rSlash - r/Prorevenge I Took Down My Boss's Company

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

0:00 Intro 0:07 Terrible boss 10:32 Warehouse Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R slash Pro Revenge, where OP costs his company big time. Our next Reddit post is from Don't Be Mean or I'll Sue. A few years ago, I quit my career in the tech industry. This was after the company I was working for went public, and everything went downhill. I was sick of making money for the rich and needed some time to really live life. I proceeded to spend a few months traveling, working on home projects, and really doing whatever the hell I wanted. One day, about four months into my freedom, I was having lunch with my best friend and

and she told me, you need to stop being lazy and get a job. She'd recently been hired at a company in the construction industry and mentioned there was an opening. The opening was doing something I had zero experience in, but a change of career was appealing. I applied and promptly was given a phone interview. I spent a little time researching everything about this position, and after many interviews, managed to fake my way in. Turns out, the position was wildly different from anything I'd done before. It taxed me in ways I'd never experienced. Not only was my job stressful, my boss turned into a nightmare.

He had worked there since the company was founded. He was part of the good old boys club. Now, for everyone who doesn't know, the construction industry has virtually zero HR. This was close to a billion dollar company and was still the same way. My boss was a narcissist, sexist, liar, and downright jerk. Weirdly, most of that was directed towards others and not me. My best friend was the one person who took the brunt of it. It killed me to hear what he would say to her.

All of it took its toll on me. About three months into my employment, January 1st hit. I woke up at 2 a.m. in the morning with pain in my chest and my head racing a million miles an hour. Luckily, my roommate was a paramedic and happened to be home. I rush over to her room and yell that I think I'm having a heart attack. She comes out, takes my vitals, asks some questions, and determines that I'm most likely having a panic attack. Sure enough, I calmed down and managed to not die. I'd never had a panic attack up until then.

Throughout the following week, I continued to have flare-ups of chest pain and heart palpitations. I figure something could really be wrong, so I go to my doctor. He does a few tests and determines its most likely acid reflux. He prescribes some meds, and the following week is better. Then, one night when hitting home from dinner with my sister, boom, I get rear-ended at a stoplight by a drunk driver. No skid marks didn't even attempt to stop. I felt a bit of tightness in my back, so I decided to go get checked out at the hospital to be safe. I get there and they take my vitals. My blood pressure was on the moon, like 180 over 100. They take it about an hour later and

it's still high. They recommend I go to my doctor again. The next couple of weeks waiting for my doctor appointment is hell. I'm having daily panic attacks, chest pain, trouble breathing, massive fatigue, the whole gambit. Finally, I get to the day of my appointment, let the doctor know what's going on, and he determines I should go see a few different specialists and get all kinds of tests done to be safe. Throughout the next couple of months, I have everything poked and prodded. Because of the amount of tests that needed to be done, I missed a good amount of work. This turned my boss on me. He constantly complained about me being gone. All the while, not an ounce of my work was dropped. With my tech background, I also took it upon myself to start making reports and collecting data that I would

present to him on ways of improving the department and company. I later found out he would take these reports, which could save the company hundreds of thousands to potentially millions of dollars, and present them as his own to the owner. This made me furious and didn't help with my physical issues. However, slowly I made it through all the prescribed tests and they couldn't find anything physically wrong with me. Turns out, all the issues were created by stress and anxiety. Something I'd never had an issue with before. My doctor referred me to an amazing counselor that helped me learn how to manage the problems I was facing and get back to a reasonable state of mind.

Although, this never got to an acceptable level because of my boss. I started to email HR with my issues with him and things that I've witnessed with others. Most of this was met with unwillingness to help in any way. A dear coworker, whom everyone loved and respected, decided to quit out of nowhere. She, too, worked under my boss. In her interview, she gave the sole reason for quitting as my boss. She finally hit her breaking point, and enough was enough. However, because she was so well-liked, this prompted some questions from the owner and other senior management.

They wanted to know why my boss was the reason for her leaving. They had HR set up a meeting with us in the department and our boss to go over issues with him. We were all excited to finally, hopefully get the people that matter to listen. We have the meeting and we all lay out the issues with our boss and give a multitude of examples. I went a bit overboard and had an entire presentation. Turns out this was all a charade to cover my boss's butt. He was prescribed some management counseling, which I'm pretty sure he never did, and things continued on their merry way.

However, now, with the knowledge my boss had of our issues with him, he turned the volume up to 11. The constant berating, yelling, and write-ups came flowing out. It got bad enough that I started to secretly record every meeting with him. I saved every single email and documented every interaction with him. I continued to push for help from HR, but again, his status in the company kept him immune from any response. Thankfully, throughout all of this, I managed to keep my mental health in check thanks to my counselor's tools. I once again get sick, but this time it's a real cold and lasts a few

days, all of which is covered by government-mandated sick time. I come back to work, and not even a week goes by, and I get called into my boss's office with other senior management. I knew this wasn't good. My boss lets me know they're firing me for attendance. I'm gobsmacked. I've never been fired in my life, and I know that I was an asset to the company's success. I didn't slack off, I didn't miss deadlines, the attendance excuse appeared to just be what my boss thought would be the easiest way to get rid of me. Now, I live in an at-will state. You can be fired for basically any reason, except for a bad one. They presented me with a meager two-week pay severance. I declined signing it, packed my stuff up, and left. I knew the whole situation didn't feel right,

especially because I was familiar with the recent state laws that passed about sick time, and an employer not being legally allowed to fire you for using it. Because of this, I went to my mom, who's been in the law field her entire life, and got a referral for an employment law attorney. The day of my appointment with the employment law attorney couldn't come quickly enough. I'd gathered everything I'd collected from my time at the company and presented it to him. My phone recordings, the emails, the documented interactions, everything. After showing the attorney, he pushes back from his desk and says,

Holy shit, you have a hell of a case here. They messed up bad. A wave of relief flows over my body. Me thinking the only blatant violation was firing me for using sick time. I was taken aback when the lawyer explained that the company made four huge violations. The sick time violation wasn't anywhere near the top of the list. Here are some big things I learned from the lawyer. The meeting I had with my boss, HR, and the rest of the department where we all went over all of our

issues with the boss was a key piece of evidence for one of their biggest violations. I learned that this type of meeting is considered protected concerted activity, and it was covered under the National Labor Relations Act. The act protects against retaliation for having this kind of meeting. According to my lawyer, all of my boss's activities following that meeting can be considered retaliation. When it comes to health issues and how they affect you at your workplace, make sure you document every interaction with your employer. It's important to show that you made an effort to let them know of your complications and how they may affect you at your workplace. I sent countless emails

to HR letting them know of my mental health issues and their failure to make accommodations was a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Having recordings and documentation of how your employer interacts differently with females and males is important to prove a violation of the Civil Rights Act. After all this, the lawyer stated I had three options. One, I could retain him and we could file a lawsuit. He explained that would be expensive and take a lot of time. However, it would most likely result in a good amount of money. Option two, I could file claims with all the departments that cover the violated acts. He explained that some of these departments can take years to investigate and process the claims. However, for some of them, especially the violation of the

National Labor and Relations Act, the investigation can be absolute hell on the employer. This would probably be the biggest FU to the employer. Option 3. I go back there myself and renegotiate the severance. This was the quickest and easiest option. This option sounded very appealing. I really didn't want to drag this out for multiple years. I told the lawyer that option 3 was most likely my choice, and he mentioned that I should probably start negotiations at nine months of severance and full benefits. After consulting with people close to me, I decided to go with option three. I met with HR and senior management, explained that I consulted with an employment law attorney, stated all the acts that he feels they

violated, and I asked for nine months severance. After a couple of weeks negotiating with their attorney, we settled on six months of severance with full benefits. It's been a few years since this all happened, and it makes me feel overwhelmingly happy thinking about it. In the end, I found an absolutely amazing job in the same industry. My ex-boss ended up being moved to a position that wasn't in management, and hopefully nobody will ever have to go through what I and others went through at that company again. O.P., I'm glad you got your happy ending. This is some amount of revenge. I don't know if I would call this pro-revenge, especially for, what did you say, a billion-dollar company? I mean, they won't even feel it. Your boss didn't seem to feel it either. Our next Reddit post is from deleted.

With all the COVID stuff going on, I was working some small jobs just to stay working. Namely, I was working at a Walmart and also at Lowe's. Well, as things eased up a bit more, job opportunities opened up, and I interviewed for warehouse manager at a company that I'll call neurotic company. I was immediately offered the job, though at a pay rate that I thought was a joke for a manager. Still, it was much better than Walmart. They put me on an hourly rate of pay and gave me a 50 hour a week schedule to meet my minimum income expectations. The pay was insulting in some ways because of the range of things the owners wanted me to be able to do, including welding, plumbing, electrical, and carpentry, all on top of managing.

The warehouse had gone through a short shutdown because of COVID and was ramping back up slowly. I managed a day crew of two that had been there forever, a night crew that at the moment had one person and four drivers, that had been there a while. My hours aligned mostly with the night crew, as they needed the most help, and the daytime guys could handle it well enough. So I managed at this warehouse for eight months. That was all I could take. In that time, the owner slowly eroded my power. I watched him tell countless lies, change his mind on things at random, and change our working hours at the drop of a hat. He was a butthole. Also, the whole place was covered in cameras, and he would come in to talk to us about very specific things he'd watched us do on camera while he was sitting at home. It was disturbing.

Turnover was huge, as the owner would simply piss people off and they would leave. It made my job impossible. But the other managers would tell me to hang in there, that he'd be gone soon. Eventually, I had a crew that was loyal and worked for me. The only problem was, if I wasn't in, they would call out to avoid working with the owner. Then, finally it came that the owner was supposed to move to Florida to be near his grandson. His wife was making him. I think he wanted to stick around and just run the business into the ground. A couple of days before he left, the owner took me aside and gave me a huge write-up for all sorts of dumb stuff that was untrue. And then yelled at me for an hour saying things like, I bet you're sitting there thinking how can this place make any money without me? Well, I was

successful before all of you by myself and so forth. This, of course, was a lie. He'd been given the company by his father, and it survived largely on loyalty from the customer base, and a single product that they were the exclusive distributor for in the region. As he left for Florida, he sent an email naming out the management team, excluding me. So I told the other managers, I felt like I was being treated like a supervisor rather than a manager, and I would therefore act like a supervisor rather than a manager. I started looking for a new job. I planned to give a normal two weeks notice and live peacefully. Then one night, I had a funny feeling and it made me take most of my personal stuff home for whatever reason. The next morning, the stated management team took me into the

office and fired me. The notice they gave me simply said, you're terminated for insubordination, and they refused to cite an incident. To this day, I'm convinced that the owner watched me take my personal tools home on camera from Florida, and then called up as managers and said, fire him first thing. Then the revenge. On my drive home from being fired, I called my workers one at a time and told them what happened, said I'd enjoyed working with them, and if they ever needed a reference, I'd be happy to help. I had a fantastic crew at this point, all good people, despite hating the owner. A few hours later, the call started coming in. The entire crew had called out for the night. I had a good giggle about it, but two days later, I started to do.

to get more calls. To the man, the entire warehouse night crew had quit in loyalty to me. I was told that they'd been offered $4 an hour raises to stay, and they all refused them. After the warehouse workers quit, I got a call for my favorite driver. He told me that none of the drivers had certifications for driving the trucks that we had, and suggested I reported to the Department of Transportation. From what I heard, the owner had to come back from Florida at his wife's protest to take back over the company. The only people they could get for the new night shift was a druggie whom they fired previously

when he got naked in the warehouse while high on LSD, and a guy whom they previously fired for making too many mistakes. Deliveries were truncated for some time because they could only use the van instead of the 30-foot box trucks they had while the drivers got certified. Oh, and as I understand it, there was also a hefty fine. Yes, it is possible they quit out of loyalty to you. I think it's probably more likely that the buffer between them and the terrible upper management was removed when you were fired. So they said, this is it. I'm getting out of here before things get worse. That was our slash pro revenge. And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.