It’s quite a normal practice for a business to minimize expenses and maximize profits. That’s actually how any business in the world operates and has done so for thousands of years.
But what is not cool about this is the fact that some businesses employ shady tactics, like “oh, I’m sorry, but we can’t pay you for the work you’ve practically almost done, so sorry to waste your time, we’ll take it from here.”
Except you won’t. Because you played yourself by employing a smart guy who knows how to mess with niche machinery your engineers have no grasp of.
More Info: Reddit
Businesses are interested in saving money, but screwing employees over is not the way to go as employees can screw the business over
Image source: - wendenlook - (not the actual photo)
The story goes that manufacturing machine engineer Confident Lime on Reddit worked at a company that dealt with manufacturing machinery. After leaving, one of the clients somehow got a hold of him, and didn’t honestly care that he didn’t work there any more. The company offered double pay for a weekend job installing one machine and doing some maintenance on another one onsite. Sweet deal. He took it.
So, he got there and went at it. However, he was interrupted about 6 hours into the job only to be told that the promised budget for his services wasn’t actually going to happen, so there was a “sorry” and the guy giving him the sad news said their engineers would take it from there.
One engineer almost became a victim of said screwing, but he reminded the company that without him, their machines are toast
Image source: AwkLemon
This was frustrating for OP, to say the least. So, he opted for revenge. But not just any kind of revenge. No, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill smash up the machine sort of thing. He was cunning as heck.
You see, there is this little piece of fine print stating that if this particular niche bit of machinery is installed partially by anyone other than by an authorized engineer, i.e. the supplier that OP used to work for, then they can’t get involved any more as they can’t guarantee the integrity of the parts and stuff.
They can, however, send the instructions to the buyer to install the machine themselves to save money. But said instructions are a convoluted mess, so it’s better to just do it through the proper channels.
OP was told he wouldn't get paid, so he rendered a machine unusable without breaking it, but rather soft-locking it in a sense
Image source: AwkLemon
Since OP was halfway through the process, there was no way on earth the authorized people would get involved, so it was all down to the client’s engineers. And the kicker here was that they did not know of this thing called the “test mode”.
Test mode is exactly what it sounds like—a mode used for testing the machine. However, when you set it up, it only works in that particular mode, not allowing the machine to function “properly”, which the client would have liked it to. Well, OP did exactly that and left.
And, of course, the engineers came over and tried to finish the job, but couldn’t get the machine to work as it was supposed to. So, come Monday, OP’s phone was hot with calls, but he let them stew for a few days.
He enabled a test mode that wouldn't go away until he actually made it go away, but the company's engineers didn't know that
Image source: AwkLemon
What ended up happening, though, was OP was asked to "fix it" for $8,500 (£7,000), thus winning in the end
Image source: Steve Jurvetson (not the actual photo)
When he finally picked up, the boss man was furious. A short and screamy back and forth later, the boss man was forced to pay OP under his terms—£7,000 or a bit over $8,500, in advance. “I'd never felt this powerful before,” said OP.
So, the money landed in his account, he came in the next day, spent 20 minutes deactivating the test mode, packing up and leaving. The look on their faces was priceless, and the moral of the story was that you don’t ever mess with professionals for they shall mess with you harder.
Folks online got a good kick out of the story, wishing OP could've enacted even more revenge there
This, in turn, prompted many commenters to share similar stories in the comments. This is besides those who said he could’ve made them pay more by adding an increasing daily rate, and those who had raging engineering spurts of revenge enthusiasm in parts of their bodies because of how satisfying it was to their engineering selves.
Needless to say, the story was a success on Reddit, garnering 12,200 upvotes and a bit over 20 Reddit awards. You can check out the post and all of the comments here, or take a look at our other pro, amateur, or whatever other types of revenge stories here.
But, before you leave us and we have to take revenge for your abrupt departure, we’d really appreciate your commentary on the story, the characters, engineering, or anything else that matters in the comment section below!