In today’s story, several interns are responsible for sales for a manufacturing company, but their boss takes all the credit.

In revenge, one of the interns lets the boss make a bad deal, which leads to the boss getting fired.

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

Director stealing credit for intern’s work? Enjoy unemployment and €250,000 personal debt

Brace yourselves, it’s a bit of a long one, but it’s a prime example of a single sentence can go a long way.

So one summer at university I took a job in the marketing department of a small manufacturing company, ostensibly creating foreign language advertising material and safety texts, as well as all the social media stuff for their upcoming move into Europe.

It quickly became clear a large element of sales was involved but I didn’t mind – I was young and wanted lots of big wins for my résumé.

The department consisted of myself, another guy for another European language, and one hugely underpaid 16-year-old ‘junior’ intern.

We all worked for an absolute bandit (hereafter ‘the boss’) who basically had no relevant experience or competencies but was a smooth talker and had ensnared the company owner with some kind of evil wizardry.

The boss took credit for everyone’s work.

This boss spent most of his time running a side business off his iPhone, only stopping to literally throw things at us whilst we were on the phone (banter), to randomly paint the inside of our office jet black (ceiling included) or make inane demands like trying to force a supplier to give us a 40% discount based on our tiny firms ‘potential’.

This was all fine and kind of funny, and gave us something to laugh about at KFC during lunch.

But the real pain in the arse was that whenever anyone made any real headway (sealed a deal with a supplier or vendor, completed negotiations with government agencies, secured a good rate for marketing, found a new opportunity etc.) he would steal the credit.

The owner never caught on and genuinely thought the guy was a one-man powerhouse, despite us occasionally leaving evidence or outright telling the owner when we’d done the work, catching the boss out in some blatant lies.

It was all just ‘miscommunication’ in the owner’s eyes.

He was now in charge.

This went on for months.

We were all on minimum wage or lower as “interns” whilst basically doing the boss’ job for him as he repeatedly told us how great he was and how little we understood.

We spent the summer confusing European CEOs and Purchasing Directors who wondered why this mad little English company was using interns for all its international business.

The other marketing guy got tired and quit, leaving just me and the junior intern, at which point I was told I had been ‘promoted’ to lead the project for both countries.

At this point I was now, on part-time minimum wage, entrusted with planning and executing a foreign market invasion for two different countries solo, whilst the boss sold adult products on his iPhone.

The boss was still taking credit for everything.

Even that would have been alright by me if the boss hadn’t kept trying to steal credit.

At one point he jumped in in a foreign language phone call I was making to a well-circulated magazine and, in English, said “I’ll take over, Anpassungburo isn’t really that important” before promptly realising the other party was about 60 years old, partially deaf, and spoke about 4 words of English.

He handed the phone back to me then went off to tell the owner he’d just landed a great rate on some ad space.

Public episodes like this meant our potential vendors scented weakness and ultimately proposed a lopsided contract.

It basically stated that if our products didn’t sell a certain volume, we would be liable to pay the vendor pure cash for the remainder.

He was happy to let the boss take credit for a bad deal.

The ‘certain volume’ was €250000 (net profit, not even gross sales) in the first twelve months.

I’d never heard of such a proposal before, and even at 19 I knew it was all kinds of shady.

This was the first thing I was perfectly happy to let the boss take credit for.

There was no way we’d make that quota, but the clueless boss was so thrilled to have a ‘big’ number to throw around he printed the contract there and then.

It had been mailed to me but he instantly claimed HE had brokered it, the absolute turnip.

He didn’t warn the boss about the bad deal.

Now for the Pro Revenge; he asked what I thought of the contract and whether we could achieve it.

What I did not say was that only a world champion village idiot would sign this contract.

I did not say that only an absolute adult products vendor would go ahead with this blatantly disastrous contract without consulting the owner.

As the boss had made very clear, he was the marketing god and I was a lowly intern whose opinion was no more use than a chocolate teapot.

So rather than warning him that this contract was so horrible we should burn the paper it was printed on and have the office exorcised to be safe, I instead said simply;

“you’re the boss – the numbers are all in the project book if you want to read it over but if it looks good to you the post office closes in 15.”

He followed the boss’s orders before quitting.

I knew without a shadow of a doubt he wouldn’t bother with my boring paperwork, not when I had dangled the chance for him to get his big win dispatched by the end of business.

Sure enough he said there was no need to see my figures as he had ‘done the sums himself’ and was certain it was solid gold.

Funnily enough, the project book quite clearly showed that I had estimated (as best I could with no analytical experience) that our gross first year sales might top 20k if we were lucky.

But anything written by me wasn’t worth reading, not with the post office closing in 15, so he signed the contract and sent me running off to post it.

I made copies and mailed it off to our lucky new vendors.

I then took a copy straight to the owner, told the owner the project book was in the boss’ office if he wanted to check he numbers, and then went to HR next door to regretfully hand in my notice before shifting it out of there before the fireworks started.

The boss got fired.

Bang on opening the next day, the boss was called to a meeting with the owner. Yelling was heard.

About an hour later the boss is walked off the property and a hastily typed email is sent out reminding people that only the owner and HR are Signing Authorized on behalf of the firm.

Unfortunately the contract was still apparently valid as the boss’ title (marketing director) gave him implied authority or something.

I’m not a lawyer and all I did during my final week (with no boss and our project in tatters) was to hang out at KFC with the other surviving intern.

I wasn’t at any board meetings, shockingly, but the company lawyer was there every day that week and last I heard the ex-boss was being sued by the company for the damages they had to fork out to the European vendor, which were potentially over €250k.

I doubt that his adult products dealership made enough to cover his legal fees.

The boss deserved to lose his job since he wasn’t at all good at his job.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

This reader was mostly satisfied with how the story ended.

Another reader is craving KFC.

This person hates marketing.

Another person would’ve played it a little bit differently.

Taking credit for someone else’s work can really backfire!

Eventually, it will get you.

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.