Working from home is the silver-lining to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Work meetings in your boxers, getting to decide your own hours? It definitely has its perks!

But when you’re not in office, the lines of what’s acceptable and what’s not can be blurred, like they were for this user who went to Reddit to share his story of being reprimanded for technically using Facebook market place during work hours.

But when he learned the person who reported him was the manager whose work he had been doing for years, he got his revenge in an oh-so-satisfying way!

Screw me over, I take away your promotion

For 18 months I’d been working from home (as most of us had).

My workplace had an agreement that those working from home can do what hours they want, so long as we are able to answer urgent calls in core hours and we get all our work done.

Fair enough as far as I’m concerned. For 16 months this worked great.

I’ve been more productive than when I’m in the office, been able to work more flexible hours and have saved a ton of money by not commuting.

Then over a few weekends I had a clear out of the house and took pictures of all the items that are in good condition but we no longer want, with a view to giving it away to whoever wants. it.

But his spring cleaning would end up with him in some hot water at work!

One day when I’m working from home I take my lunch break, make a quick sandwich and post the items that I’m giving away on one of those local Facebook free pages.

I didn’t know it at the time but one of the managers – called Shambles henceforth – from my work was also signed up to that page and he saw my post.

He then took it upon himself to go to the owner of the company and tell him that I was slacking off and posting on Facebook during work hours.

The real question is… What was HE doing on Facebook Marketplace during work hours?? HMMMMM??

For context, this wasn’t my boss, nor was the complaint to my boss, but to the OWNER of the company.

And to top it off I’d been doing a lot of work for Shambles, he’d outsourced the running of entire projects to me over the last 18 months (all of which I’d executed well and he’d taken ample credit for) and this was the only time in 18 months I’d posted ANYTHING on Facebook (because I never post).

Soon OP was having a meeting with the owner of his company about Shambles’ report.

So the owner contacted me, and to be fair he’s a decent guy, the conversation went like this:

“I’ve been told you’re posting on Facebook during work hours. Just be smart about it, it doesn’t look good when colleagues see it.”

“Completely understand, just so you know I posted that during my lunch break.”

“I was told you were posting at noon.’ (the company lunch break is usually 1-2)”

“I did but that’s because when I’m home working I always take my lunch 12-1.”

“Okay, I don’t have an issue with that, just keep your head down.”

Seems like a pretty understanding guy, but the conversation still had OP wondering who had told the owner in the first place.

Long story short, a coworker (who was working on site that day) heard on the grapevine that Shambles had been complaining to the owner about me and how I’m always on social media when I should be working.

And once he learned who had ratted him out, he could get started on his revenge!

As I said before, Shambles likes to outsource work to me. I never minded this. The work was varied and it broke the week up, plus my own boss didn’t mind as I always had my work for him done on time.

However, I never got recognition for this extra work.

For 2 years I managed a sub-department completely on my own because he ‘didn’t have time to do it’.

I didn’t get a penny more for it, but it was a good group of people and I enjoyed getting experience of management.

But without someone to do his work, Shambles started running into some serious problems!

Everytime Shambles came to me with an issue I would say I was super swamped but that I’d try to deal with it if I had time.

The projects he tried to outsource to me I immediately rejected, saying that I had a full plate from my actual job. And that sub-department I ran… We’ll get to that.

Over the next couple of months Shambles starts missing his deadlines, issues come up with existing projects that he hasn’t fixed and employees are complaining that every time they go to him with an issue it doesn’t get resolved.

It dawns on me at this point that I’ve basically been doing this guys job for him for years.

And after realizing the extent of the work he’d done, OP went to the higher-ups!

I set up a meeting with my boss and put forward my arguments for why I should be promoted (or really, why I should’ve been ages ago).

I point to all the projects I’ve successfully run as well as the sub-department I’ve managed for 2 years.

He completely agrees and says he’ll take it to his boss.

But at his promotion meeting, he was surprised to find an unexpected (and unwelcome!) guest.

When I go to the next meeting with my boss’s boss, Shambles is there too. He’s on the same level in the company as my boss’s boss.

A little phased, but not willing to give up, I put my arguments forward to them.

Shambles let’s me finish then proceeds to tell me that I don’t know enough about our work to manage, I don’t have the required people skills and then he tells me, and this is verbatim…

“Besides, people here don’t respect you. They respect me. I know I’m a good manager. If you really think about it, you know you wouldn’t be.”

Unfortunately Shambles’ standing in the company gave him sway.

I forget what else was said after that, but I was completely destroyed.

Boss’s boss comes up to me afterwards and tells me that Shambkes is a D**k, but unfortunately he’s got the approval of the higher-ups so what he says has too much sway for him to go against him.

I tell boss’s boss that if that’s the way it is, I’m going to look for other employment. He sighs and says ‘I don’t blame you.’

During the time it took me to look for and apply to other jobs I have time to think about how I can get back at Shambles.

He’s used me for years and is now blocking my promotion. I’d already stopped working on his stuff and his projects were going from bad to worse, but I needed something more.

This is where OP says his plan turns from petty revenge to pro revenge.

He broke it down into 8 simple steps.

1. I’m an accredited internal auditor for our quality systems.
2. I ask if I can be assigned a couple of last audits before I leave ‘to help them out’.
3. I carry out these audits, and using my intimate knowledge of Shambles’ projects find every single issue I can.
4. A number of people also hate Shambles and give me more dirt on him.
5. Someone gives me breakthrough information that Shambles has been forging signatures and bypassing multiple company procedures to make his KPIs look better.
6. I write up the report, with tons of evidence attached and send it off.
7. The report gets flagged at the highest level because of what it shows.
8. Shambles gets dragged over the coals.

Let me get this straight? You’ve been forging signatures and other shady stuff, and the employee you decide to pick on is an auditor?

Bold move!

I wish I could say this story ends with the Shambles getting fired and having to sell his body on the street for scraps, but (obviously using all the connections he has) he keeps his job.

I later found out though that he was due a massive promotion (as in, catapulted to the top of the company, running whole divisions kind of thing).

That never happened though, with his declining numbers as well as a damning audit showing all his shortcomings he’s basically told he’ll never progress beyond where he is and that he’s lucky to have a job at all.

OP, on the other hand, found a job he was truly passionate about while managing to help the coworkers he left!

I’d love to say I got a better job with a massive raise. That’s half true.

I decided to pursue my dream job (literally, since I’ve been a kid dream job) in a totally different industry.

All the experience I had counted in my favor and although I took a bit of a pay cut I’ve never enjoyed work more.

They knew that when I left Shambles would take over running the sub-department again, so in my last month at the company I gave them all tutorials on how to search for jobs and pass interviews.

Reddit was shocked that Shambles would go after his way of getting out of work.

This user said it was because they were intimidated by OP’s work ethic.

This Redditor shared a piece of workplace wisdom he had heard about seedy managers.

And many shared ways to take his revenge even further!

And finally this user wondered how things would have turned out if OP had done the audit beforehand!

Well at least OP is out of that terrible company, and hopefully Shambles is drowning in the work he had pawned off for all those years.

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.