Have you ever had a boss who seemingly came from the depths of HELL?
Yeah, it’s no fun…
And the woman who wrote this story on Reddit’s “Pro Revenge” page was not messing around when she taught her terrible boss a painful lesson.
Boss from HELL gets what she deserves.
“I (30sF), have been a people pleaser to a fault my whole life.
I have been working in marketing for 10+ years. Over the years, I’ve had my fair share of bosses who were good, average, and some who sucked. There is one in particular that stood out as awful. This story is from about 5+ years ago.
A woman named Pamela worked for the same company.
Pamela (40s- not real name) was the VP of Marketing and Sales for a mid-size retailer. She started at the company a few years after I did. And if rumors were true, she was the fourth pick for the position and was simply hired so the company could appease shareholders.
I was a manager under her, and my whole job was to make sure the website and stores had their products merchandised properly, received all their monthly sales materials, managed advertising, set up and managed the department’s budget, PM’d all department projects and operations, created reporting to reflect sales, managed presentations/creative briefs for future projects etc.
It sounds like the woman who wrote the story was pulling all the weight.
In short, I did her work and all the administrative grunt work to keep the department afloat. I managed all this because I had access to her email and many times sent emails on her behalf to keep the department functioning. Pamela spent most of her time showing up after 10am, taking “business lunches”, and planning company parties (don’t even know why we did those, but I planned those too.)
I consistently questioned why she spent so much of our budget on these events when we didn’t have the budget resources for any of it. Pamela told me to take from future months’ budgets to pay for the current month’s overspending.
So, at the start of every month, I had an original budget and by the end of the month, I had to turn in an edited budget (edited under Pamela’s direction) that made it look like Pamela’s spending was under control. This is important for later.
I definitely made mistakes here and there being in charge of so many tasks and constantly found myself working 12 hour days split between being in the office and working after my kid went to bed. Weekend work was also done before my family woke up and after they went to bed.
It sounds like Pamela wasn’t really on top of things…
During Pamela’s first major holiday season, sales were bad. Pamela kept changing her mind on the visuals for the stores, kept bringing on new advertising and PR agencies to “bring in sales” (all these agencies consisted of her personal friends), and ignored our buying/merchandise team’s planned promotions for her own “better” ones.
And this woman was dealing with things outside of the workplace.
At this time, I had been dealing with an ongoing infection that turned to sepsis, and was hospitalized. The doctors and my husband said it was due to the stress of work and that I needed to take a break.
As I recovered, I realized how much I was hurting myself, my family, and even the company I worked for. Eventually, my old habits got to me, and I got on my phone and checked mine and my bosses emails. What I found made my blood boil.
First, I got a lovely bouquet of flowers from upper management wishing me well, and I knew that Pamela organized the delivery (she sent me her favorite flowers.) I went to her inbox to put the receipt in the correct folder to send to accounting when I got back.
She was about to blow her top.
At the top of her inbox from the past 3 days were emails clearly not related to business. What I found in her emails was Pamela emailing her personal friends griping on how I can’t just shake off sepsis and “get back to work”.
She also complained that she couldn’t find any of my notes, spreadsheets, or documents for any of the work she was technically in charge of (they were on our shared drive labeled very clearly.)
Finally, I found an email where she sent a friend from a previous company asking for advice on how to bring in sales and save her job.
In this long thread, this old colleague asked if there was anyone managing most of the work, and of course, Pamela said I was. This colleague explained that clearly it was my mismanagement that was causing issues and that I could be blamed if sales didn’t pull through by the end of the season.
Then things took a turn…
Pamela mentioned that I was in the hospital and repeated comments from her other email thread. This person said that she couldn’t outright fire me because it could seem like retaliation because I needed to take emergency medical leave. But, if Pamela could prove I was stealing from the company or misusing company resources, then she would have grounds to have me fired (and use me as a scapegoat).
Upon my return, Pamela called me into her office and said she was “worried I was taking on too much”, and wanted to take work off my plate. She announced was taking managing the department budget off my plate.
Pamela had a new plan for her.
She asked me to only drop of a small stack of invoices to accounting. Additionally, Pamela told me under no circumstances was I allowed to talk to accounting about anything regarding budgets. Also, if I had any concerns about the department or workload, I wasn’t allowed to go to HR, I had to discuss it directly with Pamela. Oh yeah, I could see where this was going.
But Pamela was about to get thrown a curveball.
Unfortunately for Pamela, I had built a rapport with Lois (50s – not real name) who was our main accountant. Lois always said that she would do everything in her power to help me should I ask.
Knowing this, I grabbed the stack of invoices off Pamela’s desk to give to accounting. I also added the email threads I read while I was in the hospital, and the current unedited budget that Pamela hadn’t touched yet for the month.
I also found in my filing cabinet the hard copies of old budgets with Pamela’s handwriting on what numbers to change to balance our budget. Finally, I added an email from our first round of budget adjustments where Pamela subtlety threatened to put someone else in my job if I couldn’t do what she asked.
Pamela couldn’t have seen what was coming next…
So, I walked and dropped off the invoices to accounting when I bumped into Lois. She brought up invoices, and I sternly looked at her and said Pamela is the only one in our department that Lois is allowed to talk to about our budget and invoices. Lois saw the suspiciously thick file folder on her desk, gave a firm nod, and lovingly kicked me out of her office.
Within the week, Pamela was fired. From what I understand, she has been continually job hopping for the past few years. The CEO (and HR) brought me in to personally apologize for everything I went through and gave me a paid 1-week vacation to take at my discretion. Given other issues with this business, I left after another year.
Fast forward all the way to the present day.
Which brings me to today. I am, once again, a manager for sales and marketing. I have a wonderful boss (Mike – 40s M), who trusts my business decisions and backs me up on practically everything. We are hiring my team for me to soley manage and direct.
Well, what do we have here?!?!
Today, I looked through the applicants and found Pamela’s resume sitting among dozens of others. I stared at her name, wondering how many other people share her name. Upon review, yup, it’s her.
She definitely fell down the corporate ladder, with VP of our old company being the highest title she earned. And, to no surprise, she embellished her achievements, claiming the work I managed as her own, and claimed she generated an 87% sales growth during the holiday season at our previous company.
As a people pleaser, who firmly believes in giving everyone a chance, it has never been so satisfying to click “Disqualified”.”
And here’s how people reacted on Reddit.
This person summed this situation up.
Another individual said this is why you always need to COVER YOUR ***.
One TikTokker had another idea.
And this Reddit user said she handled this the right way.
That’s how it’s done, friends!
How do you like THEM apples!