When a company is going through a downsizing, they often try to get people to quit or retire so they don’t have to pay them severance.

What would you do if you had a manager who kept trying to get you to quit or get fired even though you wanted to keep the job as long as possible?

That is what happened to the worker in this story, so he finally found the most unexpected way to get revenge on his manager.

Check it out.

The time I got my manager a promotion so he quit

This is a lot of background to explain the kind of situation that developed over a decade.

A place that was once truly fun to work at and easy to earn a bit of extra overtime became a dog eat dog struggle to survive.

The low level people like me were split between those who felt disenfranchised and hated by the management, those that were basically looking for an escape route, and that group of snakes who would smile to your face and act sympathetic to your situation before sneaking away to inform the managers of anything they had learned which might have value.

We were in a specific area of the business that was isolated and slowly being replaced by technology, so from over a thousand in our building it dropped to just around 250 when I left.

Most of this was done through voluntary redundancy but the mangers were given incentive to fire as many as possible to save money on VR.

And since manager jobs were also slowly being cut they were desperate to fire as many as possible but most were incapable of following procedure.

This is almost worse than an incompetent manager.

Mike was that intelligent and brutal kind of manager who like the others had been promoted into the position, but knowing he wouldn’t get trained officially took it upon himself to become competent.

The man had gotten dozens of people fired directly and more indirectly by helping less competent managers follow the correct procedure.

A certain quantity of work at a certain level of quality was required, which everyone met.

Yet they had a bottom and top 10 list and if you were on the bottom 10 list your job was on the line regardless if you met the basic requirements.

Since there was always a bottom 10 by definition, there were always 10 people on the firing line.

This might be vague but it has to be.

Mike’s team was a sort of clearing house for the bottom 10, we were shifted between shifts and teams for various reasons but what I quickly learned is that somehow the shifts bottom 10 were all on Mike’s team.

Now my performance was consistently in the top 10 so I was safe on that count, but my attendance was low due to health issues and my attitude was really bad.

I also learned that the rest of the team was made up of people who weren’t low in performance but had low attendance and attitude problems just like me, and we had all been on the chopping block by managers who failed to follow procedure.

In short Mike was the executioner of the workforce, the most vulnerable to being fired were shifted around to his team so he could succeed where the others had failed.

Sooner or later my time came, my health caused a series of absences while I had hospitalizations and Mike pounced into action.

I’m surprised that HR was actually helpful.

In the space of a year he made 7 attempts to fire me and each time I involved HR who stepped in and protected me.

I approached HR to make a case that what was happening was wrong, not just to me but to everyone.

I made the case that the situation of Mike being the executioner created a hostile work environment.

The fact that I had gotten his attempts to fire me thrown out proved that he was not only hostile but was actively toxic.

That it was against the law to discriminate on age/disability and a myriad of other arguments.

I was told that there was nothing they could do, Mike was untouchable and had the full support of the upper management in our building because he was saving a lot of money in voluntary redundancy payouts by firing the vulnerable.

Legally there might be a case but it would have to go through a court system and not through HR unless I had an example of him being hostile and abusive.

The person I spoke to was very sympathetic and he suggested I look into some things related to job opportunities that were coming up, he mentioned that many of them were managerial positions because a new type of roaming manager had been introduced.

That sounds like a terrible job.

These were very needed and weren’t getting much interest, think substitute teacher where a manager gets sent all around the country at the drop of a hat.

It didn’t occur to me instantly but weeks later as I sat at work listening to Mike talk about his family it clicked into place and my plan began to take form.

Instead of making a complaint I gave a glowing review and had several others do the same.

If we couldn’t get the man fired for his actions, we could get him promoted into a job that he couldn’t take.

The managers in our area were not even being considered for transfers because they lacked the training and qualifications to be managers anywhere else.

Our reviews might just push him over the line into getting a promotion, and since roaming managers were being sought the two should dovetail nicely.

We didn’t give the reviews to our management but directly higher up the food chain, way above anyone that ever dealt with our area of the business.

Each of us mentioned that Mike had done an amazing job at sorting out problems etc, had great managerial skills and an in depth knowledge of procedure.

Then we sat back and waited, a few months went by with nothing happening and I thought the attempt had failed but then we came in to Mike losing his mind, he was shouting at the shift manager (his boss) about how he wasn’t being given a choice.

Turns out the higher management had gotten our reviews, looked into his record and decided he was a perfect fit for the roaming manager position and since they were in the process of getting rid of managers in our area they insisted that Mike be pushed into it.

Mike had of course tried to refuse the promotion as was his right, but the higher management had made it a choice of accept the promotion or be demoted back to peon.

Mike had a family and couldn’t just uproot them whenever the company needed him elsewhere, and a demotion with a pay cut back into the workforce of people who despised him and that were slowly being culled was just as bad.

That is one way to get rid of him.

So he asked for voluntary redundancy instead, and was accepted.

His last day he went berserk shouting and swearing about how badly the company had treated him after “all he had done,” I was unfortunately absent for it but got a play by play and loved every second of it.

Since I was told explicitly that I couldn’t get him punished or fired, I got him a promotion he couldn’t accept instead.

That is some creative thinking that got the desired results.

Well done.

Let’s take a look at the comments and see what they have to say.

This person wants to know more about Mike.

I am wondering this as well.

Yes, this was a great example of revenge.

This person says it may not have been Mike’s fault.

Absolutely, it was perfectly executed.

Excellent example of creative thinking.

You have to find that workaround sometimes to get your way – er, revenge.

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.