How do you get back at an employee who accuses you of harassment even if it’s not true?

This man thinks there’s something fishy going on with two of his colleagues, including one who reported him for harassment.

When he looked into their chat logs, he found information that could be used against them.

Read the full story below to learn how he took his revenge.

Claim harassment against me? Get fired.

At one point, I was managing a small team of business development reps at a small software company.

These are the recent grads that would be phone monkeys.

Making cold calls trying to set-up appointments for the real sales people.

Meet Amy and Paul.

I had two reps at the time: Amy and Paul.

They were young, but hungry.

They listened to training, and were generally great employees.

At one point, Paul and I realized that we had some mutual friends, and that helped our relationship.

This man found out that Amy reported him for harassment.

Fast forward a few months from their hiring, and my boss grabs me one morning for a meeting with HR.

Apparently, Amy had filed a harassment complaint against me, alleging some crazy things.

She reported that my single goal was to ruin her career, and that I would make sure she was fired.

No one believed her.

The HR meeting was a formality, as no one believed it, but they had to do the investigation.

Nothing came from it, but I would never be alone in a room with Amy again.

If she came to talk to me with no one around, I would go to a common area of the office or invite someone into the discussion.

He then learned that Paul was job hunting.

A few more months, and Paul asked me to be a reference.

The company was a mess, and the CEO was running it into the ground.

I was more than happy to do it, as I was job hunting myself.

I just asked that he keep me in the loop about interviews and offers, and I would cover his time out of the office.

He asked IT to upgrade Amy’s and Paul’s laptops.

Not surprisingly, he landed a job pretty quickly and gave his notice to me.

Also at this time, IT was doing hardware upgrades to laptops, adding more RAM to allow us to run the latest version of our product for demos.

I coordinated with IT to have both their machines done one day, and told them to take a long lunch.

He realized they could review employee’s Skype chat logs.

Well, a little over a year before this happened, one VP had been fired.

After he left, I learned it was common practice for IT to review all the Skype chat logs from the machine.

Luckily, it meant me getting a small bonus because the VP was trashing the company to me, but I wasn’t.

And I was vaguely praising the CEO (I’m no dummy, and don’t have those conversations over channels that can be reviewed).

He asked IT to check their Skype accounts.

With Paul out the door, and Amy being a lying jerk, I asked IT to review their Skype logs during the upgrade, because “something seemed fishy.”

I was right.

Even though Amy deleted her chat logs, Paul didn’t.

There were chats in there about how they were both job searching, and Amy had gotten an admin password for our CRM.

She had been pulling customer lists to take with her.

He found out about her bonus to drop the harassment complaint.

Furthermore, she had been bragging about receiving a $1,500 bonus to drop the harassment complaint against me as the CEO was worried that any complaints or lawsuits would scare away the investors needed to keep the company going.

Oh, and she chatted that, “They made me sign a non-disclosure about it, but they won’t find out.”

Both employees were terminated.

Oh, she was toast.

Director of IT and I went straight to HR and the CEO with the print outs.

The decision was quick: both were to be terminated immediately.

Amy for unauthorized access of data and breach of her non-disclosure, and Paul for some crappy reason of not reporting her.

Amy had to pay her bonus back.

They got back from their lunch, and I immediately called them into HR.

Paul was given a 2-weeks severance, but Amy needed to pay back her $1,500 “hush” bonus.

Because of her gross misconduct, she wasn’t eligible for severance or unemployment, and the re-payment was deducted from her final check and quarterly bonus.

Her exit check was for less than $10.

He noticed how Amy changed jobs repeatedly.

Paul had two weeks off, with the severance.

We remain connected, but I love seeing Amy changing jobs on LinkedIn every 6-9 months.

Let’s see how others reacted to this.

This user confirms it’s pro-level revenge.

This one shares their personal opinion.

While this one shares a similar story.

This user loves the story.

If you’re gonna talk badly about your company, be sure not to use your company laptop!

That’s common sense.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.