Sometimes it’s obvious that people want you out of some place. They will stoop low and make sure you don’t get through.

It’s sad yes and that’s exactly what happened with this man when his boss made sure he would leave work.

Let’s check out the full story.

New boss gives angry me an impossible task.

I don’t know if this is exactly malicious compliance, kind of a revenge story.

I used to work for a big IT consulting company notorious for not paying overtime. I worked for a client’s migration project for almost 1 1/2 years leading the functional migration team.

The three of us worked for the client 3 years before the start of the migration project, so we knew the data we had to migrate, all the nuances and, 2 weeks before the migration date, 99% of the data was already migrated and validated, we only did the day-by-day new data and sag off pretty much those 2 last weeks.

Problems in the work place started early on..

Other manager (that outranked me) became extremely angry about our calmness, because the part she led was behind schedule (due to bad scheduling) and everyone was being overworked because of her mishaps.

Come migration date (saturday, starting 9am), everyone was expecting long long hours of work but we clocked out at noon with the data validated with the client and the go ahead signed, sealed and delivered. My team got a written commendation from the client.

The manager’s team spent the entire weekend there. She got a complaint letter from the client.

Uh Oh… we know there’s trouble ahead.

The manager complained about us and made me and my senior analyst spend the next month waiting for incidences/bugs/complaints. We got 5 in the whole month.

My senior analyst spent 8 hours a day studying a new language, I took the chance to update my CV (I wanted out) and pretty much help a couple former colleagues that needed to solve bugs and problems within the manager’s team responsibilities.

Considering they worked hard, one would hope it would pay off but that wasn’t the case here.

A couple weeks later, evaluation time.

At the IT company, everyone was graded A to D. A being “exceeding expectations”, D being “you’re out of here”, B was good, C was pretty much “I’m starting to think you might not be good to work here”.

Given the commendation from the client, I was expecting an A.

They outnumbered him..

My evaluation was done by the manager and my mentor (close friend with the manager).

They gave me a C because “we didn’t see any pressure on your work, and you certainly lack motivation”.

I complained and took a long overdue already planned month long vacation. This was June.

After that, back at work, I was assigned to a project on another client led by manager’s husband.

They just wouldn’t get off his back

He wanted me to prepare 122 integrations with different systems in 4 months.

I told him that, in the previous project, led by his wife, they took 2 years to have 12 integrations ready, but I would give it a shot.

I even emailed him the planning where it clearly showed the time they took.

Two of those months were July and August, months were pretty much everyone on the client goes on holiday.

Manager and wife also went on holiday pretty much all August.

He did the best he could!

I spent those two months chasing people around the client’s office, but, starting September, 6 integrations were closed and 6 more were almost closed pending validation.

Manager came back from holidays and was furious.

He called me a slacker and started telling me that his wife was right, that I lacked motivation and that I would need to spend the rest of the project duration working till midnight to make up for loss time.

He was so DONE!

And I said “NO, I won’t do an hour more than what you’re paying, I told you that your expectations were unrealistic and you went ahead with them anyways.”.

He went ballistic.

And then he did what was long due..

I replied “I just lack motivation to work in your project, I want out of the project”. I was out of the project in no time.

I got a call from my mentor, she said that they were evaluating firing me without pay because of this.

I told them about the unrealistic planning, she said that I was being unrealistic, and that the planning was good. I produced the email I sent the manager.

My mentor went quiet. A minute later she told me “what do you want”.

We will have to respect the man on his decision here!

“If you can’t guarantee I won’t do an hour of overtime ever again, I want out, full severance and then some and I want the company to make it look like I quit, not that you fired me”.

She went quiet again. She said she’ll see what she could do.

I was out of there, smiling, by the end of the day.

Yikes! That might have been painful. But in a game of power dynamics, this was bound to happen. We’re glad he got out of this toxic project and workplace though!

Let’s see what the Reddit community has to say about it.

This person doesn’t like the fact that the mentor is being called a MENTOR.

This person thinks the man did a great job!

This person got statistical and praised the man for his extraordinary input.

This person isn’t a fan of personal relationships in professional environments.

This person praises the man’s courage.

Toxic work environments can really wear you down.

Good riddance to bad workplaces!

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.