When you work somewhere, it’s not just important that your boss likes you — it’s also important your team does, too.

It can be hard to work with employees that take credit for work that you did and for not having your work appreciated. Even worse, it’s horrible to get fired when you didn’t do anything wrong.

In today’s story, it’s time for revenge on a selfish coworker who only ever looked out for himself.

See what happens…

you want the files? sure here you go

December 2020 (middle of the pandemic), I was contracting as a stress engineer (basically check that things are strong enough, etc).

One week before Christmas, I get a call from the agency I was contracting with saying that my contract was not going to be renewed.

I live in the U.K. and had been working from home for about 6 months following the lockdown.

I was part of a small team.

Our main character meets their arch-nemesis.

One member of the team was a weasel in love with his own brain.

He used a lot of big words and waffled on in front of the client basically an expert turd polisher of the highest caliber.

I was more succinct and just stuck to the facts when reporting on the progress of my analysis.

So, the whole project was a bit of a show. Client kept changing their mind about how they wanted this part analysed.

I was just a contractor and, as such, had to do what they said.

Weasel Boy was horrible…

I never did find out why they decided to can me, but I can guess. I think the multiple changes and delays were put on me, and Weasel Boy obviously convinced them he was very much more valuable than me.

For a bit of background, this guy was a serious jerk.

I was once tasked with checking some of his analysis. I did. I found some errors in his calculations. I corrected them and sent them back.

He didn’t like that. Not. One. Bit.

So, he takes the knife to her laughing as he does it and turns to me and says, “Why so Serious!? Let’s put a smile on that face of yours…”

… Sorry, lost my train of thought there. ANYWAY, I correct his calculations and give him a much simpler way of doing it.

He wasted so much time!

Rather than use my method (which was correct) he spends TWO DAYS with his weasely little face buried in a maths textbook looking up a more advanced matrix method (which did the same thing as what I had given him but he was too busy getting off on matricies and how great they are).

Bear in mind the following:

As contractors we were there to get the job done.

He had a method (the one I gave him) and he refused to use it.

He wasted two days of the client’s money looking up a method that did the same thing.

Sounds like OP has a lot of rage toward this coworker.

A few days later, we were making a coffee, and he says that he had sent his calculation off to the client who was “really impressed with MY matrix method”.

I was gobsmacked. You are a little jerk, and I hate you. You wasted two days you little moron.

It isn’t YOUR METHOD. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourself, so you don’t take any responsibility for it.

You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and, before you even knew what you had, you’d patented it, and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox and now you selling it, well…sorry.

OP moves on to another job.

So, needless to say, he was a weasel and a cerebral narcissist, and he just needed dropkicking, but he gets kept on.

Enter moron #2. This guy is technically our leader and, well, he was horrible as well, but I won’t get into that too much.

About 4 months after being let go, I have been scratching around for work for months.

I am married, and we have 3 kids. Savings used up, my eldest actually gave us money from his trustfund to tide us over.

I had taken a job in a warehouse working Sat-Sun-Mon doing 12-hour shifts. It was tough work, and the supervisor was a moron who needed kneecapping.

Now the former leader want a favor!

So I took this so that I could continue to look for work during the week. One day, I am sitting there, and my phone rings.

moron 2 – Hi how is it going?

(you moron, you haven’t spoken to me in months!)
Me – Oh hi. How’s it going?

moron 2 – Do you remember that analysis you did? Well, do you still have the analysis files? The client has lost them.

He had some nerve to even ask!

(You cheeky moron! Four months and not a word, never once tried to help me find work or even drop me a text, and now you want MY help. Oh, my friend, there is a special place in HELL for you, you soulless money-grabbing moron!!)

Me – Yes, I think I do, but they are not the latest iteration. You will have to check for some of the later updates

moron #2 Oh great, if you can send them, that would be great!

(Send them? I definitely don’t want to do that!)

Me – Sure, will do.

Giving him the files was actually revenge.

I was gobsmacked. How can people be such jerks? The client lost the files? So? Sounds like a personal problem.

You might wonder why I gave him the files?

Well, because I knew something he didn’t know.

The reason why I was able to summarize the results of the analysis so quickly was because I had written some code to go through all the output files of the analysis and strip out only the results that we were interested in.

Oh my gosh, this is truly a tech wiz’s revenge.

I gave him 40 files.

Have fun manually looking through them and stripping out what you need (it would take ages).

Oh, and like I said…they were old files, out of date.

Take them and shove them, and while you are at, it tell that weasel I am glad that his wife spends all his money and his mother-in-law lives in his house and complains at him.

Thanks for reading 🙂

There was a lot of anger there but definitely some well deserved revenge as well.

What does Reddit think? Was this selfish coworker out of line for asking?

One Redditor mentioned money was missed here.

Another noted the writing was left to be desired.

People highlighted that this was a valuable lesson in always making sure you get paid.

And others warned readers that this post was more of a “hate post” than a malicious compliance one.

He probably feels better after venting!

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.