Having a job that you enjoy is a real blessing, but a single bad manager can ruin everything.

What would you do if your manager was constantly trying to find ways to get you fired, even though you did a good job?

That is what the tech manager in this story had happen, so he got together with some coworkers to set the manager up to get fired.

Let’s see what they did.

Want to be the Office Tyrant? Enjoy Getting Fired in Disgrace

Back in the late 1990’s I worked for a company that built and sold computers in bulk for large businesses. It was originally a Chinese firm with it’s American expansion headquarters based in Milpitas, California. Name of the comapany rhymes with Dupercom.

They had satellite offices all around the United States, I was the lead technician and computer builder at one of the locations in South Texas.

It was a relatively small business (about 20 or so people), with sales offices in the front and a huge warehouse filled with computer parts in the back.

Bad managers are the worst.

We had a total Karen of an office manager named Susanna who was the definition of a petty tyrant. She attempted to rule that office with an iron fist and was a total jerk to everyone.

She had the emotional maturity of a jealous, self-centered middle schooler and it showed.

She liked to try to constantly exert power over everyone, and everyone in the office absolutely hated her.

When her secretary had us build her a new computer for her home, Susanna marched into our tech office the next day and demanded to know what kind of computer we built her, just so she could order one for herself that was more powerful, because “it isn’t right that my subordinate have a better computer than me”.

It sounds like there is no shortage of pettiness here.

That’s just one example of how petty and immature she was.

We told her that we couldn’t divulge that information because of customer privacy, so of course she went behind our backs and looked up the invoices to see for herself, because unfortunately, she had the necessary access to do that.

Then, she demanded we build one for her that had a better processor, more memory, bigger hard drive, etc.

Then, she proceeded to take the computer home for herself and wrote it off at company expense.

She didn’t even pay for it like her secretary/assistant did.

She was petty in other ways too.

Another example of her pettiness was towards myself.

Back then, hardware vendors used to come to us to display and sell their wares, because they knew that if we bought them, we were going to be buying them in bulk, and I mean thousands of units at a time.

As the manager of the tech department the regional manager expected me to be at those presentations to learn about the product and how it would integrate with computers that my department was expected to build.

On the day the vendors came to give their presentation, Susanna demanded that I go to the warehouse during that time to help the warehouse manager put away stock.

WRONG.

She needs to let him attend this meeting.

I told her that as the manager of the tech department, I HAD to be at the meeting.

She didn’t like that.

She then DEMANDED, in front of the entire office and the vendors themselves, to go to the warehouse like a lowly assistant and help put away stock.

I refused.

Then she got really irate and really wanted to “put me in my place” in front of everyone, because she couldn’t stand to be told no. She HAD to maintain her dominance in the workplace.

So, I simply walked out of the room, got on the phone, and called the regional manager.

Terribly unprofessional.

She actually YELLED at me to come back to where she was, “she wasn’t finished with me yet”.

I told her “yes you are, I have a phone call to make” while I was dialing.

I got the regional manager on the phone and explained the situation, in front of her, the vendors, the entire office. I put him on speakerphone.

He demanded to speak with her, and told her in no uncertain terms that I was to be at that presentation, no ifs, ands, or buts.

I can’t believe she is trying to make him miss the meeting.

He told me that if she STILL refused, to call him back.

You could have heard a pin drop in that office.

The look on her face was priceless. Her face was so red it resembled a cooked lobster.

Then I hung up the phone, crossed my arms, and waited, and you know what? She STILL insisted I go to the warehouse and help put away stock!

This time, Robert, the sales manager, who was about ten years older than her, intervened, and told Susanna that he would be calling the regional manager back if she didn’t allow me to attend the presentation.

She got even redder still, you could practically see the steam pouring out of her ears.

Oh, she was MAD.

She just screamed “FINE!” and went to her office and slammed the door so hard it cracked the glass window in it.

I attended the presentation, but forever after that she was trying to get myself and Robert in trouble for any petty reason she could think of.

She would even go so far as to turn on computer monitors in the tech room after I had left, then attempt to berate me the next day for “forgetting to turn them off and wasting electricity”.

This woman is terrible.

Just stupid petty little things like that.

She would forge sales reports to try to make Robert and his team look bad, and generally make everyone’s office life miserable.

Cue the revenge.

Everyone in the office was tired of this woman’s antics, so we formulated a plan.

She could have been stealing them.

We had noticed that during the quarterly warehouse inventory report that if there were inventory units coming up short, say like several processors or video cards or whatever missing, she would zero those negative units out in the system and reprint the reports to make it look like there was never anything out of place.

She didn’t investigate or try to get to the bottom of it, she just zeroed them out because she was lazy and didn’t want those stolen or misplaced items to reflect badly on her performance as the office manager.

That is a lot of video cards.

About a week before the next quarterly inventory report, we purposefully hid about 2 crates (60 units) of video cards so that the inventory would come up short.

The warehouse manager printed out two copies of the inventory reports, keeping one for himself, before he presented the reports to Susanna.

Then he called the regional manager and told him that he might want to visit our location soon because he was concerned about items going missing in the warehouse.

She should have known this was a foolish policy.

Susanna, of course, as we predicted, zeroed out those missing units, and presented the reports to the regional manager the next day as if everything was just peachy keen.

The warehouse manager then took the regional manager aside and showed him the real reports, and told him of Susanna’s butt-covering shenanigans.

Needless to say, she was very much fired within minutes after those reports were presented.

Then entire office watched in silent happiness as a disgraced Susanna cleaned out her office and made the walk of shame to her car.

Wow, these people really hated her.

As soon as the main office door closed behind her, everyone in the office cheered, it was loud enough that Susanna heard through the glass doors and windows as she shame-facedly walked her box of belongings out to load into her car, tears of embarassment and rage streaming down her face.

You could tell she heard because she stopped with her head down before a brief moment before continuing on to her car.

Susanna’s assistant, a nice older woman named Helen, became the new office manager. Everyone at the office was much happier with her at the helm, and productivity increased accordingly.

How did she not know that clearing out missing inventory would backfire on her?

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit thought of this story.

This would have been an easier way to get her fired.

Wow, this person went to extremes.

This would have been even better.

I’m betting it was a side hustle.

Yeah, that could have been thousands of dollars of theft.

A great job can be ruined by a bad manager.

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.