Have you ever worked with someone who just couldn’t keep their mouth shut?

Ever?

We’ve all been there!

And I think we can agree that the office gossiper is someone to be avoided…but this time it was different.

Let’s see how this person actually used a gossiper to their advantage!

Got $40k for “accidentally” confiding a “secret” to a gossiping coworker.

“I worked at a chain salon in the US for minimum wage (+tips). We got paid on a sliding scale, the more you added services the more your hourly pay.

Then, for back to school, we started offering $10 haircuts. It’s dumb to offer a big discount on back to school because that’s when everyone needs a haircut but whatever.

Except, to advertise this sale we had to stand on a rickety step stool and hang a 10 foot long 3 foot wide banner off the roof of our store.

The step stool alone made it a dangerous task, but on top of it the sidewalk was uneven.

Our manager insisted we do twice a day (open&close) “in case someone steals the banner”. Because certainly, someone would want to steal a banner with our logo that says “$10 Haircuts”.

They got a surprise.

It was annoying but I was looking forward to my next paycheck. I had a high service dollar per hour which should’ve meant a bigger hourly pay & paycheck.

Except it didn’t.

That $7/haircut discount? It was coming out of our final service dollar calculations and we ended up making significantly less than usual! I’d worked there for years and this was the smallest back to school paycheck I’d ever seen.

I went in the next day and was mad.

That morning, a coworker (who was a total brown-noser & gossip) and I were outside setting up the banner. It was my turn to stand on the rickety step stool and I said I was “glad this will be the last time I ever do this!”

The situation took a turn…

I was fully prepared to make a joke about how I was going to fall and crack my head open, when the petty revenge idea came into my mind and I swiftly executed it.

When she asked why, I told her not to tell anyone but I’d accepted a job at another salon with a set schedule, higher commission and $5 more an hour.

I said I’d planned on putting in my two weeks but they needed me to start sooner so I was going to work the weekend and not come back.

This would leave us understaffed for the back to school rush.

After reiterating she could NOT tell ANYONE, especially not our boss, she agreed.

You can predict what happened next…

I left early that day and on my next shift my boss pulled me into her office.

She said she’d “heard a rumor” that I was leaving to work at a different salon.

I told her I had a much better offer elsewhere but if she could match that I would love to stay.

But things were looking up!

She had to put a call in to our district leader about the raise but said I could work with a set schedule starting the following week. I was working until 9pm some days and at 9am the next, the unpredictable schedule made finding childcare a pain in the ***!

I was consistently ranked #2 in sales for our store and the district, so the DL approved the raise and I stayed there another five years!

Which means I got an additional $39,000 in pay for “accidentally” telling the salon gossip my “secret”.

I also got 20% commission on $500-$1000 a week in product sales.

Show me the money!

The pro revenge: I also started printing out my service sales slip from the day before at the beginning of every shift, so that when payroll “readjusted” the paychecks to include coupons I could pull up my record and dispute it. According to payroll there was nothing they could do about it. I stayed another five years, raising the issue sporadically, until they brought back the $10/haircut sale and I quit.

A few months after I left I was made aware that a different employee in another state filed a class action lawsuit and I got a letter asking if i wanted to be a part of it. I accepted and the lawyer loved receiving five years worth of documentation, emails from corporate and payroll, etc. they had to go back through all of my paychecks and compensate me for the difference.

Might be time for a vacation…

This included adding the free haircuts (reward program) and discounted haircuts as their whole amount, increasing the service dollar. .19 cents an hour here and .30 cents an hour there added up and despite the fact that the settlement was split with a lot of people I got $10k from that in addition to my adjusted pay which was around half the settlement amount.”

And now it’s time to check out what Reddit users said about this.

This person thinks they know where this story took place…

Another Reddit user had a story to tell…

This individual made a good point.

Another person said this happens all the time in IT.

And one reader was angered by this.

That story made me chuckle quite a bit.

Some people, I tell ya…

Want to read another story where somebody got satisfying revenge? Check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.