Anger Management
I had a work colleague who management brought in. She was effectively given the green light to do whatever she wanted for a large-scale project. It turned into a total nightmare. This chick grew tyrannical from her small bit of authority, and she made people’s lives miserable.
Now, I was effectively the go-to guy for quite a few aspects around the office, so I knew I was safe. However, she absolutely hated my boss, and she tried every trick in the book to make his life awful; she was determined to either get my boss to quit or get me to leave his team.
What she didn’t know, however, was that my partner had recently moved home to Australia, and I had kept it a secret that I was planning to follow after a few months.
Life was ticking by, and this freaking she-beast pig dog was driving me up the wall. My hours were increasing, and the workload was phenomenal.
I asked her to bring someone else in for me to train as I needed to take some time off every once in a while, but she always refused my requests in the most passive-aggressive way imaginable.
Anyway, my exit date was set. In the meantime, our projects were starting to come to a head, which would have seen my workload increase to even newer, worse levels. Like, I was pulling 14-hour days already. I pulled the trigger on my plan.
I went up to my head boss and informed him of my decision to leave and all my reasons for doing so. He offered to get me a visa for my partner and her old job back if I stayed.
This helped my ego as I wondered if I was terrible at my job since I was getting so much hate from that woman. But I refused, saying I’d need to leave in a month and needed two weeks off.
He wished me well and understood my reasons. So, I sorted my references and wrapped everything up. The beauty of this was that my other managers involved in the project hated this witch as well, so when I told them my plan, they were all more than happy to go along with it and play dumb.
The payoff was amazing. A big meeting took place later that day, and as usual, she went off delegating like a champ to everyone, bossing them around and pushing people’s buttons. Then it came to my turn.
I made a point of asking her if there was any scope to get someone in to help since I was slammed. She gave the usual, dull-toned response of “Go screw yourself”, basically. Okay, no problem. Then she started to outline everything that was going on and all the stuff I’d have to do.
The expectations were crazy, and her last sentence was, “So, you’ll have to do all that”. “No, I don’t think I will”. Her face twisted, and she snarled at me, “What do you mean you won’t do it”?
I replied, “As I said. I don’t want to do it, so I won’t. In fact, I quit. I’m moving to Australia in four weeks, and I’m taking two weeks’ holiday before I go. So, screw you”. Her face dropped.
She started scrambling, saying I’d have to train someone. But I had the perfect answer. I took out a copy of my contract and said my responsibilities were clearly defined, and I would honor them.
But because she hadn’t updated my contract and responsibilities, I wasn’t obligated to help her with the rest. I also showed her the copy of the email I’d just sent to HR showing her responses to my objections to the hours I was working and her refusal to train anyone else.
My bosses at the table were losing it, trying not to laugh in her face. I walked out with one manager getting up to pat my back and possibly tell her to screw herself once or twice more, as this was what she had coming to her. The ending was just as satisfying.
All of her projects got ruined, so the other managers were able to crucify her. She also got hauled up for overworking us and refusing help. But here’s the best part. When the head honcho heard what happened, he came down to actually say to me, “Well played on telling her to screw herself”.
She walked by at that moment and heard him say it to me. The whole office knew what I did, and everyone was delighted someone screwed her over. I went back to visit at Christmas, and people still came up and said how happy they were I did it. ManElegant