In today’s story, an employee who is doing a great job ends up getting a different boss who isn’t as nice as the old one.

When Covid hits, this employee finds a way to get revenge.

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

“I Guess it’s my business now,” A Tale in 5 Acts

Note, that like many tales here many ‘trivial to the story’ details have been changed.

What is important to note is that the way my industry runs is essentially via monthly service contracts with clients.

There are 3 major players in the story; myself [Egnards], Old Owner [Lets call him Steve], and New Owner [Lets call him Kyle].

Act 1 – Do What you Love

OP liked working for Steve.

As an aimless teenager I started working for a small business owned by Steve.

It turns out I really enjoyed what I did so slowly over time my life plans shifted to make sure I could continue to work for Steve for the long term.

This included transferring to a local college, and because the business was predominantly run on ‘part-time’ hours making sure that any other jobs I had never conflicted with the hours I was expected to work for Steve.

Steve was flawed, but overall a good boss who [mostly] looked out for me. I certainly think over the years he had taken advantage of me in small ways, but looking back I really have no complaints.

Steve implied that OP would one day get the business.

The thing is, that while when I started working for Steve the business ‘name recognition’ was always directed towards Steve, over the years it eventually became, “Go to Egnards, he’s the best!”

This got to the point where I do indeed truly believe that if I did not end up working for Steve it’s very likely his business would have been nowhere near as successful as it eventually became.

As years when on it was heavily implied that when Steve retired the business would go to me.

It was never specifically stated, but Steve did have a way about skirting around those types of issues and giving me hope . . .

OP introduces us to Kyle, the new business owner.

Act 2: Enter Kyle

About 3 years before Covid, Steve decided to retire and sell his business. He did indeed ‘fulfill his promise’ by making an attempt to sell it to me at an unreasonable price, but it was very clear he already had another buyer in mind, Kyle.

Kyle owned another local business just outside of our market area in the same industry; because of the way the industry worked there really was much, if any, overlap in potential customers, but Kyle had a very large amount of money and was willing to buy.

What is important to note here is that, again, I do truly believe that if I didn’t play ball and agree to work for Kyle, my role was so integral to operation at our business, that there as no possible way a sale could go through.

Nobody in town really knew Kyle was in charge.

Over the course of negotiations Kyle ended up buying the business and putting me in charge of running the day to day – Something I was mostly already doing, but with a few more administrative tasks tacked onto it.

The thing is, my name was still “the name” in town, and Kyle made zero effort to ever be on location, so nobody that did business with us ever really knew who Kyle was.

Act 3: Kyle’s Kind of a D***, and how I learned to stand up for myself

OP wasn’t paid for attending a work confernce.

All was well for awhile. Kyle would openly talk about me being the head honcho at my location and mostly left me alone to deal with my clients in the professional and personable nature that I had learned from Steve.

Things first came to a head a year before Covid when Kyle sent me to an industry conference for 4 days – I would need to take off time from my other job, which I was fine with.

At the conclusion of the conference I put in an hours request for the hours I spent at the conference [And I was super nice about it, actually I should have clocked all hours at the convention each day, but instead did not account for hours for seminars that would help my boss but were ones I had wanted to attend]

The request was denied and I was told, “Industry Conferences are enriching activities, we pay for your admission but they’re on your own time.’

OP got paid.

This took 2 weeks to resolve but ended with me essentially saying, “Look I’ll still work for you because I love what I do, however, if I don’t get paid I will never go to another one of these conferences again to get new ideas for you.”

I was immediately paid.

I will spare similar smaller stories of that nature, but that slowly started to become the relationship between Kyle and I.

OP explains how Covid impacted the business.

Act 4: Covid hits

When Covid hit our locations were shut down, and for 3 weeks we weren’t able to do anything, meanwhile our clients were still paying for services, and because Kyle had recently moved to a new client payment portal that I hadn’t been trained on yet, I wasn’t able to help any clients get their money back.

At one point I messaged Kyle about going virtual and being able to still assist clients and got a very angry text back, full of curses, that essentially said, “Look, you’re not the boss, you had your chance to be the owner and turned it down. I’m in charge.” [we did eventually go virtual about a week later].

The big problem of course being that I would receive daily texts/e-mails/calls from clients about their memberships/bills, and there was nothing I could do to help them.

OP made a lot of changes.

It was at this point that I knew s*** was hitting the fan and I needed to start doing something.

So over the course of the next 2 months I did a couple things:

Spent an inordinate amount of time studying the best business structures

Communicated with all of the other staff at my location about my intentions

Continued to give 110% to my clients in a virtual capacity

Built a website and social media presence from the ground up

Kyle had no idea what OP was doing.

I don’t think Kyle was expecting any of this, and he probably didn’t also realize that because I often had to do backend stuff from home, I also had what was “essentially,” a little black book of every client, their e-mail addresses and phone numbers.

Act 5: Surgical Strikes

When everything was ready I waited very patiently only the end of a service month, as I mentioned, all of our clients had monthly costs, and I didn’t want to put anyone out of any part of their costs.

On the last weekday of the month I instructed the staff who would be helping clients that day to tell them to check their e-mails at the end of the day.

OP’s emails got a lot of attention.

At the end of the day I sent out an e-mail to all active [and some non-active] clients, as well as a texting service to text everybody.

I launched our social media accounts, our website; and had even enlisted a very small amount of trusted clients to spread the word via social media once I gave them the signal.

Within 15 minutes of everything my phone was ringing off the hook, I had 50+ e-mails in my inbox from different people, and my Facebook accounts were completely blowing up with local chatter.

I also heard from many of these people that they were calling Kyle to cancel their service.

OP put Kyle out of business.

We hosted a Zoom meeting for all concerned parties and essentially decided to take the weekend to clear up any confusion with the systems and start fresh and open our doors on Monday.

Within an hour of everything Kyle sent out a text blast to every client that they would be shutting their doors effective immediately.

At the start of Covid we had roughly 50 active “clients” at the business. On my first day of business I had signed up 75 active “clients,” many inactive ones telling me, “Yea we stopped doing business with you guys because Kyle was kind of a d***.”

OP’s business has really worked out.

What is really important to keep in mind here is that I never wanted to, nor cared to be, a business owner.

I was very happy working for somebody else as long as I wasn’t treated badly. Had Kyle treated me even remotely better the location would have continued to thrive and be a stable in our local community.

Kyle chose to be a bad boss to try and get quick money and cheat people, and Kyle lost out.

We’ve been in business now almost 2 years, have nearly tripled Kyle’s “active numbers,” and continue to be a staple in our community.

It should’ve been OP’s business from the beginning. It’s too bad Steve sold it to Kyle.

Let’s see how Reddit responded…

This reader loved how the story played out.

Another reader wondered what happened to Kyle.

This reader is curious about Kyle’s reaction too.

Another person pointed out a mistake Kyle made.

This reader has a warning for OP.

Don’t mess with your best employee!

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.