October 1, 2024 at 9:21 pm

Employee Got Screwed Out Of Money When They Left A Job, But They Knew The Company’s Dirty Secrets

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Shutterstock/Reddit

This is the kind of stuff that happens when you run your business in a shady manner…

So let this story be a warning to anyone out there who is thinking about being less-than-honest!

Read the story below and you’ll see that being a creep doesn’t pay!

Don’t screw over the person who knows your company’s dirty secrets.

“I used to work for a horrible company. It was financially, emotionally and physically abusive of its employees.

Over the years of being there, I had been screwed out of multiple raises.

One year I was promised that I was going to get a raise to show exactly how much I was valued in the company.

They were 7 months late for performance reviews, so for 7 months this is what I heard, “we don’t know how we would do it without you and we’re going to make sure you know how much we value you with your raise.”

That’s insulting!

That raise was 15 cents. I was worth exactly 15 cents more per hour.

It got worse as time went on. My job became a catch-all. If it wasn’t sales or the main industry of the field, it was me.

I was accounting, project manager, legal, I briefly was HR, shipping and receiving, you name it, I did it.

I accepted a promotion in the company with the promise of a raise.

After 3 months, that never happened and they denied ever saying they would give me one.

When my replacement for the old job quit, I agreed to return to the old position with the promise that I would still receive the raise that was promised to me, the job (that no one else seemed capable of doing) was split into two positions as I had been pushing for for years.

Once the job was split and I trained people for it, I would go back to my promotion position.

They decided to give it another shot…

They agreed to these terms and stated how incredibly grateful that I put the company ahead of myself.

Well, you’re on r/prorevenge so you can assume correctly that that never happened. What actually occurred was me getting written up.

The replacement that quit had screwed up royally. I was watching over his shoulder for everything (while doing 60% of the old position, 100% of the new position and training him).

I knew exactly what he was doing and telling him what needed to be done next. So when I asked if he had done Y and he said he had, I took it at face value.

Hmmm…

Turns out he didn’t and he flat out lied. This caused a major issue. As he was gone (wise man), the finger ended up getting pointed at me.

So instead of getting my promised raise, I instead got written up for being a neglectful trainer.

Then I had to write out exactly what the position was so they could split it and assess how much they should pay me. I did that.

Then it was something else. It was always something else.

They kept moving the goal posts away. At one point the HR person took pity on me and told me as clearly as she was able to that they will keep dangling the carrot, but I would never see another penny.

It was time to go.

Finally, I got out of that hellhole. This company was notorious for not paying people for their leftover PTO, so I gave my 2 weeks and used my remaining time off for the final week.

I sat down with both HR people. We all compared my hours and agreed that I had X number of days remaining.

We all came down to the exact same decimal point. So I took most of that time and had 1 day (8 hrs) remaining.

What’s this…?

I began my new job immediately. At work on my first week, I saw my paycheck and it was flat out wrong. My final paycheck should have been 4 digits.

It was about $100. After a lot of back and forth with the old company to figure out what the hell happened, they started sending my calls to voicemail.

Finally, a few days later I get paperwork that was clearly tampered with. It shows the vacation time I had, a modified company policy on vacation and their calculations on how much time I had.

Despite 3 people coming to the same conclusion, suddenly I left and never had vacation time to begin with. In fact, they had the audacity to tell me that I owed them money but they would be “benevolent” and let it go.

I didn’t anticipate this, so I hadn’t taken the original paperwork with me. Rookie mistake.

What a mess…

I pride myself on being financially responsible. I have never paid a bill late and I’m usually a month ahead of all payments.

So as a final **** you from my company, they tried to **** over my finances.

My first week of work was spent half juggling the new job, half on the phone with my bill companies and bank trying to defer payments for a few weeks.

I had considered getting an employment lawyer, but realized that without the documented paperwork, I didn’t have a case.

What I DID have though was years of dirt on a company that operated in super shady ways.

They had an ace up their sleeve…

I had saved countless emails over the years from the head of the company making abusive statements, talking about dumping chemicals in the lake behind us, talking about “growing a pair” over dangerous work environments, ******** harassing remarks, etc.

All of this went as evidence to OSHA where I filed over a dozen claims (all legitimate). OSHA and the DoL were AMAZING.

As a sidenote, if you’re ever scared to speak up at work, DO IT. If your company threatens you that they will fire you, you are protected.

They handled my case so professionally. I wish I had called sooner.

I later received a summary of the changes the company was required to make and it cost about 5 times what they had stiffed me.

But wait, there’s more!

I wasn’t done there though. I reached out anonymously to their parent company, where 85% of their revenue came from. They had been cooking the books to get larger payouts on the jobs they were doing.

I told the parent company to look into this and that they were in serious breach of contract. Their contract is up for renewal this year – that’s going to hurt.

He finally let them have it.

The owner of the company had multiple family members on payroll. None of them work there but were making better salaries than most of the employees.

I called the IRS and started a fraud case (unfortunately, I do not know the status of this one).

I still keep in touch with coworkers from the company. The place isn’t done yet but it is going down fast. The staff has been reduced 60% (minimal firing, mostly it is like rats leaving a sinking ship and no one getting hired to replace them).

Their contract is about to end, destroying their revenue. The EPA is investigating them.

Don’t give someone power and access to all of your dirty laundry and then **** them over.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person was impressed.

Source: Reddit/Petty Revenge

Another individual chimed in.

Source: Reddit/Petty Revenge

This Reddit user has been there.

Source: Reddit/Petty Revenge

Another person weighed in.

Source: Reddit/Petty Revenge

It came back to bite them in the… well, you know…

It almost always does.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.