It’s helpful when bosses and managers understand what their employees do and how they do it.

In today’s story that’s not the case, and one employee ends up getting revenge on the incompetent manager.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

Have a tantrum and get my team member fired on the spot? Enjoy your unemployment.

About a year ago, a new VP of Development turned our company upside down by introducing “The System” of his own invention.

Actual name. Was going to be the Agile killer. He was shopping for book deals and everything.

The System meant taking any and all decisions away from what he called “the assembly line” (software engineers) and adding a huge new layer of middle management.

There would also be a central team of Decision Facilitators routing each type of decision to the proper decision-making department.

But that’s not important right now.

They introduce us to Pat.

What’s important is that one of the many, many people emergency-hired to implement The System was Pat.

What makes her unique?

Well, for one, Pat’s entire 27-year career was running one dilapidated mom and pop shop in a completely different industry.

The only similarity to what we did was the word “manager” in her job title.

That wasn’t the only problem with Pat.

Second, she was unbelievably slow on the uptake. Never met anyone like that.

She needed an ELI5 summary of everything, and she was incapable of translating existing knowledge to similar concepts.

It sounds like a hyperbola, but I’m not exaggerating. Any time, any topic, she’d be like a recently thawed out Neanderthal. Blank state.

There’s also a problem with Pat’s wardrobe.

Last but not least, and how do I put this diplomatically? Her wardrobe did not have a single item that would fall under a conventional definition of business-appropriate attire.

Ow, my peripheral vision.

Now, it’s really not my place to comment on that. I know.

However, two and a half weeks after Pat joined our team, one of my developers, a 60-something recent grandfather, was walked out by security because Pat ran to HR in tears about him “constantly staring”.

Apparently, if that guy was allowed anywhere in her vicinity ever again she was going to quit on the spot and sue everyone.

They give more details about the interaction.

I know this is the most controversial part of my story.

A few people I told this one before would instantly jump to her defense: if she felt she was harassed then she was, end of story.

Who knows. As an aside, I found it extremely interesting that mentioning the guy’s race instantly changed those people’s minds (Pat’s white, the guy who got fired was the only african american on our team).

In any case, the incident that sent her to HR in tears was the two of them walking out of the bathrooms at the same time, and the guy smiling at her. A 5-second interaction in the hallway.

The downfall impacted them.

As the guy’s direct manager, I got into trouble for “allowing it to happen”, even though I first found out about it as he was being escorted out of the building.

For me, this meant many, many, many meetings, memos, reviews, CC list longer than the actual email, and all sorts of drama.

After a few weeks this was finally killed when our in-house council advised that with no verbal contact whatsoever, staring is really hard to prove as inappropriate in nature.

End result for the team was a huge hole in our ability to maintain obscure legacy systems; sensitivity training for the entire team; and a giant red mark on my annual review which denied me my measly raise and a not-so-measly bonus.

The System and Pat were also big problems.

I also had to spend at least an hour a day, every day, educating Pat on basic human knowledge instead of doing actual work, while Pat herself completely dropped the ball on every single thing she was supposed to do.

Sadly, The System meant I could no longer make any decisions myself.

A single minor change would need to be routed to testing, then integration, then verification, then deployment management, with “assembly line” people.

I.e. actual people doing the work, strictly forbidden to even touch it without being assigned to it by jargon-spouting MBAs that filled our halls.

Since The System meant that I was required to offer at least two options for every item, Pat was unable to blindly rubber stamp anything.

They describe how Pat was problematic.

At first she’d run to me and had me read everything I wrote out loud and explain every sentence and every word to her. Then she’d kick it up to her manager with a “please advise”.

He’d kick it back down saying “no, it’s your job to figure this out”. And that’s where it would die.

I still can’t comprehend how Pat managed to attend daily meetings where everyone was yelling at her about work stoppage, quite a bit of which was caused by the gaping hole left by the guy she fired.

Pat continue to do absolutely nothing. It’s quite possible that she really was not all there.

They decided to stop trying to help Pat.

After a few short weeks, Pat just stopped checking her email completely.

Like a one year old playing hide and seek, she seemed to sincerely believe that if she just shut her eyes really tight, she would be invincible.

She wasn’t even a bottleneck. Pat was the dead end. The event horizon.

One morning I came in, looked at the back log, and realized I just didn’t have the motivation to keep begging Pat to do her job.

I figured I’d just do mine.

There was an “emergency meeting.”

I did contact her boss, who was CCd on all the communications anyway. Got a spectacular one-liner back saying “don’t bother me with this, and don’t ever go over Pat’s head again.”

A couple of months later, a major part of The Big Project failed in a spectacular fashion.

There was an emergency meeting late that evening. Stern faces. All the big brass.

Pat and her boss swaggered in. He gave me the look like he was almost sorry I was getting fired.

They had emails to back up what happened.

What did I have in my defense?

82 critical and 166 major issues in the tracking system (actual numbers) assigned to Pat with no action in months, other than daily comments asking Pat to take action.

72 daily emails from me to Pat with my entire team and her immediate manager in CC about impending doom.

She laughed: “Well, I told everyone I don’t read my emails, why did he keep sending these? He should have talked to me in person!”

Tey kept showing more proof.

Ignoring a couple of raised eyebrows, I produced daily meeting minutes which proved that literally every single person on the team did, indeed, bring these up to her in person.

Her defense? “I didn’t understand what any of those things meant! How could I choose from options I do not understand! He didn’t explain any of that mumbo jumbo to me.”

I went right back to the tickets and the daily emails which spelled everything out in excruciating detail, time and again.

Pat began to look confused. “If he thought this was urgent, he could have told someone else!”

They also got revenge on Pat’s boss.

As she was saying this, her boss suddenly looked up from his iPhone and horror flashed across his face.

He was right.

I like to think that the slo-mo memory of me whipping out the print out of his “don’t bother me with this” email will be forever ingrained in his mind.

Here’s the fallout…

Pat got fired.

Her boss got fired.

A few weeks later VP of Development got demoted and his successor quickly replaced The System with a common-sense industry standard.

They also got Pat fired from her new job.

This was almost 10 months ago, and from what I understand, Pat was unemployed the entire time until finally starting a new job last Monday.

She was terminated from her new position yesterday.

I might or might not have contacted her new employer to clarify an error on her LinkedIn, which as it turns out also made it into her resume, where she claimed a more senior title and uninterrupted employment at my company.

Keeping all of the emails and documenting everything really paid off!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

This reader likes how OP got revenge.

Another reader points out how important it is to “document everything.”

This reader loved the revenge story.

Another person thinks Pat had too much “power.”

This reader is glad Pat’s boss got fired.

Seriously, document everything!

You just might need it someday.

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