Do you remember Covid? How could we forget. It was a horrible time, and one thing that made it horrible was that so many businesses were shut down, yet these businesses still had rent to pay and employees to pay.

In this story, one such company was evicted by their landlord during Covid, and they were told to remove all of their equipment. When they saw an ad the landlord placed for the space they were vacating, they decided to be pretty extreme about what they removed from the space.

Let’s read the whole story.

Landlord advertises all of our company’s equipment for sale to our competitors. Best follow our eviction to the letter.

I work for a leisure company, think soft play, indoor soccer, laser tag (can’t be specific)

Prior to lockdown, Managers and the big bosses were negotiating the renewal of the lease on one of our parks. Things were going mostly smoothly, however, the landlords were difficult to contact.

Then 2020’s garbage hit the fan.

Covid was really bad for business.

All of our sites were closed, and everything was thrown into a mess.

Negotiations began to slip down the priority list; nobody thought the landlord would push an eviction for an expired lease during this period. Especially with it still getting rent, despite the sites closure, and the closure of every business and restaurant in the immediate area.

We were wrong.

A few days ago we received a letter saying we had 7 days to leave the premises and take everything with us. We are reminded that anything left in the building after 7 days will become the landlord’s property! (that line is very important).

The landlord thought he was going to get all of their equipment.

Now a lot of construction goes into installing our equipment into a new building, which makes emptying one even harder.

Add a lockdown, with no staff and most businesses shut, it meant that saving much of our assets would prove to be extremely difficult.

To lose a profitable site and all of its assets is definitely a blow to our company. But here is where it gets worse;

A few days into our 7-day eviction, we find out that the landlord has been advertising our park to our competitors. But he isn’t offering just the building, he is offering ALL OF OUR STUFF PRE INSTALLED.

“Ready to go, just needs re-branding.” The landlord has evicted us from the property in an attempt to increase rent and make a solid profit from our equipment installed because he thinks we won’t be able to empty the park.

They weren’t going to leave anything behind.

We were furious.

And here is where the malicious compliance came in. We were told we had 7 days to move everything we owned out of the property. So that’s what we did.

Local businesses from all around offered up free space to store our things, a few people came back out of lockdown and they all spent the rest of the week removing, selling or destroying everything that was related to us.

We didn’t even leave light fittings.

They took more than they usually do.

In every other sight vacation we have seen, we always end up leaving thousands of $$ worth of disco lights in the ceilings because they’re too hard to get.

We leave most the construction in, as well as things like the bars and kitchens that all stay intact (recognisable as what they once were) but not this building.

We ripped up the flooring we installed, tore down the walls that were not part of the original structure (Wooden walls to divide up the space) ripped apart our manager’s offices and removed all artwork, and lockers.

This is really bad for the landlord.

The landlord now has every new deal he has been making dead in the water, a large renovation bill to install new flooring etc. (or a company willing to do it themselves like we were).

Lockdown has been extended another 4 weeks, so he has at least another 4 weeks without rent (we were paying) and won’t have any potential buyers.

Silver lining: The assets we got out of the site (fridges, tv’s, equipment, food, tables) have all been sold, and the lack of rent and additional income has helped the business and paid staff wages.

They weren’t using the site anyway due to Covid, so the only person who is really hurting is the former landlord.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

The landlord brought this mess on himself.

Another person would’ve liked to see the landlord’s reaction.

This person found this story satisfying.

Another person would’ve been much more malicious.

He got exactly what he asked for!

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.