled his guts while being recorded. I immediately had a brainwave. I decided that I would confront Shane one on one. I pinged him on Skype and said that we should talk. He responded with a smiley and said, sure, I called him and let him know that I was recording this call. Also, the Skype notification popped up to let all participants know the call was being recorded. I went right forward and accused him of lying about a major incident and said that it seemed

like he had a major beef with me. As expected, he lied and said that he was sorry that I felt like I had to react this way. He said that he would need to talk to our boss about it. I said, wait one second, and turned off the Skype recorder, and then said that Skype isn't recording, and he knew exactly what he'd done. At that point, his mask slipped. He said that he was perfectly in his right to put me in my place.

He said that I need to respect the longer serving people in jobs like this, and that he would do it again in a heartbeat. I didn't hold back. I called him a dinosaur who refused to move with the times and wanted to coast out his days here without doing any work. He said that he was a couple of years away from retirement and he'd be damned if he was going to bust his butt for some shiny new software. I said to him, speaking of new software, have you heard of OBS?

Of course he hadn't and I suggested he google it. Then I hung up on him. Not long after, the message just started. He was begging me not to use the secret recording that I had taken. He said that if he gets fired, he'll lose his retirement package and his medical benefits. I told him to go eff himself, and that he should have considered that before trying to get me fired. I passed all of this onto the relevant channels before really giving it any thought.

Things were set into motion, and sure enough, a few weeks later after a company investigation, he was fired. I heard from Mel that he had asked to take early retirement so that he could keep his benefits, but apparently that was rejected. It all came out later that apparently Shane had significant debts and that he was counting on his retirement package to keep him financially afloat. With no job and no retirement package, he had no money to pay for his medical treatment which he badly needed.

He was in no state to get himself a new job and his skills had stagnated so badly that he couldn't even get a new job online. Mel later told me that Shane died about six months after this whole incident due to his ongoing health issues. I felt conflicted about this for a while. Sharing that recording obviously contributed to his death, but I don't know how bad I feel about it. I'm a young guy trying to build my career

and he actively tried to destroy me. I should have maybe held off when he pleaded for me not to reveal the truth, but he was old enough and wise enough to not engage in the childish games he played. If I'd known that he'd be dead as a result of this, I'd have maybe done things differently. It's one that stays with me, that's for sure. I'm still at the company, and I can tell you that I will never treat a new employee the way that he treated me.

So maybe the breaking of that cycle is the one positive thing to come out of all this. OP, I understand why you feel guilty about it, but I wouldn't feel guilty in this situation. You didn't get him fired, he got himself fired. You didn't give him these health issues, these are HIS health issues. This story is basically like Shane dug a grave and then tried to push you into it but you stepped out of the way and he fell into it himself, so this is his fault, OP. Our next read is posted from GatorboyActual. This story is about a friend of mine, a big dude, maybe 6'3", 250 pounds and a no-nonsense

military non-commissioned officer. He likes his booze and likes to have a good time when he's off the clock. I'll call him JB. One day, we get one of those, when a free, week-long cruise all expenses paid phone calls. He decides to look into it because why the hell not? He calls the number back and gets a lady on the other end who gives him a rundown of how the cruise thing works.

It sounds too good to be true, so he asks her, is there some timeshare BS or other strings attached to this? She assures him that no, there's not. He goes for it and signs up for a cruise a few months later during a block of leave. Now, in order to claim the cruise, he and his wife had to show up a day early to a hotel near the port where the cruise was departing.

The room is paid for already and it's part of the cruise package. They show up the day before and check in with the front desk. The concierge asks if they would like to upgrade to the VIP package for just 20 bucks, which includes free drinks at the hotel bar. Hell yes, he takes the upgrade and hits the bar! JB is a social drinker, and when he gets liquored up, he starts socializing with the other bar patrons. He finds out that they're also there for the crews, and that there's a mandatory presentation the next morning that everyone has to go to.

JB starts to smell a rat. This sounds an awful lot like a timeshare scam. Well, he's having none of it, and being good and drunk, he rallies all the crews' goers around him, about 30 people, gets up on the table, and delivers a William Wallace-style speech about how they don't have to deal with these timeshare scam artists. Within minutes, he's whipped the crowd into a frenzy and convinced everyone there not to buy into whatever the presentation is selling. Sure enough, the next morning everyone shows up to the presentation to claim their cruise.

They're told the tickets will be given to them at the conclusion of the presentation. JB is drunk again because, well, free booze and he's on leave. JB starts to go back into Braveheart mode, getting real loud about how this is a scam and he was told explicitly that there were no timeshare B as attached to this cruise. Well, the timeshare people instantly recognize that JB is bad for business, so they usher him away from everyone else into a side room and try to talk some sense into him. The Time Share person says, Sir, this is a mandatory presentation.

We can't give you the ticket for the cruise unless you go to this. JB said, BS, y'all specifically said that there was no Time Share involved in this cruise. Sir, we have all of our calls recorded, and it was very clearly outlined that you need to listen to this presentation. Good, let's pull up my recording and you show me exactly what they said. At this point, the timeshare's big, beefy security looking dude tries to intervene because JB is getting louder and more angry.

The security guy put his hand on JB's shoulder and said, Sir, we're gonna have to ask you too. Back up, mother effer! I will rip off your head, crawl down your neck and out your butthole! At this point, it's clear that they can't let JB into the presentation or he'll ruin everything. So, the director of the program pulls JB into his office. Basically, he tells JB that they listened to his call and he's right. The lady had said that there was no time-share involved. The director admits that they listened to his call and he's right. The lady had said that there was no time-share involved. The director admits that they aren't able to print his ticket until

12.30pm, the time the presentation is scheduled to end, because the company locks the tickets in order to force people to go to the presentations. The director guy says, come back at 12.30pm, I'll have your tickets and I'll upgrade you to premium for free if you just don't go anywhere near our presentation. Too easy. JB does exactly that and then hits the boat. The premium tickets were like the best cabin in the boat and, again, free booze and all sorts of awesome upgrades including $5,000 in his account. Turns out, everyone else who had to sit through the timeshare presentation almost missed the boat because it went so long. Not a single person bought a timeshare, and the presenter spent hours trying to convince

them to. Eventually, they gave up and handed everyone their tickets and defeats. In total, they made $0 in sales and lost another $5,000 to JB's free premium upgrade. I went to one of these with my wife, then girlfriend at the time, back when we were when we had first met. So I guess we were probably close to like 24 or something. We flew to Florida and we were planning on hitting, you know, Disney World and Universal Studios and just sightseeing in Florida in general.

And I think the tickets were to Disney World for free. And we go to this presentation and and we have been assigned some older guy, but the second he saw how young me and my girlfriend were, he immediately pawned us off to this other younger guy who I guess was new to the company. Because obviously, since we're this young, we didn't have a lot of money to blow on time shares. Anyways, they gave us the pitch and I just said, look, I'm not really here for the time shares, I just want my ticket, so say what you gotta say, but we're not interested. And then the guy just started bragging.

He started bragging about how much money he makes. I guess to make himself feel better or to make me feel worse? I don't know. But in any event, thanks for the free tickets, dudes.