10 Times Disgruntled Former Employees Took Revenge On Their Employers

Most everyone has had a bad day at work. Some might even have fantasized about ‘getting even’ before quitting and storming out.

Of course for most people, such fantasies are only a bit of harmless stress relief. But every now and then, people really do exact revenge on their jobs and bosses. Make sure your boss doesn’t see you reading these 10 stories of workplace revenge…

Don’t Move That

Wayne Crook worked at Bristol Flying Centre, a general aviation services provider, until one day he moved an aircraft into a hangar, which was something he was not qualified to do. As a result he lost his job and more notably, his cool.

Rampage

Crook came back to his former place of business after hours with a hammer in hand and smashed everything. He smashed 35 computer monitors, over 40 windows, and every single toilet and sink in the facility, before topping it off by writing “gross misconduct” in blood on one wall. For the £175,000 in damage he caused, he spent 20 months in jail.

Only IT Guy

Triano Williams was an IT worker from the American College of Education, an Indianapolis-based online college. More importantly, he was the only IT employee with administrative access to the school’s Google-hosted domain account. He said he was fired after he refused to relocate from Chicago to Indiana so he turned in the computer that had been provided to him.

Slipped my Mind

But he didn’t give the school the password because he “didn’t remember it.” He offered to help them recover it, but it would cost them a cool $200,000. He alleged that his firing was at least partially racially motivated and wanted the payment – and a clean letter of reference – in order to help retrieve the password. The college eventually sued Williams and he was ordered to pay roughly $250,000.

Secret Sauce

Probably the tastiest tale of revenge came after a woman was fired from the fast food chain, Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, which is known for its Cane’s sauce, a secret “proprietary blend of premium seasonings and spices.” The recipe is “top secret and known only by our General Managers, who are sworn to secrecy,” according to the restaurant’s website.

Loose Lips

But after Twitter user @JanniAreYouOkay says she was fired by them, that oath of secrecy didn’t mean much to her any more. She tweeted the recipe for their secret sauce, down to the exact proportions. Raising Cane’s said it wasn’t the actual recipe but those who tried it said it was the real deal.

Where’s my Money?

Probably the most justified workplace revenge on this list came when a group of construction workers in Australia weren’t being paid by their boss. They’d been building a house and it seemed all the framework was up without the workers ever being paid, they said.

CTRL + Z

So as revenge, the workers “undid” their work, so to speak. Footage was uploaded to the Facebook group Uptrend Engineering and Construction of the construction workers taking chainsaws to the framework of the building, one of which had the caption: “Will learn the hard way.”

Bad Review

Lennon Brown worked as an IT contractor and then a full-time employee for Citibank. He was told in a performance review that his work was substandard, something that he thought was unfair and offensive.

Shut it Down

So before he left work that day, Lennon transmitted some code to the Citibank Global Control Center routers that erased the configuration files in 90 percent of the routers, shutting down 90 percent of all of Citibank’s networks across North America. It may have felt good to him in the moment to stick it to his employers but the stunt ended up landing him in jail for 21 months and costing him $77,200 in restitution.

Bitter Departure

Richard Neale co-founded the tech security firm Esselar in 2009 and was the company’s director until 2013, when he left after a dispute with a colleague over an insurance payment. He sold off all of his shares but still held on to a lot of bitterness over his departure.

Not So Secure

He would exact his revenge in the following year when Esselar was doing a security demonstration for Aviva, an insurance company. On the night of the demonstration, Neale hacked Aviva’s system and wiped data from 900 of their phones. Naturally, Esselar lost Aviva’s business, costing them the £80,000-per-year contract. But the hack was traced back to Neale and he spent 18 months behind bars for it.

Vacation Time

Jim Knight was the head chef at a pub named The Plough in Oxfordshire, UK. He apparently wanted a weekend and Christmas day off and his boss didn’t want to give it to him. It was such a sticking point for the two of them that Knight ended up fired over it. He would get his revenge via The Plough’s twitter account, which he had access to.

Airing it Out

His first tweet said “We’d like to inform you that we’ve just fired our head chef.” He went on to say “Unfortunately he wanted to have a weekend off this month and Christmas day this year for family commitments so we thought we’d sack him,” and “We don’t care that he has a 7 1/2 month old baby daughter.” Needless to say, it wasn’t great publicity for the pub.

Salt in The Wound

Juan Rodriguez was an employee who was fired from his job at a Fairfield Inn & Suites, a Marriott subsidiary. He said he’d also heard from other employees that his former assistant GM was planning to make up a story about him renting rooms under the table so he couldn’t get unemployment.

Slashing Prices

As payback, he connected to Marriott’s booking network with a company password and just started slashing rates. He switched the cost of rooms that usually went for $160-$500 down to as low as $12. In the time before the company caught the changes, thousands of rooms were rented, costing them more than $50,000. “I actually wanted them to work. I also wanted to teach them not to keep your password out there,” Juan said.

Job Opening

Marie Cooley’s story doesn’t quite count as revenge for reasons you’ll see later. The Jacksonville administrative assistant saw a newspaper ad from her architectural firm looking to fill a position that sounded a lot like her job and the phone number for the ad was her boss’s. She naturally assumed she would be fired so to take revenge, she erased seven years worth of blueprints, worth $2.5 million.

Oops

She was the only person besides her boss who had access to the files so it didn’t take police long to figure out who was responsible. Shortly after she was arrested for her crime, she found out the job ad was for her boss’ wife’s firm, meaning her “revenge” was for nothing at all.

Harassment

We’ll end with the craziest revenge story, which happened in Pune, India. Abdul Shaikh and Nabi Nadaf were two men who worked for an outsourcing company but were fired or repeatedly harassing female employees.

Let it Burn

But that wasn’t the only firing that would take place. The two men returned to the office and set the office furniture on fire. They even thought to burn the CCTV cameras to conceal their identities but they didn’t get them all. They were spotted, identified, and charged with their crimes.