20 Simple Tactics Employees Used To Get Petty Revenge On Their Awful Bosses

Plotting the perfect revenge plan takes skill and finesse and boy-oh-boy do the following tales ooze those in spades. You gotta hand it to some folks, they really know how to play the game and the rest of us should take some notes. Taken from the r/pettyrevenge and r/MaliciousCompliance threads; let’s dive into the juiciest collection of perfectly executed petty revenge plans where the employee gets the last laugh against an annoying boss. 

#1

Image source: SadGravel

Boss said I wasn’t using enough Wet Floor signs while mopping

#2

Image source: valheru1000, Erik Mclean

Some years ago I was working in a petrol station, run by an Indian chap and his family. I was casual and only did Friday and Saturday nights, and sometimes a shift to cover someone who was sick.
Anyway, the boss got a bee in his bonnet about driveoffs. (That’s when someone fills up and then leaves without paying.) According to his little fantasy world, that was the fault of not only the driver, but of the person on service. He decides, without consultation that he would simply deduct the cost of the drive off from the wages of the person on till.
I came into work on Friday night, collected my pay from the drawer, and found I was about $120 short. As I generally only earned about $300, this was a big chunk. I rank the boss and inquired why my pay was short. He explained that as I’d had two drive offs, totalling $120, he took it out of my pay. I explained that that was illegal, and that he had to pay the rest. He refused.
Okay then. I close the store, turn off the lights, lock the doors and go home. This is friday night, possibly the busiest night of the week.
The next morning comes. I get a series of increasingly desperate voice mails (As I switched off my phone until I woke up) The signs haven’t been changed, the stock hasn’t been put up, the fuel delivery turned away (As no-one was there to sign for it), deliveries of food and drinks have not been accepted. Basically, the weekend was f**ked for the store.
Eventually the boss manages to get a hold of me, where he spends the next ten minutes screaming down the phone, claiming I was inconsiderate, rude and a bad person.
I replied, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” and hung up on him.
Eventually his wife (who was the accountant) rang, gave a fairly sincere apology, said that my lost wages would be in my next paycheck, and to please come into work that evening.
“No. I need that cash now. This week. If it’s in the drawer when I get there this evening, I’ll work. Otherwise, I’ll leave.”
The money was there. He refused to talk to me for several weeks (Like I cared), but he didn’t try that crap on me again.

#3

Image source: anon, NordWood Themes

To my boss – I can see this eating you alive
My boss (we’ll call him Steve) is one of those guys who’s always attached to his email. Whether he’s at his desk or answering them from his phone, he will stop the conversation immediately and read the email. No warning. The sound will go off, he’ll stop mid-sentence, read and reply to every email. This annoys me. A lot. While going over a very important project (well into the $40-$50 million dollar range and long-term), I’m briefing him on talking points and covering the power point on the projector. A few slides in, he gets an email. Immediately Steve pulls out his phone and begins reading and replying. I’ve dealt with this for years, and this is where the revenge begins. I’m on slide 6, and while he’s buried in his phone, I progress the slide to 13 and patiently wait for him to end. He looks up, oblivious to my trickery. Mind you, he has to present this within a few hours to top-tier business management, and this a project that we’ve been working on for months. I finish briefing him on the rest of the slides, we take lunch, and eventually the guests arrive for their briefing. Steve’s taking charge of the meeting, and I retreat to my office, where I can still clearly watch the presentation but don’t have to participate.

Steve’s hob-knobbing, talking our guests up, laughing and joking. As he’s talking to one particular VP, he gets an email, and in normal s**t-lord fashion, he stops mid conversation and reads it. The VP did not like this, not one bit. He interrupts Steve’s email reply with a hand wave and a, “let’s continue.” This is where I get my second idea for revenge.

Eventually Steve gets to the power point presentation, yammering on like he’s the one who spent all the time on the fancy fly-in’s, formatting, research, etc… Until he gets to slide 7. I can see him pause, break his jovial manner, and begins reading word for word what’s on the slide. He’s no longer chipper and poised, he’s floundering. Little does Steve know that I’m about to launch an email war on his psyche that he is ill prepared for. See, since I’ve been in my office, I’ve been collecting all the emails that came in that needed replies, drafted the replies, and have them sitting on my desktop. I’ve CC’d Steve to every one of them, because I’m just that good of an employee. As he skips to the next slide, I send the first email. I hear his phone jingle. He pauses and instinctively reaches for his phone, throwing him off his presentation. He looks around, and then continues. A minute later, I send the next email, then after a short pause, the next… And the next… I can see him sweating bullets, his brain imagining some catastrophic failure somewhere in our building, in shipping, in product sourcing, etc… But he can’t check his emails without breaking from the presentation and pissing off the executives.

It’s still going on. I have about 8 more emails to send, and he has about a hour until he’ll be able to slink away and cower over his phone like Gollum holding the one ring.

I’m glad I went to work today.

#4

Image source: ruifaf , Aedrian

as I start to work in a general manager position in my actual company, my boss gave me a company smartphone. I was carrying two phones with me all the time. as soon he noticed this he called me and said no personal phones were allowed during work time “because personal life stays outside of the job and not to mix things” and I was there for “work and not to call to my girlfriends or logging into Facebook” and “personal phones are a distraction”. I agreed and complied the next day. the very next day after I started to keep my personal phone in the locker room, he was waiting for me in the lobby in a very bad mood because he called multiple times after work time and I didn’t answer and asked why I ignored him. I said I was at home and my company phone was in the locker room so it was useless to call me after work time because the job should stay outside of personal life and I didn’t want to mix things.#5

We recently launched a project to a select group of beta testers. Late on a Sunday evening (I’m not paid to be on call or work on weekends), I get an email from the boss, cc’ing everyone involved in the project, that the entire site is down, please can I get it sorted urgently, as this makes the company look bad. Complete with screenshot of the problem.

I’m really glad for the screenshot. I didn’t even need to open my laptop to see what the problem was. I’m mildly peeved at the tone of the email and I don’t think including everyone plus the janitor was really necessary. So I reply-all to all, saying that the reason the boss is getting that error is because he has typed the wrong website into his browser.

I get a sheepish mail from him the next day saying that no, it was actually one of the beta testers that had sent him the message about the website not working and screenshot, and he had just forwarded it, and wasn’t he glad it wasn’t actually a problem. Suuuuurrrre, buddy.

Very petty, but I got a kick out of it.

Image source: dominyza, Taryn ElliottTaryn Elliott

#6

Image source: socksandpoptarts, Andrea Piacquadio

I was an intern at a local wedding magazine during college. Small office of three interns who put the mag together, with an editor who will always be the most incompetent person I’ve ever worked with. And I’ve worked in food service!

Anyway, after months of petty bulls**t, my car broke down over Thanksgiving. I called the editor, letting her know just in case I was ever late showing up, as I planned to take the bus/bum rides. Her response? “Oh, your car broke down? You are no longer needed as an intern.” Click.

B**ch, you did not just hang up on me! I was mad, but I took that call as a blessing in disguise and decided to forget about it. We weren’t getting paid as interns, so who cares?

Two months later, a Saturday, I’m relaxing at home when I get a call. Guess who?

“Hey OP! Listen, I’m sorry about that call during Thanksgiving break, my phone dropped it. We’re trying to get this month’s edition printed, and I can’t keep up with all the mail, the ads and the phone calls. It’s crazy here, and the other girls quit, can you believe that?? When will you be back in the office??”

Readers, it’s been four years since that Saturday, but even now I can still feel that incredible sense of petty joy.

“You said I was no longer needed as an intern two months ago. I have already accepted a position elsewhere. My new boss doesn’t call me on weekends and actually pays me. Lose my number.” Click.

#7

Image source: annual_mushrooms, Jonas Leupe

I work with a big company that lets me work 4 – 10 hour shifts a week and have Fridays off. Occasionally at the beginning of this I would get a text on a Friday from my boss. Or a text when I’m off on vacation. These annoyed the hell out of me. Nothing about my job has that level of urgency.

The biggest annoyance to me was when I had the day off so I could move out of my house (just across town) and he texts me that morning. I certainly ignored it. Then he calls me. I ignore it. He calls me again a few minutes later and I answer it. What he wanted to talk about was something that “could wait until Monday” but he called me anyways.

So I decided to start handling things with a little pettiness. Anytime you want to text or call me on a day off, that’s fine. But I won’t respond until after 6pm and I will always ask a question with it which makes him work when he isn’t working.

After a few tries of this, he figured it out (subconsciously or consciously) and never texts me when I’m off anymore.

#8

Image source: anon, Daniel Klein

This was back in the 90’s, way before the internet was a normal thing to have in an office. Computers within offices were not networked and we transferred files on 5 1/4 floppy discs.

After one particularly s**tful day, my nasty boss fired me. I was happy to go but as I was packing up my stuff, I added all the words I knew he couldn’t spell into the dictionary on his computer. It didn’t affect any of the other computers I was highly gratified to see at least four spelling mistakes in my termination letter. I also stuffed the prawn heads left over from lunch into the hubcaps of his car, and taped down the button on his desk phone so, even if he answered it, it kept ringing. It’s been 25 years and I still giggle about it sometimes.

#9

My boss LOVES to call me at 6:15 A.M. to ask me if I would LIKE to fill the shifts of the people who just called in sick.
This is an everyday thing.
I was bored and frustrated, so I decided to volunteer at 3:30 a.m. to call this same manager to ask if they needed extra help. He got super-pissed and tried to write me up for it. I showed the GM the time stamps of the calls I had received.

I don’t get calls anymore.

Image source: curiousaboutnow

#10

This was years ago but it still makes me giggle. When I was 19, I got my first real office job. We weren’t customer facing so everyone dressed really casually. Jeans, tennis shoes, t-shirts. One day my boss called me in to talk to me about dress code. He said that he’d like his assistant to wear business attire like they do at the corporate office. I ask what that is and he said like little dresses with jackets. I felt icky but I didn’t fully understand why for years. That night my boyfriend (now my husband), took me to the store and I bought 5 outfits that exactly matched my bosses’ attire. Old man jeans, cotton button up shirts and loafers. That’s what I wore until I left the company. He couldn’t say a damn thing and he never talked to me about dress code again. I now realize that it ruined his little fantasy and it makes me proud of my young self.

Image source: Freshouttapatience

#11

Image source: AllTheThingsYep, Jude Infantini

My friend works for a bakery/sandwich place. Their boss is an insufferable jerk. She treats all the employees like crap, forces them to work off the clock, plays favorites, etc. You name it, she’s done it.

Today the boss was bragging about trying new recipe for thanksgiving. She needed a loaf of Asiago bread for said recipe.

Alas, there is only one loaf remaining. She put the loaf in the back so that customers wouldn’t see it and refused to ring up the bread for herself.

Queue petty revenge!

This store has an online ordering service. So my brilliant friend frantically texted me to order the bread online. Since the manager had not purchased her bread (per company policy), it was still available for purchase. I placed the order for pick up 5 minutes before her shift ended.

When the order came through online, my friend printed the to-go ticket and with a s**t eating grin, took it to her boss.

Boss was PISSED, but had no choice to give up the bread. Muhahaha. Victory!!!

TL;DR: friends boss wanted the last loaf of bread in their store but, friend had me order it online to prevent her boss from getting it.

#12

Image source: lauramarsipan, pexels

Years ago I worked as a Barista for a coffee shop. It was managed by a really awful old woman who was mean spirited and cranky. She criticized my hair, my appearance, my attitude, my work ethic (I always showed up to work EARLY!! and that’s saying something when your shift starts at 6:30am) and never stopped nagging at me for one thing or another – usually in front of customers, which was humiliating. She acted like this to me and most of the girls I worked with. She was sweet as pie to my male co-workers, though, go figure.

Anyway, one day she taped a typewritten sheet of paper to the wall filled with a bunch of new rules regarding point-of-sale behavior. It was riddled with typos. When she was gone for the weekend, I took my pen and corrected every typo on the page. She was so mad and embarrassed when she got back, but because a whole weekend of shifts had passed, she couldn’t pin it on anyone.

#13

Image source: timeytrooper, Mizuno K

This was back in the 90’s.

I had a boss, probably in his 80’s. Every morning the man walked past the coffee pot, to come to me to order me to get him a cup of coffee. I hate coffee. I hate everything about it.

This man was also quite rude.

I wasn’t required to get him coffee (nor anyone) he just demanded it of me. So I started brewing coffee for him. Sometimes it was decaf. Sometimes it was 3 bags of coffee in one pot (bitter and full of caffeine!) But I never did it the same way twice.

After 2 weeks he finally stopped demanding coffee from me because “you are too stupid to learn how to make it.”

#14

Image source: anon, RoseBox رز باکس

Lay me off with zero notice because the boss splashed all the cash to impress people but then call back an hour later for a favour…
After ending my contract with zero notice I get a call back an hour later asking me for the backups I kept on disc as they didn’t bother keeping any.

Alas as I’m now no longer under contract, I will have to charge 125 an hour and I keep my backups four hours away. So that’s going to be 1,000, if they transfer over the money I’ll get it to them next week.

They agreed and paid the money.

I opened my drawer, took out the backups I kept there and made a note to drop it in to them across town in a few days.

#15

Image source: SnooPandas3480, RODNAE Productions

So I worked at a gas station. I was hired as a regular employee and given the manager position after he found out my mom used to be a few years prior to my working there and I knew the ins and outs of the store. I was the manager for 2 years and my boss hired a guy 2x my age who did not like having a young female boss. He was trying to tell people he was the manager, that he was gonna take my job and hire whomever he pleased. I reported it to the owner. Owner didn’t do much.

Well a few months in we got into a fight (employee and I) and he threatened me with violence and My boss took the guy’s side! The employee threatened to beat my a*s…And I told my boss, I wanted to fire him and hire someone else. He spoke with the employee and I got “bro coded”. Basically, he took the employee’s side of it all because of bro-code and dismissed the fact that he had threatened me and let me go. Needless to say, I was FURIOUS. 2 years id worked my a*s off for this man from 4:30 am til 10 pm or later, most days alone, mostly 6 days a week. I’d been sexually harassed, assaulted, and robbed and I STILL STAYED. But this dude comes along and you take his word over mine? Nah, homie. I got you.

My boss forgot all of his utilities, deliveries and basically, EVERYTHING was in my name because he barely spoke English and the companies always dealt with me anyway. He had so much trouble communicating in English it was just easier to have me do it and I knew all of the vendors anyway cuz of my mom’s job there years prior, nothing had changed except we added a few new things to bring in business (That I advertised and did all the work for mind you.)

I canceled EVERYTHING. I called every single vendor, All his utilities and deliveries were stopped in their tracks. The “Employee” He so loved and respected and such, Yeah that idiot got arrested a month after I was fired. For what? Assaulting his girlfriend. Soooo… He lost everything and had to sell the business within 2 months. I feel absolutely ZERO remorse for it because he put a grown-a*s man’s hurt feelings over my physical safety and I was not having that s**t. If I had to go back, would I do things differently? Maybe. But Do I feel remorse? Nope. I built that company for him the best I could as a 20-something-year-old girl. I took all of my loyal customers with me and about 75% of them still over 10 years later still won’t go there because of what happened. They still come to wherever I’m working at.

#16

Image source: Tobacconist, Iamninoslav

I work in the auto industry and outsell my coworkers dramatically. Each of them took a personal day off two weeks ago and since then, I’ve been asking to take a day off myself. Seems reasonable, since I ran the numbers and make more for the company than five other people combined. But the boss said no, he needs me there. Seems completely unreasonable to me.

So yesterday he came into work showing off a cool beanie hat he found that has bluetooth speakers inside of it. He loves the thing. I heard the story of how he found it five times. Opportunity noted…

Today while he was in the bathroom I paired his new beanie to my phone and left it turned on. He came out from his 15 minute dump session and I flipped my volume real low. I watched him look around for the source of the faint sound, then see his beanie and put it on.

“Why does it sound like someone is breathing in my speakers?” he said.

I turned the volume up full blast.

“Oh god is someone playing porn on my new beanie? There’s a guy moaning. OH GOD, THERE’S TWO GUYS MOANING! THIS IS GAY PORN!”

He now vows to burn his hat. The rest of us had a good laugh, and I’m still not getting a day off.

#17

Image source: chook_slop, Nathan Dumlao

I worked for a company in Austin Texas for over a decade, and in that time had amassed over 30 company shirts. I had a pile of polo type shirts and button ups. The company was a high end specialist retail and corporate sales place that had really nice bathrooms. After the company was sold to a genuine prick, he decided to fire a good quantity of about 100 employees including me.

Anyone who knows Austin, knows the huge number of homeless people living under highways. So after my firing I passed out shirts to all of the local homeless population, telling them that if they wore the shirts, they could use the bathrooms in the store.

Edit: this all happened 2 years ago, but the wife says she has a even more shirts put away… Might need a quick post holiday trip into town to drop off a few… Just to keep the revenge up, I’ll put a merry Xmas from “boss name” note with them.

#18

This happened a few years ago, I was a data and reporting analyst and did all the ad hoc reports for the company. My boss, we’ll call her Kerry, was a useless, she was one of these people that was always late, left early and took days off at short notice. The only thing of value she did was all the regular reports – sales, revenue etc. We suspected she got away with it because she was having an affair with her boss, we’ll call him Stewart.

Our CEO was a fairly decent bloke, he’d look for ways to cut costs and would pay regular bonuses for the best cost saving initiatives. Kerry was very keen to submit ideas and encouraged us all to automate our tasks so she could try and take the credit for the savings.

On one of her skive days, which coincidently Stewart was “sick” as well the CEO was desperate for the sales report my boss does. I said I’d give it a look and see if I could get it done. Normally she’d spend 2-3 days doing it each week but the CEO wanted it that afternoon. A quick inspection of the data showed it would quite easily be automated so I knocked up the necessary script and got it over to the CEO who was super impressed that not only had I got it done in a couple of hours but also that it could be updated whenever he needed it. He asked if I could also look at the revenue, churn and a couple of other reports. Over that afternoon I automated everything my boss did.

Both Kerry and Stewart were back in the next day but were immediately summoned to the CEO’s office before being suspended and sent home. Turns out the CEO knew they were having an affair and all the times they were sick or late or had to leave early was so they could sneak off and have sex. He’d not done anything about it because how important these reports were. Now they were automated he was able to get them suspended and later fired for gross misconduct for all the time they’d taken off. I also got a nice bonus out of it.

TL;DR: My useless boss encouraged us to automated our work so I automated all her tasks and the CEO fired her for.

Image source: lungbong

#19

Image source: Santasotherbrother, Wesley Tingey

When I was an apprentice, mid 1980’s, the drunken owner
wanted the thermostats in the shop set to 62F (16.6 C) in the dead of winter.
Long narrow industrial building, heater and thermostat at each end.
I worked in the middle, near a door. Which really sucked.
Doesn’t sound cold, but when your job requires you to
stand still all day, yes, it sucks.
(I’m sure it was colder in other work places, doesn’t matter.)
Mysteriously, the office was always 72-75F. Strange.

So one day, I took the covers off both the thermostats in the shop,
figured out how they worked, and “recalibrated” them.

After I was done, they ran about 10 degrees F warmer than indicated.
62F (16.6 C) became 72F (22.2C). Big improvement.
More than once I saw him check the thermostat, because it wasn’t cold AF.
Then he wandered off with a puzzled look on his face.

He NEVER figured it out.

#20

Image source: twograinsofrice, Pavel Danilyuk

One of my first workplaces had extremely toxic management – it was owned and run by an old couple in their 60s were “co-CEOs”. The wife in particular was a bitter, racist a**hole who would micromanage everyone, take credit for our work and also hated my guts more than the rest of the team (I am minority, female, young and also opinionated i.e. all the things she despises).

Because she’s quite old, she never learned to touch type and instead does the typical hunt-and-peck style, so once she starts typing she stares down at her keyboard the entire time. She also tends to write quite long emails.

I became so jaded that any form of revenge was screwing with her to brighten my day, so one time I decided to plug a wireless dongle for a mouse into her PC. Once I saw she was typing, I’d wait until she’d typed a reasonable amount and then click using the spare mouse somewhere random. She’d continue typing, look up, and rage at her computer and have to start again. Sometimes I’d repeat the process within the same email for extra f**kery.

My colleagues were in on it, so I’d give them a heads-up when I clicked so we could all have a laugh.

When I was done, I’d simply wait until she left and casually unplug the dongle from her PC. Honestly this is one of the things that kept me sane while I was there until I managed to escape.