When you start a new job it can be a great experience that you hope will work out well for years to come.

Sometimes, however, your new boss is terrible and not only makes you work excessive hours, but also blames you for all the problems.

That is what happened to the employee in this story, so she found a way to get her revenge.

Take a look.

Stick me with your work? Enjoy getting stuck unemployed!

Background

Around 8 years ago, I applied for a job working for a relatively small organization as a manager.

Instead of the position I applied for, they offered me a different job reporting to the person they hired for the management position – still a step up in my career but not quite as good.

I accepted the job and soon after was invited out to dinner to meet my new manager.

Let’s call her Sara.

Skeptical for good reason it seems like.

I immediately became skeptical of Sara.

She presented as a devout Christian woman while throwing shade at her previous co-workers and jobs, all of which raised alarms I my mind.

I resigned myself to being polite but distant from her rather than running away as fast as I could because I figured I might have the wrong idea about her.

Yeah, not so much…

As soon as we started working together, she started pawning off much of her work to me.

She hated making phone calls which she was required to make, so I got stuck with those.

She wouldn’t return messages from clients so I ended up doing that too.

The organization was small and had a serious resource shortage, something which was made worse by some recent system changes that were made right around the time we arrived.

Her shirking was positioned as “delegation” since she dealing with fixing those systems issues.

The higher-ups saw it as a temporary issue and implored me to be cooperative.

Soon, I was working 60 hours a week trying to keep up with the workload.

I got paid overtime, but no amount of money can make up for constantly being thrown under the bus by your incompetent boss because I couldn’t handle the workload I was being asked to manage. Nobody could!

She is awful.

When she would actually get called on the carpet for mistakes and issues, she would yell and scream at me while simultaneously blaming me for the problems she caused.

Meanwhile, she was having long conversations with anyone who wandered past her doorway, leaving at 4 everyday with no overtime, and smiling that self-righteous smile of the oblivious sociopath.

I think she truly thought she was a great and successful manager.

I will point out that the people in upper management clearly noticed that something was up with the work in our department.

A year had passed and things weren’t getting better.

They were actually worse on my end since now I was so demoralized that I had cried a couple of times at work.

Thus, they didn’t pay much attention when I pointed out that our work loads were inequitable and that I was basically working both of our jobs, mine and Sara’s, without the appropriate tools since Sara hadn’t actually fixed the system issues she had been hired to manage.

Other people in the organization didn’t really understand the system issues because they never had to use the system.

Revenge

I finally decided that I was finished dealing with Sara and needed to demonstrate the dysfunction to the higher ups.

I waited for Sara to take a week of vacation and then promptly called in sick for two days once she was gone, leaving the higher-ups to try and handle client issues for those two days.

I didn’t answer any calls from the office during working hours, despite having some frantic “How the hell do I do what the client is asking me to do?” messages.

Instead, I waited until after hours, claimed to have been sleeping due to medication, and then left long messages detailing the convoluted processes of how the system worked (or didn’t).

I took the time to work on my resume and write up my resignation letter, including an offer to stay for up to two months to facilitate a transition.

(I didn’t bear the lower-tiered worked I’ll will and the money would be helpful if I could have a set date in mind, so I felt OK with a longer notice period).

She had been telling them what was going on for months!

I arrived back at work after my illness and had three of the higher ups walk straight into my office, shut the door, and sit down.

“What the heck is going on here?” was the first thing that came tumbling out of the general manager’s mouth.

So, I spent a good ten minutes detailing the system issues, reminding them that I had consistently mentioned being overworked and not having the tools to do my job.

Apparently, Sara, unbeknownst to me, had been bad-mouthing me to all of them, calling me incompetent and slow.

Once they told me that, I said I found that surprising since she had spent all of that time bad-mouthing the system to me and calling the management incompetent.

One of the other managers told me that they were attributing the problems to me and my emotional state, and now realized after just two days of trying to do my job just how awful things really were.

They apologized to me for doubting my claims and vowed to make changes.

I thanked them and handed them my resignation notice, telling them that I had decided to go back to school to pursue a new career and couldn’t do that while working for or with Sara.

Over the next two months before I finally left, Sara basically became a woman defeated.

I fed them every nasty word she said for two months, including showing them some text messages I received in which she bad mouthed the organization.

How much worse could they be?

The GM told me they couldn’t fire her because anyone new would be even worse with the system, but that they were taking steps to cross-train others on the system in order to be able to get rid of her.

They monitored her office and interrupted long conversations.

They removed me from her control, allowing me to return her delegated work and insist she do it herself.

We had long meetings about systems issues during which she was left looking like a bumbling incompetent.

After I finally left (they had a little party for me), they called her into the GMs office and read her the riot act for basically chasing me out the door and costing the organization a strong employee…their words, not mine.

Sara contacted me after being told off and expressed how sad she was that I would say such things.

I denied using the words they claimed I used, saying only that I talked about the circumstances and not the people.

I lied purposefully in the faint hope that It would be useful to me in the future.

I had no great love for the management of the organization despite their recent attempts to make amends and it cost me little to play both sides.

Her reputation was so bad at that point that nobody would believe her if she said I stuck up for her.

It wound up being a good instinct!

They fired her 3 months later and told her not to use them as a reference.

Sounds like that is all she is qualified for.

She has basically been stuck in a series of temporary and low-paying jobs ever since she left.

We are still social media friends and I have seen her messages about looking for help from God and tough financial times.

As much as I want to feel bad for her, I can’t muster up even a little bit of concern for her.

Instead, I enjoyed a little private laugh at every bad thing that seemed to happen to her.

Call me a jerk, but I view her as someone who tried to destroy my career to save herself some work.

Cold-Blooded Pro Revenge

So it has been nearly 8 years, as I said, and I have finally had a chance to truly extract my pound of flesh from her.

Last week, she sent me a long e-mail talking about our working together and how she’s happy to see is things have gone well for me and how she looks back fondly on our work together.

She said she knows that we didn’t work together ideally, but that she had few options and wanted to ask me for a professional reference.

I jumped at the chance and reassured her that I held her no ill will. “Here is my contact info. Just have them get in touch. Anything you want me to emphasize when we talk?” I got all the details and told her I would let her know when I got the call.

I finally got the call this past Thursday.

Smart, so it is actually believable.

I proceeded to take her down with as faint praise as I could possibly muster.

I really put on the Hollywood touches: weird vocal inflections, thoughtful pauses before tepid endorsements, seemingly careful and precise word selection.

They must have heard from others about her penchant for talkativeness because they asked me point blank about that too.

I went super cagey in my response; “I mean, she certainly is friendly enough but I can’t recall any personal experience with her being distracted from her work by talking too much. Of course, I spent so much time in my office that perhaps I just didn’t see it.”

Got the word this morning thanking me for the reference and saying they hired someone else for the job.

I expressed my condolences and told her to feel free to let me know if she needs another reference.

She told me she would definitely be in touch.

Wow, holding that grudge for eight years! Well done.

Let’s take a look at the comments to see what other people think.

It is sad that she picked her as a reference.

Lots of people deserve this type of revenge.

This reference was perfect.

Does she deserve mercy?

This revenge has been going on for years.

Some people will never let it go.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.