Working for a mean boss is hard to handle, but if the pay is good, how can you quit?

In today’s story, one employee can’t afford to quit his job despite the horrible boss, but when he eventually finds a better job, he gets revenge!

Being the absolute worst boss does not pay off.

In the year 2003, the company I was working for closed down, so I sought out new employment.

I was a machinist by trade, with a great reputation, so it took me less than a day to get a job.

We will call the new place Spiral, because if the specialized tools they made.

OP was eventually put in charge.

Anyway, I started out as one of the operators.

The place was owner operated. Meaning the owner was there daily.

He had a floor supervisor that was actually pretty nice.

After I had been there around a year the owner and super had a falling out and the super left. For whatever reason, the owner, we shall call him Dick, told me I was in charge.

Dick was rich and successful.

A little backstory on Dick.

He was in his 60s and had started the company out of his garage.

He ended up buying a huge chunk of land and turned it into an industrial park, all while in his 20s.

By now, he was one of the richest guys in the state.

Dick was not a nice guy.

He was also the biggest jerks I had ever met.

He treated every employee like garbage, except for me and one other guy.

If we dared to talk to each other during work hours, he was scream at us.

Dick liked to talk to OP.

My promotion kind of financially trapped me though.

Dick would have no problems talking to me though, and he was the braggy sort or rich guy, while paying us the bare minimum.

During our talks, I learned that he cooked his books.

Here’s what Dick did…

You see, the industrial park was owned by an entity that he created, while Spiral was owned by another.

He would always make sure that the park entity charged Spiral enough in rent that it looked like the company was barely staying afloat.

He also bragged that he had taken a bunch of industrial waste and buried it on his property at home because it cost so much less.

Employees kept quitting.

He made my life hell over the next decade. Always keeping my pay just high enough that I could not afford to leave, while treating me and my guys like crap.

I ended up with a 95% turn over rate on employees, I am not exaggerating.

We ended up having to go to temp agencies and towards the end, even they refused to send me people.

OP convinced Dick to change his job title.

I had to do some careful wording, but my duties ended up swelling to the point where I convinced Dick to let me say I was the Plant Manager.

This right here was huge.

I have no degree from college, but I now had a title and the experience.

I started to look for a job in earnest, and after 6 months, I found one for a lot more money, with benefits, yeah Spiral had none.

OP got revenge before he quit.

Now, over my time at Spiral, I had seen everyone that gave them notice be told to leave on the spot, and the company that hired me insisted I give them the 2 week notice.

So I said I would, but I didn’t.

At the end of my last day, I sat at my desk and sent an email to the head of OSHA and the state’s EPA office. Two men that I had gotten to know well. I filled them in on all of the violations that Dick had disclosed.

I also sent an email to the states attorney about the books.

Dick ended up with big fines and jail time.

I left my keys on my desk with a paper under them that simply read “I quit.”

I never found out if the states attorney went anywhere, but the contact at OSHA let me know the company ended up with $150,000 in fines for some willful violations and the guy from the EPA dug up half of Dick’s property before he admitted to where he buried the waste.

Last I knew, he ended up in jail.

I’m surprised Dick opened up to OP about all of the illegal things he was doing. It definitely came back to bite him!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

The boss wasn’t a very smart criminal.

This reader loved the revenge.

Here’s a good point…

Another reader thinks OP should’ve left his job a lot earlier than he did.

He was smart to quit the way he did.

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.