Working for a bad boss can be a deal breaker for a lot of employees.

Imagine working for a boss who was nice one minute and horribly rude the next.

Would you try to ignore the boss and do your job, or would you quit and look for work where the boss was sane?

In today’s story, one man decides to quit, but that’s far from the end of the story!

Let’s see how it all works out.

Better than me because he made $200/hour, so I made him pay me $200/hour

This happened to me way back in 1998.

I had been working as a one-man IT shop for a very small manufacturing company.

The owner was a tax attorney who had incredibly wild mood swings.

One day he called me into his office and told me how great I was, how I was his “data prince”, and too many more compliments to count.

In the middle of the conversation he suddenly switched gears telling me how much better he was than me because he made $200 an hour, and he could replace me in a minute.

Time to look for another job.

I quit on the spot and told him “You’ll need me before I need you. And when you call me it’ll cost you $200 an hour.”

Then I left.

Fast-forward a year.

I’m working another job and making twice as much money as I did at the old job.

He found out what happened after he quit.

I get an unexpected call from one of the plant managers at the old job.

He tells me that after I left they hired two consultants at double my rate (each) to finish some of the critical work I was doing.

One of the projects I was working on was ensuring their ordering system could handle special requirements from a very large national retailer: their biggest customer.

Turns out the consultants couldn’t do the job, even after paying 4X my salary to them for a year.

“Oh that sounds bad” was my response.

They needed him to do them a favor.

“Yeah we were wondering if you could do it for us, like on a part-time basis.”

The owner had sent his lackey to beg me to come work for him because he was too scared to call me himself.

“Sure I can do that, no problem.”

“Really?” he asked me.

There was just one stipulation.

“Yup, for $200 an hour.”

After a long silence (I assumed he put me on mute to talk to the owner who was sitting in the same room, because that was his style), he agreed.

6 months later at $200 an hour, they had their ordering system in place and were able to maintain their biggest, most lucrative account.

That played out perfectly!

I love that they actually realized how valuable he was and had to pay him whatever he wanted.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is true!

This person thinks “revenge” wasn’t quite the right word for this story.

He could’ve charged more.

Perhaps $1 more just to rub it in.

This person would’ve gone for 10% more.

Well played! Well played!

You gotta get that money.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.