rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance My Boss Fired Me, So I Ruined Her Business!
Episode Date: June 9, 2021r/Maliciouscompliance OP is one of the most valuable employees in his company. He delivers a premium product to the company's clients and gets rave reviews. When a new boss takes over the company, she... immediately begins cutting costs by reducing the quality of the product and laying off employees. Eventually, the big boss puts her crosshairs on OP and fires him. You want me gone, boss? Sure thing! Hope your company can succeed without its most valuable employee! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best post from across Reddit.
Today's subreddit is R-Slash malicious compliance where OP destroys his toxic boss' company.
Our next Reddit post is from Niclo2K.
I worked for a company for 14 years.
I loved working there for 12 of those 14 years.
There were two main parts of the job.
The first part was the sales side of things.
This happened away from the office at the customer's location.
This involved quite a bit of driving and on a couple of occasions flying abroad to work
face to face with the customers to deliver a high quality product.
We weren't the cheapest, but we did have the superior product. And I was our best employee when it came to delivering
that product. I consistently got rave reviews from customers from my personal style when it came
to delivering their product and executing the customer's vision. I got a huge amount of repeat
business and I got a lot of new business through word of mouth with customers recommending the
company based on their experiences with me.
The second part of my job was the office side.
This was my weaker side.
I hated cold calling potential customers with numbers I found in the phone book.
When it came to answering the phone and speaking to potential customers who initiated contact
with us, I was fine.
But I wasn't great at making cold calls.
This was really the only not great part of my job.
So when I was in the office, I wasn't asked to make any calls, and said I prepared the
product, designed new product, and trained new staff members.
I was also just a problem solver, filling out whenever and wherever, filling in for sick
employees when I could.
I liked the owner and I liked the manager.
I liked all the staff who were around me.
All in all, it was a great job that I was really good at and that I took pride in.
The company had been doing so well that the owner had slowly expanded over the 12 years
since I started working for the company.
I joined about 3 months after he started, so I'd been a part of this expansion.
I worked out of my nearest office, but often traveled to other areas to train their staff.
I was also loaned out to other companies to help train their staff.
At one point, I was a guest lecturer at a university teaching medical students how to
deliver complicated explanations to people who don't have the base knowledge that you
yourself do.
After 12 years on the job, I had a decent salary.
Not massive, but I was happy.
Then the owner decided to sell off part of the company.
He was selling the area where my local office was.
He told me that he would love for me to remain his employee, but I would need to work from
a different office.
This would either require me to move or at minimum quadruple my daily commute.
The other option was to remain working for my current office, but with a new boss.
I chose the second option.
Before the new owner bought the company, she worked alongside the staff for a couple of
weeks to see how we operated.
This was before any of us knew that she was about to buy the company.
As far as we knew, she was just another employee and she was shadowing us to learn.
She came with me on assignments in the field and she saw my abilities.
When the sale was announced and we were informed that she was a new owner, everyone was surprised.
She made some sweeping staff changes.
The manager left to start her own business since a new owner was also going to be a manager.
A lot of staff were let go.
The secretary, myself, and a couple of newer hires were kept on.
The new hires had the lowest wages and were hourly not salary.
Anyone who had climbed up to a decent level in the company was let go. While technically this was
a new company for the customers, it was the same old business. The company still had the same
brand name. The only real difference was that there was a new owner and the registered business
name was now different. As far as the customers were concerned, nothing had changed. My job for the first few months after this sale was to train up the remaining staff to
replace the more experienced staff members who had been let go. I recommended a couple
of new hires who I had experienced working with in the past. I was open and honest with
the owner and let her know that one of these employees was my close friend and the other
was my girlfriend. Both were more than qualified for the work and both were happy to join.
The owner interviewed them both than hired them since we need a new staff.
Over the next two years, the business started to fail. The reason was simple.
The new owner tried to maximize profits by increasing prices while decreasing the quality of the product.
For new customers, this wasn't noticeable. They just thought that we were expensive
and the product wasn't the best. But for old customers who had been with us for over 10
years, they immediately noticed. They were being charged more and were receiving lower quality.
So the owner doubled down and increased prices again. 95% of our old customers left us. New customers almost never became repeat customers.
Complaint skyrocketed.
While all this was going on,
our staff turnover rate was ridiculous.
People left after a few months
when they realized the minimum wage
they were being paid wasn't worth it.
Under the old owner,
the average hourly wage for new employees
was around 2.5 times the minimum wage.
This made people
care about their jobs and want to keep them. My girlfriend quit and my friend remained,
but he was looking for something new. Then I got a phone call. The owner needed me to come to
her office. This was unexpected. I had just finished working on location with a customer.
My next customer was in two and a half hours. It was a half hour drive away. The office was over an hour away from both locations. If
I drove back to the office, I would have about five minutes in the office before leaving.
My mileage was paid above my regular salary, so I was saving the company money by doing
this. The manager didn't care. She needed me to return to the office, so I did.
I arrived back at the office, and the owner handed me a letter.
The letter informed me of a disciplinary meeting to take place in a couple of days, and I
could bring along a witness if I so desired.
This completely surprised me because I was her best employee.
I read through a list of complaints about my performance and I started working on my
defense. At the meeting, I declined to have a witness. Instead, I decided to record the audio
of the entire meeting on my phone without informing her, where I lived, this is legal, and I didn't
need consent. The boss's witness was her friend who she'd met at yoga and hired for an office
role, firing the secretary who had been there long before the takeover. Every point that my boss raised, I could counter. They ranged from the week.
You were unavailable to work for a week in August. I booked a week's holiday so I could attend
my cousins wedding on the other side of the country and turn it into a week long vacation.
To the pathetic. You were late for work on the twelfth of May. Is that the day that my car broke down and I called the office to let you know?
I don't know.
I do.
Here's the receipt from the garage dated May twelfth.
And finally to downright lies.
Basically, she accused me of gross misconduct for breaking health and safety laws in the way
that I was delivering a product for a customer.
I hadn't broken any health and safety laws.
I knew exactly what I was doing
since, as I've mentioned already,
I've been doing this for 14 years at this point.
She had watched me work on multiple occasions
and had never mentioned it before
because it wasn't an issue.
She even had me train staff
on my very specific delivery method
because it wasn't an issue.
She finished her list by telling me
that she doesn't
want to lose me, but she can't justify keeping such a poor employee at my current salary.
I had two choices. I could either sign a zero-hours contract and work for minimum wage,
or she could fire me with two weeks notice. I counter that she would have to give me 12 weeks notice.
Since my contract guaranteed me 1 weeks notice for every year
of employment up to a maximum of 12, she argued that I'd only been her employee for 2 years.
I informed her that, with how the business take overhead run, it counts as continuous
employment. I quoted the exact law and code that backed me up. She asked for a 30 minute
break in the meeting so I can think about the offer.
Then she went to call her lawyer. When she came back, she informed me that since she was firing
me for gross misconduct, she didn't have to give me any notice at all. If I wanted to remain
and move through the zero hours contract, I could do that today. But if I didn't, then she would
have to fire me. But because she was so nice, she would give me the two weeks notice.
I asked for a couple of hours to go home and think about this, and she let me.
Why do I love getting my last minute gift at shoppers drug mart?
Well, lots of stores, many open late, great selection of gifts, and let's not forget the
PC optimum points.
I get gifts for them and points for me, and so can you.
Go to shoppers, exclusions apply.
These side marios all you can eat is all you can maja soup, salad, and garlic home.
I knew the reason that she wanted me to remain
for at least two weeks was because during that time,
one of our few remaining bigger customers
were set to have a product delivery from us. And they would only work with me. The owner had tried sending other staff
in my place on several occasions, and each time there had been serious problems. It wasn't
the staff's fault, it was just a very difficult delivery for a very specific customer which
needed to be perfect. As a result, this customer would only deal with me. I called the
office and spoke to the owner. I declined her offer of a 0 hours contract and said that
I would be leaving. She then said that she was giving me my 2 weeks notice. I declined
her offer of 2 weeks notice. I informed her that if I was being fired for gross misconduct,
then surely I can't be relied upon to safely deliver
the product.
Therefore, it would be best for everyone involved if I didn't return to work.
She panicked and said that she needed me for those two weeks.
I famed ignorance and let her know that I was just thinking about what's best for the
company.
After all, you can't have unsafe staff delivering your product to your customers.
However, if she wanted to rethink that GrossMconduct accusation, then I would work my 12 weeks notice.
Those were her options, zero weeks, or 12.
She chose 12.
For those 12 weeks, I worked the same way that I had for 14 years.
I didn't coast, I didn't slack, I didn't badmouth the company on my way out.
I continued to drain the new staff. I continued to deliver the product in my own personal
exceptional way. I also got in touch with a lawyer who was a specialist in employment law.
For those 12 weeks, the owner barely spoke to me. She resented the fact that I knew my legal
rights and didn't believe her lies. She hated the fact that I could defend myself.
She was petty. She accidentally dropped my mug in the kitchen, breaking it. Most petty of all,
she paid for every member of the staff in the office to have a spa day, except me. I was asked to
work my day off to answer the phones while everyone else was getting pampered. Nobody else knew that
I hadn't been invited until they arrived at the spa and I wasn't there.
But here's the thing, I'm a big fat bearded guy.
I have no interest in a spa day.
If she had offered it to me,
I would have thanked her and declined the offer.
But by pointedly excluding me,
she was making herself look terrible.
For the last two weeks,
I was training up my friend to basically take over for me. At the end of the 12 weeks, my final day came around. The owner had nothing planned. Not
even so much as a card after 14 years, even though it was only two for her. The office manager
who had become my friend got me some presents, but he had to give them to me when the boss
was gone for fear of reprisals. The day after my final day, two things happened.
The first was that my friend who I had been training up to replace me, quit.
He was on a zero hours contract, so he wasn't required to give notice.
He was unhappy with her treatment of me, and was unhappy that she expected him to do my
previously salary job for minimum wage.
My friend didn't inform me of his plans to leave, and I only learned
of it when he knocked on my door in the middle of the day when he should have been at work
to let me know. The second thing that happened was the owner received a letter informing
her that I was bringing legal proceedings against her for unfair dismissal. I had arranged
this with my lawyer to be delivered the day after my final day. According to the office
assistant, she went pale and started crying before leaving
the office to call her lawyer. She refuted my claim for unfair dismissal and said that it was
gross misconduct. She tried to come up with more reasons for firing me, but the truth was that
the company was making less money because of her business practices, and I was the highest and
only salary employee. I had evidence that I was a great employee.
I had evidence that she asked me to move to a zero hours contract.
She initially tried to deny this, since the gross conduct fabrication makes no sense
if she wanted me to stay.
But once my lawyer provided her lawyer with the transcript of the entire meeting, along
with a copy of the recording, she knew that she was screwed. Still, she
let the case drag on for over a year. I think she hoped the legal fees would cause me
to drop the case. Little did she know, my lawyer was working on a no-win, no-fe basis,
while hers wasn't. She ended up settling out of court. The aftermath. The office assistant
would become my friend quit a couple of months after I left.
She hated how I was treated and didn't feel safe working for such an untrustworthy boss.
Several former customers contacted me personally to inquire why I was no longer with that company.
Apparently, the owner was telling them that I just up in quits. I informed them that I'd been fired
for cost-cutting reasons. So they moved their business elsewhere.
Several of them even offered me jobs.
One of them even went so far as to offer me a part-time job and pay for me to attend
college to earn a degree that was required for them to hire me full time.
This was a lovely offer, but they were one of the customers who were a bit too far away
to commute, and I wasn't ready to move.
In the end, I found a new job in a different industry where a lot of my skills transferred
over.
I'm currently earning more than I was, working fewer hours and for better owners.
The old company is floundering.
COVID left a new owner desperate for cash.
She canceled orders, but she refused to refund customers' money, citing an act of God-cloths
in the contracts.
The business's Facebook and Google reviews have taint most of the staff left.
The business is still afloat, but barely.
Man, OP, your boss is an idiot.
Hasn't she ever heard of, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
My guess as to what happened here is that she fell so far in debt by purchasing the business that she was desperate to make money quickly.
So she kept cutting costs and cutting costs and cutting costs hoping to put more money
in her pocket.
But instead, she just ended up ruining the one thing to get savor from this hole that
she dug for herself.
O.P., I've predicted bankruptcy in your boss' future.
Our next reddit post is from WolfPeter.
Last year I went to my uncle's house for Thanksgiving.
I cooked the turkey the day before and put it into the fridge before going to sleep on
their couch.
I woke up to their young kids screaming in my face to make him chicken nuggets at 4am in
the morning.
They never make their kid behave or punish him for anything he does.
So I just ignored him and went back to sleep after he decided to go scream in his parents
that he wanted chicken nuggets.
Cut to 9 a.m. and everyone is getting everything ready for the day.
Cooking is beginning for the dishes that need a few hours in the oven.
They didn't buy a turkey, they asked me to buy one, and I decided to cook at the day before
and thought that we could toss it in the oven an hour before the time to eat a rive so
it would be warm. However, their kids started randomly coming up behind me and
screaming as loudly as he could into my ear. I asked his parents to make him stop, seeing
as how I prefer my hearing intact, and I don't like anyone just screaming in my ear for
no good reason. I was told by my uncle, word for word, it's our house. If you don't like it, leave. They were
shocked when I actually did exactly that. I opened the fridge, took my turkey out, got
my car, and drove away. Not one minute after leaving, I was getting spammed by calls, asking,
begging, or threatening me to come back with the only turkey for Thanksgiving. When I got
home, I called my uncle back and told him, you told me to leave if I didn't like it, so I left.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, then I hung up and blocked this number.
OP, you could say that you quit that family cold turkey.
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