This is a good one, folks!

It’s the kind of revenge story that makes you want more and, most importantly, the good guy wins!

Are you ready to be impressed?

Read on and see what you think!

Fired from my job, but received a years worth of pay and got my boss fired.

“This happened in the early 2010s, before the advancement of technology in video editing and content creation.

I was hired as a content creator for a university that wanted to leverage YouTube to kickstart their branding campaign. The pay was low (roughly $22,000 USD) and in those days, there were not that many video content creators around and the process usually took a long time from start to finish.

I don’t know about this…

I was hired and on my 2nd day, my manager presented my KPI of 85 3-10 minute videos in 52 weeks which was impossible for a one-man team in those days.

This meant I had to do the scripting, producing, casting talents, shooting videos, composing music (they were too cheap to pay for a royalty-free music subscription) and editing – all of which I had to use my own equipment and software because their cameras and computers were so old, they simply couldn’t handle the strain of even doing things in 720p, much less 1080p.

I tried to let my manager know but she just smiled encouragingly, telling me to give it a try, assuring me if the videos were good, the quantity would not be what she focused on. Hearing this, I agreed to give it a try.

Let’s see how it goes!

My manager treated me well in the first month, however, one day when she found out I was a smoker, her attitude changed overnight. A colleague had actually done a facepalm when I told her about it and she let me know that the manager didn’t like smokers and often advocated to get them fired.

She started nitpicking me on everything, from smelling like cigarette smoke after my breaks, coming in 5-10 minutes late despite doing more than 4 hours of overtime daily, not being contactable during break times…the list goes on.

But I soldiered on, because I just wanted to do the work and do it well.

5 months in, I was called into the Director’s office where I saw my manager putting on her best “displeased but gleeful face” and I felt my stomach drop.

The director told me that she was disappointed because she had heard that I was falling behind on my work, and it was already halfway through the year and I had only completed 30 out of my 85 videos.

Oh, really?

I tried to explain that I had been working my *** off on these videos, I literally worked 6 days out of the week, over 60 hours just to do what needed to be done and that being a one man army made things impossible, and also the fact that the videos I had put up grossed the highest views ever on their YouTube page.

I also recounted how my manager said that she was looking for quality videos over quantity.

The director dismissed this and stated that the KPI was simply 85 videos in a year and since it was almost half a year in with my numbers at less than half, she felt it prudent to cut the cord early.

I asked how would they even meet the KPI if they were to fire me now my manager had snorted, saying “We’ll find a PROFESSIONAL production house to finish your work.”

The director had given her an odd look but nodded in her support nonetheless, telling me “You don’t need to worry, Manager will get the job done.” That was when a lightbulb went off in my head.

Seeing as I was the content professional in the office, one of my jobs was to keep a database of production houses to use in the event we needed to do a shoot that required more resources, and I was sure that they would be using the production houses in my database as my manager had no contacts in the production industry.

This was going to be interesting.

So, I changed the contact numbers and messed up all the emails on all of the entries except ONE. The one, I had a friend working as a junior director (not an assistant director, but a director assigned to smaller video projects).

I gave him a call and told him of my plan, and sure enough within 2 days, they were called to come in to pitch.

I told him that I had a plan that was a win-win for us. It would instantly help him and put him on the fast track to a director position by bringing in that much business to his production house and it would also benefit me financially.

I would teach him exactly how to pitch to win over the boss and the director and in turn, his company would pay me a standard finders fee of 15%.

He agreed instantly and immediately put me on the line with his general manager who upon realizing this was to be 6 months of work for a high 6-digit payout, instantly agreed and drew up a contract.

As it turns out, after I gave them a metaphorical “step-by-step playbook” they were the “perfect fit”, somehow understanding the needs and style of the university as well as the sort of themes the university wanted to feature.

Sounds great!

The director and my former boss were amazed that my friend’s production house was so familiar with their content that they signed them up on the spot.

Now, even back then using a production house back then was not cheap. Each video that they produced could cost double to triple my monthly salary given that they had specialized people for each function (Producer, Director, Director of Photography, Gaffer, Sound person, Video Editor, Assistant Director, Production Assistants etc), but this meant that they could complete a video every 2-3 days.

So yes, they produced 50 videos in a span of 4 months for over 100 months of my salary and I sat back and collected the healthy 15% which was about 15 months of my salary.

Not bad!

This allowed me to put money aside for a holiday and the rest to further my studies with a respected film school overseas. I thought my plan ended here and I had gotten back at my former bosses, but to my surprise, I received a call from my colleague while I was holidaying in Bali one day.

This was the same colleague who had facepalmed when I told her that my manager had found out that I was a smoker.

She told me that my former manager had been FIRED and my director given a massive blasting by the Chancellor of the University.

This didn’t look good…

The content creation project which I was hired for was only given a budget equating to about a year and a half of my salary and they had exceeded that budget by over 10 TIMES.

My former manager was so desperate to ensure that her content creation project could be completed that she had thrown caution to the wind, paying anything to get the job done so that she could show my director that she had completed the project, and had approved the massive spend without getting consent from the director.

So that is how I got my friend a super fast promotion to a full Director in his production house, and a year of pay after getting unfairly fired from my job.”

Let’s see how Reddit users reacted.

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Another individual chimed in.

This Reddit user spoke up.

Another person made a good point.

And this reader had a lot to say.

Nicely done! We’re impressed!

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.