Oh, corporate America. The land of “family,” “teamwork,” and “we’re-all-in-this-together”… until it’s time to “restructure,” “downsize,” or “eliminate your position.” Then it’s every man for himself, and usually, the little guy gets the sh*t end of the stick. But for one hero on Reddit, the little guy fought back, and it was glorious.
Our narrator was at work on a Thursday when the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) came in. He told him a software feature he’d been working on needed to be finished by Friday morning. A strange request, given the project had been postponed for months, but our hero, being a good employee, said “OK fine.” He stayed up until 2 AM and finished the project. What a guy.
And then, the next morning, the betrayal. The CEO and CTO called him into a meeting to let him know he was “being laid off.” It was his “last day.” No two weeks’ notice. No severance pay. Just a cold, calculated “see ya!” And then, the kicker: “We’ll need to you to finish out today, working with [replacement] to log all your logins and passwords and show him the rest of your code.”
I am screaming. I am livid. They knew. They knew they were going to fire him. They knew it was his last day. And they made him work until 2 AM to finish a project for them before they canned him. That is not just shady; that is actively evil.
Our narrator, understandably, was “angry” — an understatement for the ages. He looked them dead in the eye and asked, “So you knew you were going to can me today, that’s why you made me work late yesterday? Does that seem wrong to you?”
And what did these corporate overlords do? They just “stared at me, no apology, no acknowledgment.” That’s the moment. That’s the moment you know you owe them absolutely nothing.
So, our hero played his final, brilliant card. He laid it all out: “Alright. If you’re gonna play it this way, then it’s both personal and business. I need a job, so it’s to my benefit to quit right now and walk away, and start looking for work, rather than helping a company that clearly doesn’t care about me. If you want me to sit here and generate a list of passwords and train my replacement, then I want a two-week severance package, or I walk right now.”
That, my friends, is how you leverage your worth. That is how you turn their cold, calculated cruelty into a desperate plea. He gave them a choice: pay him for his labor, or lose everything.
And what did they do? Of course, they declined. Because they are petty. Because they are greedy. Because they thought they had all the power.
So he “walked out the door.” And then, being a smart dude, he called one of their vendors and let them know he was “open to work.” He had a new job “within a week.”
Meanwhile, these clueless corporate titans were “still emailing me to beg for ‘help’ weeks later.” The sweet, sweet taste of justice. The sheer, unadulterated pleasure of watching them scramble.
Was he in the wrong? Absolutely not. N-T-A. You are not in the wrong. You owe a company nothing more than they give you. They showed you who they were by making you work late and then firing you without cause or severance. You showed them who you were by refusing to be a doormat. This is a masterclass in professional revenge.