A lot of people think going to college is the way to prepare for a solid career, and while this is often true (it’s the path I took), don’t overlook the trades. A job like a plumber can be a really solid career, and it’s never going to be replaced by AI.

In this story, one person shares their experience working for a plumbing company. Everything seemed great at first, but there wouldn’t be any point in telling the story if nothing went wrong.

The working conditions ended up getting so bad that the plumber quit and was out for revenge. That’s where the story starts to get really good!

What would you do if your former boss tried to get out of giving you your final paycheck? That’s just one issue this plumber was dealing with.

Keep reading to see how the plumber finally gets his final paychecks and takes down the company he used to work for.

Boss wouldn’t pay me the money I earned, so I had his company shut down

Last year I started working for a local plumbing company that seemed promising. Would pay top dollar to employees for good old fashioned labor. So I signed my W-2 and went on my way.

Seems legit, right?

I started out making an hourly wage, was given my own work van and was offered a work cellphone. However, if you used your personal cellphone, the owner of the company would pay your bill because you’re using your own phone! How neat is that?

This sounds fishy.

Fast forward a month or two. I was forced to make commission based off of every job and I didn’t have a say in this. But 20% of every job you go to? Hell that’s a lot of money in plumbing! So I was none the wiser.

Eventually I found out that my paychecks weren’t having any taxes taken out of them. So I asked my boss

“Why am I not having taxes taken out of my check?”

To which he replied: “When we switched you to commission, you’re a subcontractor now. You’re 1099! You’re gonna be making so much bank now, bro.”

Didn’t sign a 1099 form but ok.

The working conditions sound awful.

As the time went on, I started working 90 hour weeks with no break. If my phone was turned off and the office folk tried to reach me and couldn’t, they would take money out of my paycheck.

The phone bill? Never got paid.

There would be days where I wouldn’t make a single dime because the boss would mess something up in our system.

We also had no heat in our vans and when it got to -14° outside his words to us were “Go buy a freaking blanket. I can’t afford repairs like this right now” while he is in Florida on a cruise with his whole family.

Enough of that!

So like anyone else, I just up and quit. Forget that.

When I left, I asked for my checks (I was owed 3 of them for the weeks I worked) but my boss wasn’t ready to give them up yet.

“You messed me over, and now I’m going to mess you over.” He said when I asked why he wasn’t going to pay me.

I offered multiple times for him to just meet me so this wouldn’t have to go any further. He refused.

He asked for legal advice.

I took to r/legaladvice (bless them) and asked what I should do. The responses led me to LARA (Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs) to file a wage claim to get my money.

But on top of that, I filed a report with them stating the company doesn’t pull permits (which is required to do) when replacing people’s plumbing. So they sent over an investigator to check these claims out.

I then went to the IRS to find out about this whole tax ordeal. I filed the proper paperwork to have the IRS check and see if I was misclassified as a 1099 employee when I should have been a W-2 employee since they weren’t taking taxes out.

SURE AS HECK I was wrongfully not getting taxes taken out of my checks. So the IRS sent an investigator of their own.

But wait, there’s more!

Now at this point I see on my phone that I still have their email address linked to my Google account. So I do some snooping.

It turns out they haven’t paid city taxes in over 6 years and that the office manager (a woman who has verbally abused me time and time again) collects disability through the state but still collects a 1.5k paycheck from the company every week.

You can bet I sent that in with the IRS. Screenshots included in my email.

This is how it all unfolded.

Here’s how it all worked out.

I have a friend that still works (or rather worked for them at the time) and he told me about the investigators coming in.

LARA fined them upwards of $50,000 for failing to produce the proper permits for work that was performed.

They also paid me what the company owed me WITH INTEREST since I waited over a month for those checks.

On top of all of this, the IRS made them pay for my taxes at the end of the year, took away the office manager’s disability, audited them because they haven’t paid city taxes and fined them for each employee they did this to.

He had the perfect response ready for his former boss.

At this time as well, all of his fleet vans broke due to wear and tear. This resulted in the company closing.

When he asked me why I did all of this my response was simply:

“You messed me over, so I messed you over.”

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who reported a man to HR for calling himself her “work uncle” and giving out his phone number.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this revenge story.

I’m sure it was very satisfying.

Here’s more praise.

This person loved the revenge.

An office manager weighs in.

Paying employees fairly and providing reasonable working conditions are vital to prevent them from quitting, or in drastic cases like this one, getting revenge. Withholding paychecks was really the last straw here, and I don’t blame OP at all for deciding to get revenge.

It sounds like the company was great at first. Perhaps the owner got greedy. Whatever caused things to go from great to awful, OP did a good job taking the company the final lap from awful to out of business.

One lesson here for employers is to treat their employees the way they would want someone to treat them, like paying them what they’re owed and making sure the vans have heat.

A lesson for employees is to know your worth and not to keep letting a horrible boss try to convince you that you’re crazy for complaining about horrible working conditions. This plumber did a great job.