November 15, 2025 at 8:35 pm

A Contractor’s Rude Former Co-Worker Wanted Files He’d Worked Hard On, So He Sent The Files But Didn’t Tell Him That They Were Specially Coded And Would Take A Long Time To Get Through

by Matthew Gilligan

man working on a computer

Shutterstock/Reddit

Ask and you shall receive…

But if you DEMAND things from someone, you better be prepared for some blowback!

The worker in this story from Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page wasn’t happy about what went down, so they decided to turn the screws a bit on someone they used to work with.

Check out what went down!

You want the files? Sure, here you go.

“December 2020 (middle of the pandemic), I was contracting as a stress engineer (basically check that things are strong enough etc).

One week before Christmas I get a call from the agency I was contracting with saying that my contract was not going to be renewed.

I live in the UK and had been working from home for about 6 months following the lockdown.

Ugh…

I was part of a small team, one member of the team was a weasel in love with his own brain.

He used a lot of big words and waffled on in front of the client basically an expert turd polisher of the highest caliber. I was more succinct and just stuck to the facts when reporting on the progress of my analysis.

So the whole project was a bit of a **** show. Client kept changing their mind about how they wanted this part analyzed. I was just a contractor and as such had to do what they said.

I never did find out why it was me they decided to can me but I can guess. I think the multiple changes and delays were put on me and weasel boy obviously convinced them he was very much more valuable than me.

For a bit of background this guy was a serious jerk. I was once tasked with checking some of his analysis.

I did.

Well, that’s interesting…

I found some errors in his calculations.

I corrected them and sent them back.

He didn’t like that.

Not. One. Bit.

I correct his calculations and give him a much simpler way of doing it.

Rather than use my method (which was correct) he spends TWO DAYS with his weaselly little face buried in a maths textbook looking up a more advanced matrix method (which did the same thing as what I had given him).

Time is money, people!

Bear in mind the following…as contractors we were there to get the job done. He had a method (the one I gave him) and he refused to use it. He wasted two days of the client’s money looking up a method that did the same thing.

A few days later we were making a coffee and he says that he had sent his calculation off to the client who was “really impressed with MY matrix method”.

They were pretty upset about this.

I was gobsmacked.

You are a little jerk and I don’t like you

You wasted two days you little jerk

It isn’t YOUR METHOD.

You read what others had done and you took the next step, you didn’t earn the knowledge for yourself so you don’t take any responsibility for it.

You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had, you’d patented it, and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox and now you selling it, well…Sorry

So needless to say he was a weasel and a cerebral narcissist and he just needed dropkicking, but he gets kept on.

There were even more jerks!

Enter Jerk #2. This guy is technically our leader and well he was a jerk as well but I won’t get into that too much.

About 4 months after being let go, I have been scratching around for work for months. I am married and we have 3 kids.

Savings used up, my eldest actually gave us money from his trust fund to tide us over. I had taken a job in a warehouse working Sat-Sun-Mon doing 12 hour shifts. it was tough work and the supervisor was a jerk who needed kneecapping.

So I took this so that I could continue to look for work during the week. One day I am sitting there and my phone rings.

Jerk2 – Hi how is it going?
(**** you, you haven’t spoken to me in months!)

Me – Oh hi. How’s it going?

These people had a lot of nerve…

Jerk2 – Do you remember that analysis you did? Well do you still have the analysis files? The client has lost them.

You cheeky jerk! 4 months and not a word, never once tried to help me find work or even drop me a text and now you want MY help…oh my friend there is a special place in HELL for you, you soulless money grabbing jerk!!)

Me – Yes, I think I do, but they are not the latest iteration, you will have to check for some of the later updates

Jerk#2 Oh great, if you can send them that would be great!
(send them? why don’t I send you to The Backrooms where you can get a Stick Job from an Entity you jerk!?)

Me – Sure, will do.

I was gobsmacked. How can people be such jerks? The client lost the files? So? Sounds like a personal problem.

You might wonder why I gave him the files?

Well, because I knew something he didn’t know.

The reason why I was able to summarize the results of the analysis so quickly was because I had written some code to go through all the output files of the analysis and strip out only the results that we were interested in.

Here you go!

I gave him 40 files.

Have fun manually looking through them and stripping out what you need (it would take ages).

Oh and like I said…they were old files, out of date.

Take them and shove them up your *** and while you are at it tell that weasel that he is a little henpecked jerk and I am glad that his wife spends all his money and his mother in law lives in his house and complains at him.”

Here’s what folks had to say on Reddit.

This person shared their thoughts.

Screenshot 2025 11 15 at 5.50.59 PM A Contractors Rude Former Co Worker Wanted Files Hed Worked Hard On, So He Sent The Files But Didnt Tell Him That They Were Specially Coded And Would Take A Long Time To Get Through

Another individual weighed in.

Screenshot 2025 11 15 at 5.51.07 PM A Contractors Rude Former Co Worker Wanted Files Hed Worked Hard On, So He Sent The Files But Didnt Tell Him That They Were Specially Coded And Would Take A Long Time To Get Through

This Reddit user spoke up.

Screenshot 2025 11 15 at 5.51.46 PM A Contractors Rude Former Co Worker Wanted Files Hed Worked Hard On, So He Sent The Files But Didnt Tell Him That They Were Specially Coded And Would Take A Long Time To Get Through

And another reader was impressed.

Screenshot 2025 11 15 at 5.52.17 PM A Contractors Rude Former Co Worker Wanted Files Hed Worked Hard On, So He Sent The Files But Didnt Tell Him That They Were Specially Coded And Would Take A Long Time To Get Through

That guy was in for a rude awakening!

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.