Bullies never seem prepared for their victims to clap back.

Arrogance is a pain.

This means that it doesn’t take much to bring one down.

See how this worker did it.

That time I got in trouble for violating the company “Social Media Policy”

I worked for a company that had a SaaS product, but my team was the on-premises team that would install it on customers servers who paid extra for the service.

While other teams had multiple other teams supporting them, we were basically on our own to make the SaaS product portable so that could be installed at customer sites.

One afternoon on a particularly hard crunch, my coworker and I have a pizza delivered.

It was going to be a 12 hour day, so we decided to eat lunch at our desks while we hunkered down.

Something added to the chaos.

There was 1 single slice left and my coworker gave it to me.

I wrapped it up and put it on a place for my 5pm snack time.

5 pm rolls around, and it’s gone!

I look in the trash, there it was with a single bite out of it.

I came back later around 6 or so because we were still in crunch mode and noticed my co-worker had left a note on her juicer. Apparently, people had been using it and not washing it.

I was fed up with people getting into co-workers’ nonsense, so I wrote the note you see here and left it on her juicer (after thoroughly washing it, because some other loser decided to leave it dirty).

The next day the entire office was a buzz when I walked in. People walking up to me, giving me high fives.

Generally speaking, people were in a good mood for me standing up, except for my supervisor.

Prior to him becoming supervisor, he was the team lead, but would butt heads with anyone who dared to show any promise of talent.

On seeing the “Atta, boys” written on the note, I took a picture and put it on Facebook.

A few days later my supervisor comes up to me stating that HR is bringing me in to sign a PIP because I “Broke company social media policy.”

“What do you mean? This is just a stupid note about someone stealing my pizza. It was funny!”

“Someone on social media will read your note and think our company has pizza thieves.”

Two can play that game.

I knew he was behind it, so later that night I looked on his Facebook and came across a post of his from 2 weeks earlier.

“I hate the nepotism at my company.”

HR brought us both in for our performance improvement (PIP) meeting.

He went on and on about awful I was, and how he had all this evidence of that, and my “Pizza Note” In my hand I held a manila folder.

I didn’t lead on with what was in the manila folder, but I remained silent the entire time while my supervisor laid his case out to HR.

“And THAT is why there needs to be on a PIP!” closing his case with a smug satisfied look on his face.

“Do you have anything to say?”

“I sure do!” I said, taking the printout of the screenshot I took, complete with a time stamp. “So here’s a post Jerk did 2 weeks ago, saying there’s ‘Too much nepotism at our company.’

I think that’s a lot more damaging to the company reputation than me complaining someone stole a slice of pizza out of the fridge.

It wouldn’t be fair if I’m punished, and he’s not punished for saying something way worse on social media. We should both be put on PIPs.”

His face turned a ghastly white. He started to stammer. “BUT BUT. THIS WAS WHEN I WORKED AT IBM.”

Fortunately, his adversary had receipts.

Me to HR lady. “Look at the timestamp, this was 2 weeks ago, I can pull up his profile on my phone, this wasn’t about IBM”

Jerk: “YOU’RE ALWAYS SUCH A BIG BABY! YOU CAN’T HAVE THINGS YOUR WAY!” He went on about a 5 minute tirade of calling me names.

I just stayed silent and looked at him. I weaponized calm. HR interrupted him.

“Jerk, why don’t I finish talking to to her and you and I can talk later”

“THIS ISN’T THE LAST OF THIS!” he said as he slammed the door out of her office.

The HR lady and I talked for a bit, very calmly. She told me I did a great job, and all things considered she wouldn’t be recommending a PIP for this incident.

A few months later I got a new job.

Here is what people are saying.

We all need it.

Yes. We got it. Thanks.

You don’t want to overdo it!

Pizza is not a joke.

Now I want pizza.

But that’s nothing new.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.