It doesn’t matter how professional you are, there are just some people at work you don’t get along with.

Maybe it’s the way that they talk, or they chew with their mouth open, or they microwave fish in the break room every day at lunch, for whatever reason, you just don’t gel.

And I’m sure the thought has crossed your mind that the workplace would be much more enjoyable for you if they didn’t also work there.

But this user’s boss tried to make that thought a reality when he lied about a coworker’s horrible comments in an elaborate scheme to try and get OP fired!

What was OP’s response? Getting him deported!

Check it out!

Try and get my Team Member Fired, Get Deported!

Back in the early 2010’s I started working for a big internet based company in the UK. The company was opening a new office with a new subdivision in London.

When I started there were two team leaders and the office manager. The two teams were the content team and the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) team.

I was recruited to be the development team lead (that is web development).

When I was interviewed for the job, both the office manager and SEO team lead were carrying out the interview.

As you do in interviews when they asked if this or that could be done I would respond “Yes of course” or “You know you would get a better result doing X, Y or Z”.

OP managed to impress them enough to land the job…

So, I got offered the job and for the first year there was so much going on. As well as building a team, I also had a portfolio of websites that needed to be redeveloped and redesigned.

It was at this point that some red flags started to pop up. I would have the SEO team lead (we’ll call him Andy), coming to me and telling me that I needed to do things the way he wanted.

I would always push back and say no, and give a reason why I was doing things the way I was. Andy would get irate and would complain to the office manager about me.

Much to Andy’s frustration, the manager would always side with OP!

When the office manager would ask me about it I would explain what had happened and why I had said no and the office manager would leave it there.

Because at the end of the day I was the one with the experience in web development not Andy.

After a few instances of this my first year I realized that Andy was getting so irate was because he thought that I would be a yes man to him. Sorry buddy, that is not who I am.

And it was working on one of OP’s bigger projects that OP said his revenge came into play!

Me and the team had been working hard to get two of the new websites completed, and I was due to show them off to the board before they went live.

This company’s head office was in another part of the country, and I had to leave the office in London at about lunch time.

So, I arrive to the hotel that is across the road from the head office about 4pm and jump on my laptop to start going through the sites to run some tests.

I was testing functionality, making sure the look and feel were correct, things like that.

But unfortunately, the website wasn’t exactly running smoothly.

Then it happened, we found a major bug that caused a major issue with the functionality of the website.

So it is at this point that I am going to introduce the star of our story, Johnny (not real name, but attacked all the same) who was my Senior Developer.

Me and Johnny worked through the night, me in the hotel room and him in the London office. We finally fixed the bug, about 7am the following day.

My meeting with the board was at 10am, so after getting showered and fed, I head over to the office I started my day with zero hours sleep.

Thanks to OP and Johnny’s hard work, everything went smoothly during the meeting!

I go into the meeting and the first thing that is said, is the CEO asking if I was ok.

I explained that we had found an issue with the sites yesterday and me and Johnny had worked through the night to fix it before the meeting.

Long story short everyone was really impressed and loved the new sites.

At the end of the meeting the CEO pulled me aside and thanked me for everything and then told me to go home and get some sleep. I thanked him and when on my way.

Now that the hard work was done, celebration was in order!

So, after taking my team out for a well-deserved lunch to say thank you. The office manager then organised a night out for the whole office to celebrate on the following Friday.

We started off at a fancy bar (not my sort of thing, I am a man of cheap tastes) and then everyone moves on to a small club.

I go to the club for a bit, but then leave quite early in the night as I need to get a train home. I say my byes and then head home.

Little did OP know that this work outing would become the source of a major problem for his team!

I come into the office on the Monday and there is something going on. I speak with Emma (Not real name) the content team’s lead.

She does not know what is going on, but there are people from head office, HR and others. Then a few minutes later all the team leaders are call into a meeting.

We are all squished in one of the small meeting rooms, there is office manager, two members of the HR team from head office and the three team leaders (including myself).

And when they heard what the meeting was about, they were floored.

So, HR explain that there has been a complaint made against Johnny.

A member of the SEO team (we will call him Mark) had called Andy on the Friday saying that Johnny had been making prejudiced comments while everyone was out at the club.

Both myself and Emma were taken aback, this was not like Johnny.

On a side note, I fell that I need to explain the races of people involved. This is just for context and not an attack on anyone involved.

Johnny, Emma and I are white British. Andy is African (born in Britain, I believe), and Mark is Indian (once again I believe).

So with their celebration cut short, OP had to deal with the fallout of the accusation.

So, the whole day was spent with HR doing interviews with the other people that were there that night and we then all reconvened towards the end of the day.

The result of the interviews were that no one had heard anything like what Mark was saying. So, it was Marks word against Johnny’s, this was not acceptable for Andy.

He wanted Johnny fired and cried “we could not have someone like that in the office”.

But something was fishy to OP, and Emma was with him…

So, both Emma and I looked at each other and though that it was strange that he was so instant on firing Johnny with no evidence.

Both the office manager and HR agreed, and Johnny was let off with a warning and to be aware in the future of how things he says that could be mis-interpreted.

Life went back to normal in the office, that is until about two months later. The story of what had happened had gone round the office (about 12 people).

Then one afternoon, I was pulled aside by one of the guys on the content team and he said that he had over heard Andy and Mark talking and thought I should know.

We went into one of the meeting rooms and he laid everything out.

And if OP was floored by the accusation, the actual truth behind it was even more shocking!

What I heard made my blood boil and I think had I been in a cartoon steam would have been erupting from my ears.

He told me that the racism complaint was faked and a plan that Andy had to attack my team because I would not bend to his demands.

Him and Mark were on a call outside the club (Andy was not there that night) and that is when he heard what they were doing.

It later came out that their plan was to make the complaint against Johnny and get him fired.

This would then lead on to Andy complaining that I was not fit to run a team if I let that sort of this happen under my leadership.

When OP asked why he didn’t mention any of this earlier, he revealed that he actually had!

My first question was why he didn’t bring this up with HR in the interviews, he said that he did but it was his word against both Andy and Mark.

There was no way that I was going to let the slide, but I knew that if I was going to go after them, I needed to have everything in place before hand.

I didn’t tell Johnny what I had been told and asked the guy that told me to keep it to himself for now.

I didn’t want Johnny to get emotional and do something that would get him fired or worse affect any revenge I could dish out.

So, I watched. I watched everything the SEO team did (and didn’t) do. Then it happened, it was like angels had descended from heaven to deliver me the winning lottery ticket.

While smoking is a bad habit, this time it put OP in the perfect position to get his revenge.

The building we were in was a three story building with a main stairwell with a door on each floor to the offices. The stair well also lead to a door out to the street.

At the time I was a casual smoker and used it to get a break from the screen and clear my head if something I was working on was not going well.

So, I walk out of the door to the office and into the stair well and who is there…. Mark of all people.He is on the phone, and he goes white as a sheet when he sees me.

And OP had caught Mark in the middle of a particularly precarious conversation…

Now he is mid-sentence with the person on the other end of the phone and as I am walking past, he is forced to carry on the conversation.

I overhear, and from what he is saying I can tell that he is talking to a school or something like that.

The conversation sounding like he was looking for information about applying and about a visa. I thought that was a strange call to be having and something was fishy about it.

So OP casually mentioned what he had overhead to one of the higher ups at his company…

I had my suspicions as to what was going on, but nothing concreate at this time.

A few days later I was heading back up to the head office and by that time we had a new office manager who lived near the head office so was based there most of the time.

When I got there, I dropped my things off at the hotel and headed over to the office. I went to his desk and ask to have a quick chat.

I explained to him what I had over heard Mark talking about on the phone and said that maybe the company might like to look at his visa status.

He had to wait a little bit, but OP soon saw the fruits of his labor!

So, a week went by and nothing seemed to happen…… then BAM!!!!! He stopped showing up to the office.

A few days later I got told what had happened from one of the other SEO team members.

Mark had been fired with immediate effect of no longer having the correct visa to work in the UK (the company did not want to sponsor a new visa for him, I don’t know why).

I started asking questions around the office (random chit chat) and I found out that Mark is from Dubai and he was here on his wife’s student visa.

I also found out that his wife’s course had finished and that left them with a small window of time to get a new visa.

And then OP had his “A-ha!” moment!

Now there are some doggy people in London (and everywhere else) and they would setup these fake colleges that would sign people up to get visas to live and work in to UK.

At some point before or after this saw a program on this and normally these were setup in tiny offices that you couldn’t swing a cat in let alone run a college.

They were used as postal addressed for the “college”, and they would charge a “course fee” to be enrolled and thus be able to apply for a student visa.

So, what Mark was trying to do is to get “enrolled” in one of these “colleges” so that he could stay in the UK and carry on working.

Unfortunately for Mark, his cash ran short before he got his “degree.”

I found out a few weeks later that Mark and his wife did have to leave the UK and go back to Dubai because he didn’t have any money coming in to pay for his new “college” course.

BYE MARK!!!!!!!! When I found out that Mark had been let go, I pulled Johnny aside and filled him in on everything.

He could not believe it and was stunned that they would try and do that.

I apologized to him as it was my fault that he had been targeted by them in a way to get at me. He would not accept it and said that I had gone above and beyond in defending him.

Andy wasn’t off the hook either, and OP let him know he was on his list!

Following on from this I made it quite clear to Andy that I know what he and Mark had done, and I would not be forgetting it and to watch his back.

About two months later Andy handed in his notice and left the company, never to be seen or heard from again.

I have told this story to some people over the years, and I have been asked so many times if I feel guilty for what I did. I always respond the same way,

“I feel guilty that Johnny, was wrongfully accused and targeted. I don’t feel guilty about what I did to Mark. You don’t mess with my friends, family or team.”

Wow! Talk about having karma come back to bite you! If I was OP I wouldn’t feel one bit of remorse either, what goes around comes around!

Reddit loved to see OP’s higher ups get what they deserve, but many felt like OP didn’t actually play that big of a role in his own revenge.

And this IT expert let OP know he might actually have been the problem, especially in his testing validation.

Finally, this web designer told OP that the format actually does play a pretty big role in SEO!

Good for this guy! That’s how you support your friends.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.