The saying “work smarter, not harder” should be edited to “as long as you get the credit for what you’re doing.”

Of course, there’s always revenge against a boss who tries to take credit for your hard work.

Read the story below to see how he got out of a toxic workplace with fair compensation.

New boss takes it in the neck

Years ago, I was the manager of an elite help desk team for a large computer manufacturer.

This was the coolest job because of the perks.

I got to handpick the best-of-the-best techs to work in my department because we charged $2 per minute for support.

We would support anything that anyone was willing to pay us $2/minute to support.

Each tech had the potential to earn the company $960 per day, which is a big big deal because tech support is not usually a profit center for any company.

This situation sounds like a win-win!

The reason I’m explaining this is because I was required to give up two techs for their entire shift, in order to run a complex report for my bosses, which cost them (potentially) nearly $2,000 per day.

The company IT department had not been able to automate the creation of this report, so they gave it to me to deal with.

After running through it with my techs, we came up with a process that involved receiving the previous day’s data from IT.

Tech 1 started the report, working on it for her entire shift.

Tech 2 resumed the report for her entire shift, turning it into management for their review at the end of the second shift.

So, data from Monday, was delivered to us Tuesday morning and was turned into a report for management by Tuesday evening, which they wouldn’t see until Wednesday morning.

The data was two days old, by the time they saw it.

Sounds like there’s gotta be a more streamlined system out there.

My team was the golden child of the tech support arm of the company, and I had a great boss (GreatBoss).

I had a meeting with him about this daily report issue because I wanted my two techs back on the phones making money.

I offered to write a software application on my own time which would retrieve the data in real-time and create the reports for the currently available data whenever management wanted to view it.

No more two-day-old data, I was offering five-minute-old data.

I asked for two-weeks salary as compensation, and GreatBoss agreed.

For him, it was a steal.

Potentially $1,920 daily in reclaimed revenue from two techs who were pulled off of a profitable team was a super deal for him.

Ok, so another win-win?

So, I got to work.

It took about a week to write the code.

When I was finished, I installed it on one of the company servers and did some fine tuning.

Everything worked as planned. I was about to raise the performance metrics of my team and make a few thousand extra in the process.

Unfortunately, during that week GreatBoss had been forced into retirement, and I had a new boss (NewBoss) who came with a yes-man named Randy (RandyWeasel).

When I presented the reporting system to NewBoss and RandyWeasel, they were really impressed.

Alright, so where’s the pay we were promised…

They loved that they didn’t have to look at old/stale data and could be proactive instead of reactive.

Then I mentioned the agreement with GreatBoss regarding compensation for my time.

That’s when things went south.

NewBoss said he would need to clear that with upper management, and that he didn’t think he could pay that.

The next day, he came back with an offer for two vacation days instead of an actual payment.

Of course, I turned that down.

His argument was that it would be better to get something for my work than to get nothing for it.

TWO vacation days? That doesn’t hold a candle to the pay.

It was then that I learned that my access to the server had been revoked.

I couldn’t take it back.

They had the goods, and I was at their mercy.

Or was I?

As the author of the software, only I knew how it worked, what maintenance it required, and only I had the source code — so it couldn’t be modified by anyone else.

If they wanted changes, they would have to re-write it from scratch.

I knew it would only be a matter of time before lack of maintenance bit them, so I planned to be long gone by that time.

My revenge began about five minutes into my next shift.

I arrived with a large duffel bag, and two sheets of paper in a folder.

Right on schedule, RandyWeasel arrived at my desk for some nonsense thing.

Being an idiot, he thought nothing of it when I handed him a clipboard and said, “Sign this” — he took the pen and jotted his signature down like a trained dog.

He continued his nonsense, and I said, “Follow me to the copy machine” — which he did.

He went on with his nonsense while I made a copy of the sheet he signed, and the other sheet which I pulled out of the folder.

I, then, stapled the two copies together, and put them in his hand.

What could he have signed?!

He looked down at the top sheet, a vacation request form starting today through the next two weeks.

He said, “You can’t take this,” to which I replied, “You signed it, and it gets better”.

He flipped to the next sheet, my two-week notice.

His eyes grew to the size of saucers as he realized that yesterday was my last day, and that they had no replacement for my duties and no leadership for my team.

I returned to my desk, and proceeded to pack up everything.

Whoa! And how about that vacation time? Did they honor it?

I got my two-weeks paid vacation, GreatBoss hired me to lead a tech support department with a new company.

Best of all, the reporting system I built crashed due to lack of maintenance within a month.

I’d like to think that NewBoss and RandyWeasel lived to regret their actions — but the reality is that they probably just found someone else to screw over.

Whatever, I got mine — and they got jack.

What does Reddit think about this corporate comeback?

Redditors knew the most important rule.

Readers were also thrilled by the tale.

The compliments kept coming.

Truly, this story was a hit!

A classy revenge for a worker who meant well.

I hope management got an overhaul.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.