No one likes a thief!

You can say that again -and this story from Reddit proves it, my friends!

Check out what happened!

My employer stole my stuff so I made him PAY for it.

“Some background first: Since I was a kid, I was fascinated by computers and electronics.

During school, I had no social life. I just stayed at home and was learning stuff.

I was going to generic high school that should prepare you for university without any specialisation, but there were few people with same interests as me, and our IT teacher was really supportive of us.

Their hard work paid off.

When I finished high school, I already had a job as a programmer and had a few years of experience in the field.

I also was experienced with electronics and even worked on a few contracts for the factory in town, involving creating machines for them (other engineers came up with an idea how to machine will work, my job was to put there motors, sensor, wire it up and write program for the PLC to control it).

I moved to a big city and started university, so I lost my programming job in my city.

I was looking for a part time job, while living off my parents support.

Things changed when my friend got an escape game voucher for 5 people for his birthday and took me with him.

The escape game had cool “magic” stuff, like you placed objects in a shelf and all pictures in the room fall of the walls, etc.

While we were there to solve puzzles, I was mostly interested in these “magic” things, making theories about how they made them and thinking how I would do it.

When the game was over, I saw for a moment their technical room, and at this point I was like “I want to work here”.

They landed a job.

I sent them my CV and as I was overqualified for this job, I was accepted after first interview.

I was young, naive and stupid, so they just used me.

My hourly rate was after tax as equivalent of $8.50 (to put it in comparison, cashier at big store here makes roughly $6.50 + benefits).

First few months were awesome.

I was paid for doing my hobby and the owner loved me, as his previous tech guy (referred to as Tech Moron now on) was, compared to me, just dumb. (I’m not bragging. I swear!)

He did not came up with almost any original design, he just found something on the internet and was skilled enough to read the schematics and somewhat copy it.

But he had big gaps in his knowledge (once he told me that I can’t build a battery operated circuit that will be powered while the battery is charging, as this would cause to battery to explode.)

When I told them about charging regulators and how it’t not an issue with his phone or laptop, he just told me I was hired to help him and to **** off).

Things were getting weird at work…

Over the time, Tech Moron started to realise that I’m just smarter than him and his ego could not handle it, so he decided his only now from now on is to make my life hell.

For example, the owner tasked me with replicating device that they already have in one game, as he wanted to put it into another one.

I spent week just by messaging tech moron asking him for the schematics and source code, calling him, and he just never replied.

Then I decided to screw him over, I came up with an improved design and built it.

When I was showing it at the next meeting to the owner (who was very happy with it), Tech Moron just yelled at me for not using his design and wasting time on reinventing the wheel.

After some time, the owner realised what was going on and hired another tech guy (Tech Senior from now on), but he cannot fire Tech Moron, as he had all important source codes and designs at his laptop, and because of a bad contract, it was not property of the escape game company.

Little did we know, that in the future, he will not hand over most of the designs and codes and we will end up rewriting that from scratch.

The company was also franchising. We just took a game we already had running, made an exact copy, and installed it in another location.

We then provided support, while they were paying us licence fees, usually a small percentage of their profits.

The owner was a typical manager, who thought a woman can deliver a baby in a month. And it showed as the company grow.

Eventually Tech Senior was made my boss as he had much more experience in electronics, while I was more oriented on programming and on-site support for game masters if something broke.

We didn’t give a **** about Tech Moron, as at this point, he just showed up once a month, did almost no work, criticised all we already did and had working and went home.

Things seemed to be going swimmingly…

Things were going really well, so we hired few electronics students to help us.

The building department, which was making props (like special wooden table that we could hide our magic into) also grew.

Things were looking really good, until one meeting about new franchise client.

The owner told us what he needs, we (tech guys) talked to props guys, went over all the requirements and told him we need 10 weeks for it (well, 8, but we always accounted for stuff going sideways, as this date will be on the contract).

Usual stuff in healthy company. Next week, next meeting. He told us that the client does not want to wait and he put 5 weeks in the contract.

His reasoning was we are doing the same stuff as before and now have more people, so it will go faster.

It was time to get to work.

We worked hard. Like really hard.

There were weeks when I just went home for 8 hours to take shower and sleep for a bit, then went back to the workshop to work on stuff.

It was hard, but we managed to finish in time, and I got some sweet money in overtime.

But this was a mistake. Now we showed him that what he wants is possible. So the next contract went over the exact same deadlines stuff.

This was a lot of work.

More overtime. I remember having almost no social life, just working the whole week, sometimes sleeping at the workshop, and being stressed as hell.

Then, every Friday I just went to a pub with a few friend, totally wasted myself to relieve the stress, and slept through the whole weekend. Then comes Monday and we start over.

Eventually I went from “I love this job” to “I don’t give a ****”, and I wasn’t the only one.

Our performance dropped and we started missing deadlines. Did the owner account for it in the contracts? No!

“Repetition makes perfection, this time you can do it faster” was his reasoning. And he just kept signing more and more contracts, dumping the **** on us.

I remember the one meeting when he asked us about status of project D, as the deadline was next week.

Well, we did not even started working on this, as we had our hands full with project C, which was started later because we did not finished projects A and B in time.

Ugh!

This is how far it went. Deposits from new contracts were used to pay fines for old contracts. At this meeting I realised I just have enough.

Of course our job was not only franchising. We had our own games that needed to be maintained and we were doing that all the time alongside that franchising hell.

What was the biggest issue with all games was the control software.

It was a **** load of simple-purpose scripts driving all the Raspberry Pi’s an Arduino’s in the game, but it had one UI presented to the game master so he could control all the props in game, override them, etc.

At least in theory…

There were a lot of issues.

But oh boy, it was buggy like hell! Sometimes not working at all, sometimes you wanted to shine light on object to give the players a hint but instead it opened doors to the next level, etc.

It was not universal, simple requests required massive changes, lots of overrides were not implemented correctly.

One day, the owner finally agreed to my demands and allowed me to rewrite all of that.

It took me few months, but I created universal engine that could handle all the **** game designers were asking us to do, was easy to expand, had error protection and recovery tasks.

Now, if one prop stopped responding, you just opened the debug page and clicked Restart.

This was a game changer, as previously the game master had to switch off the power and sometimes that was not possible during the game, and my biggest achievement, I created easy scripting language which was used to describe the game workflow.

The game master now had a **** load of (working!) controls and options to interrupt predefined tasks and change the flow, but that barely happened, as the game was now almost automatic and he was there just to give hints.

I was not comfortable running this software on the Raspberry Pi that was there for the previous control, and I wanted a better hardware for that.

My request was always denied by the owner, but the games manager wanted the new software working asap (to this point, we were always just testing it from my laptop), so I decided to lend them a few PCs.

Some time ago, friend from a big corporate pulled a **** load of Dell optiplex workstations from e-scrap.

They were working fine, had Intel i5 CPU, 8 gigs of RAM, decent onboard graphics, Displayport, USB 3.0, fully working computer, you could by them refurbished for about $200.

The company just had no use for them and nobody wanted to go over selling them, so they just dumped them. I had stack of 20 of them at home, just collecting dust.

Sounds reasonable…

I took few of them to my work, and the boss agreed we will settle it later, so I just emailed him list of all of my HW that was used in the games (5 PCs, some WiFi routers, old tables, some monitors and other stuff I had collected mostly from e-waste, fixed it, and had no use for it).

Of course I did not told them I got that for free and was expecting them to pay me for it.

Fast forward, I was fed up with the franchising deadlines and got few job offers that made me realise my real price and that I was abused young kid in his 20s, working for almost nothing. But I was waiting.

In the next month, my software was deployed in the remaining games. Tech Moron was out of the picture for few months now, Tech Senior had some programming knowledge and was able to use my scripting language, but had very little understanding about the insides of the complex engine I wrote, which was now being developed for over a year.

I had results, I was important and I had demands. I scheduled meeting with the owner, where I wanted to present the list of all the wrong things and what I want to do about it.

It was time for an ultimatum.

It all came to a single argument: I’m not happy here but you need me, so you will fix these issues and give me a raise, or I’m leaving. And I will stand my ground.

Recruiter from a big IT company I wanted to work for messaged me on LinkedIn few weeks prior and I already went on the interview, so I had an escape plan prepared. The future looked bright and I was ready to make it happen.

The day of the meeting came up. I was in a good mood until there was a nasty accident in the workshop (I don’t want to post any details, as this would identify me in a second, but this is important).

I, being the youngest one here, not even responsible for the mess, was tasked with cleaning it up.

I had an argument with the workshop manager about me being a programmer and not a radioactive waste cleaning lady, but in the end, I just broke and started cleaning.

Enough!

Half way through it, almost vomiting from the smell, I just snapped. None of this would happen in a decent IT company.

I went to my office, packed my stuff, and just sat there just playing games, waiting for the owner.

When he showed up, I told him about all the issues, he argued some, but when we got to the end, I just told him that today was the last straw and that I’m leaving right now.

I was employed as an independent contractor so they could save some money on taxes and my contract had nothing about my time there.

I just told him that I will send him download link for all the files I have (as the contract stated that they are owned by the company).

He begged me to stay for one more month, as they were behind on many deadlines.

I just said I will think about it and left. On my way home, I called the recruiter and told him I accept the job and can start next month.

Next day, I just made a big archive of about 150GB of files, backups, etc. that I had, uploaded it to my server and emailed the link to the owner and tech senior.

It was time to chill…

I then spent the next two weeks in bed, watching Netflix and ignoring calls.

For the last week, I showed up to help clear up some things, hand over my projects, asked about the computers and other stuff I lent them (he told they will pay for it) and then left. I was lucky as hell.

The next month, the coronavirus happened, and month later, they were forced to close all games by government, making their income go almost zero overnight.

This I believe was the reason they never paid me for my stuff, even I repeatedly asked until I got tired of it.

Time went by, until few weeks ago, when I saw the Tech Senior was looking for a new job. I messaged him and we talked. He told me that they survived by doing private events for companies, until they could open again month ago.

All the other tech guys except him were let go, but he managed. Until he got into an argument with the owner. He did not told me much details, be the owner wanted something either impossible, or expensive as hell.

When he presented cheap alternative, the owner just snapped and fired him on the spot.

He tried to reason with him about not firing him until he can teach his successor (and find a new job in the meantime), but he was fired on spot.

Really?

Week later, I got a call from the owner. He hired the younger tech guys he fired during covid and wanted ME to come and answer their questions, mostly about the engine I wrote.

I agreed but as we were planning the meeting, I was suspecting he just wants me to do it for free. When I brought up the hourly rate, he just told me we will solve that later, hung up and never called again.

They day of the meeting came, I was waiting in my car outside the workshop, waiting if he will call where am I, but he did not.

Few days later, I parked next to warehouse where all the games were held, with a yagi antenna in my car.

Surprise surprise, the WiFi routers I lent them were still there, with the password unchanged. I connected to the WiFi and poked around the network.

All the PCs that I lent them to run the software on were still there, still running the Linux server I installed there, and looking at the logs, they were still used to control the games.

Bam!

I wrote a script that runs on boot, rolls a dice, and then deleted the whole drive. I was connected to MY WiFi router, making changes to MY computer, formatting MY drives. Then I drove away.

Few days ago, I got a call. Apparently, when the Monday shift came in, the control system for one of the game was not responding, the browser was showing time out.

They decided to reset power for the whole rack where all the PCs were multiple times, hoping it would start up, because turning it off and on again always works.

When they decided to stop trying, they find out that all 8 games were dead.

The “new” old tech guys figured out that the drives probably died, but had no knowledge about my system, so they could not set it up.

When I asked about Tech senior, the owner made some excuse about him quitting and not wanting to work for them anymore.

I told him I was happy to help. In the end, this used to be my dream job. But I now work for a big company, I don’t have much time and it’s expensive.

Here’s the deal…

I can come over to set it up, but my hourly rate now is $150. He talked me down to $100 (which was still about twice as much as I make now).

When I arrived, I checked the PCs, pulled out the email I sent him year ago and told him that these serial numbers match these on the labels, and told him I’m happy to find my lost stuff, took first PC and took it to my car.

We had an argument, I told him that I’m either taking all that stuff, or he is paying me something over $2,400, he wanted to call police, but I had the proof this equipment was mine.

He eventually agreed, and I got to work.

All my software was still in the Bitbucket, even with the few modifications tech senior managed to make, alongside with all the config file and scripts with the game workflow that tech senior was periodically modifying and backing up, so it was pretty easy job.

I got it all working and then stayed for few more hours, explaining some stuff to the tech guys. I printed the invoice and left. Tired, but satisfied.

Money money money!

Yesterday, a nice sum of about $3,600 landed in my bank account. From what they told me, all 8 games were dead for 3 days.

Each game costs between $80 and $120, takes one hours to finish and half an hour is needed for preparation.

So there are 12 slots every day, averaging on $9600 income per day when fully booked (this is of course just the income, profit after paying all the rent, wages, electricity, consumables used in games, etc. is much lower, but I don’t know how much).

Before corona, about 80% of slots was booked during week and 100% during weekends. I just like to think I made him lost 23 thousands (not counting the angry customers which were forced to reschedule) dollars just because he was a jerk.

If he paid me for my stuff or did not fire his only tech guy, none of this would have happened.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person shared their thoughts.

Another individual nailed it.

This reader chimed in.

Another person spoke up.

They played the long revenge game!

Good thing it all worked out.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.