Sadly, workplace bullying has long been a thing – and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

The woman in this story was well aware of the bullying that was going on in her office, particularly toward a young employee who had been recently hired.

So she did all she could to protect her from the meanness within the team, and doing her best to make her feel welcome and wanted.

Little did she know, all this would blow up in her face.

Read on to find out how this story went down.

“You’re not my real supervisor and you never will be!”

This is a story about a woman we’ll call ‘Basic’.

Basic came to work in the accounting department at a law firm after her mother died. My boss was a family friend of hers and wanted to help Basic out.

She was very young and right away, a lot of people in the department who didn’t like how she got the job took to making fun of her and making sure she never advanced.

I was still starting out in this firm and department (but no stranger to law firm life) and wanted to help her out as much as I could. I taught her some basic software skills and tricks. She was very eager to learn, though not very bright.

Let’s see how the situation in the workplace developed over the years.

Years pass and she has not gotten a raise of any sort since joining on and the department seems to delight in this. Meanwhile, I jumped on an offer to join another department as a supervisor and I get to choose who gets to come with me.

I chose Basic, since the department was to be designed around a workflow I had created, and she had been trained extensively on it.

Upon our first day of setting up in our new office, it was explained that administratively, I am not her direct supervisor (time off, sick days, payroll, etc). I am, however, supervisory to the workflow of the department which included her participation in it.

She took this to mean that I was not her supervisor, period, and she gleefully told me this as someone comes by to congratulate us. I explained that, yes, that is true for the administrative side, but it fell on deaf ears.

I confirmed with our boss that the situation was as I understood it, to which she agreed. I didn’t make a big deal of it because we had time to work on it if it ever comes to that.

But eventually, this misunderstanding came back to bite her.

We pressed on. After almost a year of working together, things were okay – not great, but the work was getting done. I continued to defend Basic to the old department who were still eager for her to fail.

One day, Basic had exciting news. She had landed a new job at a different firm. I was sad that she didn’t come to me for a reference but was very excited for her. Basic asked me not to tell anyone as she wanted to share the news herself.

There was one problem: she just told her supervisor that she’s leaving. I knew that our boss would dismiss her immediately (though she dismisses people with two weeks’ pay), and we had a backlog of work I can’t do alone.

I also thought that Basic deserved her victory lap. I could either ignore protocol and let a lot of speculation happen about her sudden departure, or do the job I was hired to do and make sure Basic had that victory lap.

So she decided to take action.

I left our office a few minutes later to tell my boss what was going on. Unfortunately, another supervisor and my boss’s assistant were also there. I asked them if I could have a few minutes alone, but after confirming it wasn’t personal, they said they will keep it confidential and I close the door and explain the situation.

My boss of course wanted her gone immediately. I got her to agree to let her stay a week (with one week’s pay) and again asked the two others who wouldn’t leave to keep this confidential.

But by the time I got back to my office, someone has texted Basic, congratulating her on her new job. The texter had just received a text from someone who was in that room.

This was less than a minute after I left. Basic slammed our office door, and began to scream at me – this was her news to tell.

Uh-oh. Let’s see how she responded to this confrontation.

I tried to tell her that I was doing my job, but once again she said, “You’re not a real supervisor!”

Basic continued to yell at me until she decided she needed some air. Basic pointed a fan on me, put it on full blast (to shame me?) and screamed, “This is not over!” then left, slamming the door again.

I moved the fan, then went to my computer. HR had sent me an email copying in my boss to go over what I had said. I updated them with what was going on and they asked me if I still wanted Basic there for another week – it was my call as supervisor.

Basic came back, slammed the door again, saw that I had turned off the fan and put it back on me, before beginning to leave a voicemail to HR to see if she could sit somewhere else for the remainder of her time there.

I emailed back that I would like her to be terminated today.

Read on to find out how Basic got her comeuppance.

Basic was then called to my boss’s office. When she returned, she was very apologetic. I learned later that my boss had said that she hadn’t decided whether or not to let her go today based on her actions, and it would be based on my recommendation as her supervisor.

I said that I was going to lunch; by the time I got back, she was gone.

It was bittersweet, since the department where we came from, where so many had made fun of her, harassed her, and made sure she never got a raise?

Now they began to say how they always thought she was so kind and I was so mean to her and was an absolute *****.

This woman did her best to protect her fellow employee from the nastiness in her former department, and it’s such a shame that it got turned around on her on both counts.

It doesn’t seem fair.

While Basic never respected the employee who had protected her, her former department continued to show their unpleasant side – just showing that this woman had the moral high ground.

Let’s see how the Reddit community responded to this.

This person thought that the woman had been unfair to Basic, and should have let her speak to the boss herself.

However, others commended the way that she’d tried to support Basic throughout her time at the company.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought there was a lesson we could all learn here.

Protocols seemingly meant that this woman had to speak to her boss once Basic had spoken about her new job – and she rightly put herself first in trying to secure Basic’s continued employment for another week, too.

The people who said they’d keep the information confidential, then immediately proceeded to spill the beans the second after the meeting ended though?

They’re the bad guys; they’re the ones that can’t be trusted.

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.