He Quit His Toxic Job, and a Week Later His Ex-Boss Asked Him to Leave a Review—Assuming It Would Be Glowing
Magnific
Some people have no clue the hell they put others through, or they just don’t care.
In this case, an employee spent four years working at a small planning and design firm and not feeling happy about the work conditions at all.
Despite being a specialist, he was expected to take on responsibilities closer to those of a fully qualified project manager without the corresponding support or compensation.
He quit, but his boss reached out to him to ask for a review.
His boss simply assumed it would be a positive one. Well, he should have been careful what he asked for.
Read the full story below.
Toxic ex-boss begs me to leave a company review. I give him exactly what he asked for.
For context: I (29M) recently quit my job as a specialist at a small planning and design firm somewhere in Germany. The place was a mess.
The pay was a joke, the leadership was completely unpredictable, and they expected me to do the job of a fully qualified project manager (like planning the entire renovation of a large municipal facility) without the pay or the support.
The turnover was crazy.
As we can see, he had a lot to say about it.
Three of my colleagues quit around the same time and during my 4 years there, my boss went through 5 different assistants. I eventually packed my bags and moved to a different city for a fresh start.
A week after my last day, my former boss texted me.
He casually asked me to “please leave a review” for the firm on a popular local job review site (basically our equivalent of Glassdoor).
He genuinely thought we parted on great terms and assumed I’d drop a 5-star rating to boost their ****** score.
I just rolled my eyes and ghosted him.
But then he saw something he couldn’t unsee.
Fast forward to a few days ago. I checked the company’s page and saw three brand new 4.5-star reviews posted in the same week. They were so obviously faked by management.
They all used the exact same HR buzzwords (“great work-life balance”, “amazing health benefits”, which was literally just 15 minutes of stretching on Wednesdays, lol) and magically praised all the exact things people usually complained about.
It was infuriating.
At this point, I remembered his text. He wanted a review? Fine. Let’s comply.
I sat down and wrote a brutally honest, mathematically precise review.
I kept it completely professional and entirely subjective (“In my experience…”, “I felt that…”) so they couldn’t legally sue me to take it down.
I gave them 1 and 2 stars in almost every category, explicitly mentioning the lack of support, the horrible communication, and the heavy workload.
Then he did something extra.
But I didn’t stop there.
While I was at it, I contacted the platform’s support team and reported the three new 4.5-star reviews for manipulation, pointing out the identical wording and the fact that they were posted at the exact same time.
Less than four hours later, two of the three fake reviews were nuked by the platform.
The automatic spam filter probably caught them because my boss was dumb enough to write them from the same office PC/IP address.
Being honest paid off.
With his fake reviews gone and my honest 1-star review dragging the average down even further, panic mode set in. How do I know? Because my ex-boss texted me again.
This time the message was full of typos, desperately asking if I could please leave a good review to help them out. He has absolutely no idea that I am the one who tanked his rating and reported his fakes.
I left him on read again.
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The cherry on top: A buddy of mine who still works there texted me yesterday. He said my review perfectly hit the nail on the head.
He also mentioned that since the review dropped, management has suddenly been acting super nice and accommodating to everyone out of pure fear that more people will quit.
Honesty is so important! What did Reddit think?
Yup.
A reader shares their experience.
Someone is suspicious.
Why stop there?
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who got back at slacking coworkers with fresh-baked treats.
Another reader chimes in.
Exactly.
The boss wanted a review and he got one.
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