This is one of my favorite ‘petty revenge’ stories.

A woman was fired and immediately escorted out of the building without even getting the “courtesy” to grab her belongings.

But as she walked through the door, she already had a plan in mind.

Let’s read the story.

Maybe You Should’ve Been Nicer When You Laid Me Off

I worked for a company for six years that had a lot of members-only and public events.

Eventually, I was in charge of promoting these events.

I installed my own software on my workstation to make my job easier, and so I wouldn’t have to create the artwork and flyers from home.

The software was Adobe Photoshop, Acrobat, and InDesign before the Creative Cloud subscription was developed.

It wasn’t cheap, and I never asked to be reimbursed for it because it made my job easy.

Notice she paid for this software with her own money.

When my husband had a motorcycle accident and I was about to miss a lot of work, they set up remote access for me.

I could still perform my job from the hospital next to my husband’s bedside.

The company was sold and for two years, my job never changed.

Then one day, the General Manager and HR came into my office.

He informed me that due to a slowdown in business, I was being laid off effective immediately.

I said, “Okay. Let me grab my stuff and I’ll be off.”

All I wanted was the stupid stuffed animals that were sitting on my monitor that were gifts from members and my husband.

The GM said, “No, we’ll get them to you later.” Really??

This is humiliating, not to mention unnecessary. But she had a plan in mind already.

They forgot to remove me from remote access to my desktop.

I logged into my workstation and uninstalled Adobe Photoshop, Acrobat, and InDesign.

I didn’t touch anything else. All of my files were left in place.

Then I waited.

Two weeks after I was let go, I received a phone call from the assistant GM.

She was taking over my duties, and needed to finish the artwork for a project that I was working on, but she had problems opening the files.

Interesting!

I asked where my stuff was and when could I get it back. She said, “Soon.”

I told her to buy Photoshop, Acrobat, and InDesign, or she could go online and find some open source software and learn how to use it.

I received my stuffed animals a few days later. I don’t know how they ever finished my artwork.

I also ran into the GM while grocery shopping a month after being laid off. I found a new, better job and was happy.

After exchanging pleasantries, I hugged him and thanked him for letting me go.

Life is funny that way.

This was the perfect response to how they treated her.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

A reader shares a similar story about being laid off.

This commenter shares a personal experience.

A commenter took passwords with them on their way out.

A simple algorithm.

Someone vents about how unfair these situations are.

Another person started getting calls after being laid off.

What goes around comes around.

She definitely shouldn’t feel bad.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.