"My Co-Workers Surrounded Me As He Was Escorted Out": 18 Times Employees Were Absolute Heroes And Got Revenge On Their Awful Bosses

For most people, getting a toxic boss fired is something they can only imagine in their wildest fantasies. But for some lucky folks, it becomes a reality. Recently, redditor u/tunaball25 asked the r/AskReddit community to share how they got their awful bosses fired . Here are their super satisfying stories.

Warning: This post contains mentions of child abuse.

1. "He grabbed the back of my neck and said, 'If you ever say I'm wrong in front of a customer again, I will beat your ass.' I told the general manager, and my supervisor was relieved of his duties about five minutes later."

— u/[deleted]

2. "My supervisor would constantly talk about everyone on our team, but only behind their backs. My husband and I happened to work at the same place (different departments), and my supervisor would make sexual comments about threesomes (with him), what hotel we picked for our afternoon delight, and shit like that. It was so bloody uncomfortable. I got so sick of telling him to cut it out. It got to the point where I decided to quit. I had my resignation letter in my purse but decided to let his boss know why I was quitting."

3. "I took a cellphone video of her taking money from the safe and putting it in her wallet. I knew she was doing it, and I also knew that the moment it came out that money was missing, she'd blame it on me. She was so dumb that she didn't realize she should stop while I was standing 10 feet away with my phone out and facing her."

— u/[deleted]

4. "I was working maintenance at an ice rink. The rule for anyone who knows how an ice rink works is if the Zamboni doors open, you get the fuck off the ice. Some dickhead decided to ignore the fact that they were open and that I was standing in the doorway and decided to rip off one last slapshot. The puck bounced off the glass and hit me in the head. I was OK, but I reported it to my boss because we have to fill out an incident report for things like that."

5. "The CEO publicly praised me for completing a task that my boss had struggled with, so my boss retaliated by forwarding all of his tasks to me in an effort to overwhelm me with work. I actually found his job pretty manageable, which the CEO also noticed and fired him, giving me his job and office."

— u/[deleted]

6. "Our desks were separated by a five-foot cubicle wall. He was under the mistaken impression that it totally blocked sound. Thus, I got to hear all his loud phone conversations, primarily his booty calls, including those with his boss's fiancé. I figured it was none of my business and tried to ignore it. Well, there was a position in another department that I was interested in, and as per procedure, I handed in an application to my boss. I didn't hear anything further and followed up a couple of days later, only to be told that something must have happened to the application. I filled out another one and handed it in."

7. "In college, I worked in a takeout restaurant just off campus, and we were all employed by the school. I was 17–18 years old (back in 2007–2008). My boss, the manager, was a 40-something creeper, hitting on me and touching me inappropriately (trying to massage my shoulders, tickling me, putting his hands on/around my waist) despite my asking him to stop. Then he friended me on Facebook, I declined, and suddenly my work schedule was changed."

"I was on shift during hours when I had class, and when I explained that problem, I got taken off the schedule altogether. I told the assistant manager what was going on (my manager explicitly told me not to talk to the assistant), and he reported what was going on to upper management.

Boom, the manager was fired. I worried for a while about whether he would come after me for that."

— u/[deleted]

8. "I was fired because I 'abandoned my job' while on short-term disability because while on approved leave, they set a date for me to return, never informed me (by their own admission), and when I obviously didn't return to work, I was fired. The locker I had at work had my work boots that the company pays $90 a year towards. However, there isn't a pair under $100 available, so you always end up having some come out of your paycheck. At that point, they are yours regardless of the company line. They disagreed and said they were thrown out. I reported them stolen, and the HR director responsible for getting me fired was fired."

9. "I phoned my boss to tell him I wouldn't be at work for the rest of the week as my mom was terminally ill in hospital. The next day (about an hour after she passed away), he phoned and asked why I wasn't at work; I just hung up on him so I wouldn't say anything that would get me in trouble. The next day, I sent the area manager a Whatsapp message explaining what he'd done and attached a video of him breaking the freezer door while having a tantrum, which cost the store nearly £5,000 in lost stock and repair costs (he'd told the AM it broke on its own). He got fired that day, and I got two weeks off with full pay."

— u/AkariAkaza

10. "My boss and I didn't get along. She had no authority to fire me, but she promised her boyfriend my job. So she hired her boyfriend in another position, with the plan they'd drive me to quit, and then she could just promote him to my job. This lasted for about a month. She fired him when they broke up. He confessed their scheme to me on his way out (we'd actually become friends at this point), and I told him he should really tell HR. HR did their investigation, and she was fired because 'sleep with me and I'll give you a job' is textbook sexual harassment. She told anyone who'd listen that it was all my fault because I didn't quit like I was supposed to."

11. "I left my last company due to a bully of a general manager. Many people were leaving due to him being sexist, racist, and doing things people could easily claim sexual harassment and sue him for. The list goes on. Everyone informed HR during their exit interviews, hell he even tried to make my exit interview not happen, but they still weren't doing anything. I had been at my new job for a couple of months and was STILL getting complaints from my old team almost daily. So, I made an email account named 'Concerned (company name) Crew.' I sent an email to EVERYONE who had an email account within the company explaining what he did/still did with events spanning from his start to the day prior. They fired him within the week, and my old crew thanked me."

— u/akujiki87

12. "I took a phone call on my cell when at my desk. The middle manager came up and screamed at me, yelling that I was not allowed to take client calls while at that office. I was a contractor and made it perfectly clear that I did work for multiple clients prior to doing work for this company. The CTO's office was 10 feet from mine. He came out and stood in his doorway, listening to the rant. When the middle manager was done, I just looked over at the CTO and said, 'It's him or me, and at the moment, I don't give a fuck which you pick.' The CTO walked the middle manager out right then. The funny thing is that I didn't hang up throughout the incident; it was my wife on the other end. I was spending about 70 hours a week at their site digging their staff out of a hole they had dug themselves in."

13. "My boss tried to tell me I couldn't take breaks. The company policy handbook, which I had signed and thus became a binding contract by state law, laid out lunch and/or breaks based on the length of the shift scheduled. When I pointed this out, she switched to scheduling me by myself and then strolling by the store to check up on me occasionally, writing me up when she 'caught me' having closed the store in order to take breaks/eat lunch. I called her boss (the regional director) and complained, got the write-ups removed, and listened to her tell my boss to chill the fuck out and let me take my breaks, but she still didn't do it."

"Further (formal) complaints resulted in no changes. I knew there was a quarterly conference call coming up, so I developed the habit of walking into her office and saying, 'It's time for my break,' and making her say, every time, that I wasn't allowed to go.

She got in the habit of doing it kind of absent-mindedly in an increasingly aggressive tone. So then I did it again in the middle of the conference call, and she blew a gasket, ranting at me about how many times she'd told me that I was not allowed to take breaks under any circumstances, etc.

The call, which she always put on speakerphone, went dead silent. It took her about five seconds to realize what she'd just done, and then before she could try to begin damage control, her boss politely cleared her throat and said, 'I've told you before that is incorrect.'

I grinned a big ol' shit-eating grin and went back to work, and there was a temporary manager from another store there the next day.

It turns out she had had my formal, written complaints intercepted before they got to her boss, which I wasn't aware was possible (apparently, she had friends in high places), so I imagine that didn't go well for her."

— u/libra00

14. "Not me, but my girlfriend at the time. We were both working at a small burrito chain; she was the front-of-house manager, and I was the kitchen manager. Above us was one senior manager and then the owner. We did tip pooling based on hours, and the senior manager always told my girlfriend not to count the tips every night, as he divided it up at the end of the week. Well, of course, she counted them every night. It turns out the senior manager was stealing almost $500 a week from employees in tips, and because his previous FOH manager never questioned him, it had likely been going on for years. She told the owners, and he was gone the next day. A week later, his wife left him."

15. "Not my boss, but I helped my friend get her boss fired. He was a general manager and was always grabbing her sides, purposely scheduling her to have shifts alone with him, asking her for nudes, asking her to sleep with him, etc. She reported it so many times to the owner, and they said they couldn't do anything because they hadn't seen it and had no reports other than her account. So I called and complained as a customer about how I witnessed him being creepy to her and how it made me uncomfortable. For the most part, it's true; I just don't shop there."

— u/Gardengnostlc

16. "I found out she was inflating our numbers to make it look like we were hitting our daily and weekly goals by not turning in everyone's timesheets and covering the pay with petty cash. It all came crashing down on her when a bunch of people in our office didn't get their checks, and she didn't have enough cash left to cover them. I called the regional manager (her boss) that night, and she was fired the next day."

17. "I used to work for an industrial supply company, and my boss was extremely mean and would be very Jekyll and Hyde-like. He used to threaten us, would call our spouses and yell at them about our performance, berate us in front of customers, the list goes on. He once told me that if my five-year plan wasn't helping get him promoted, I had no place in the company. He openly questioned me as a person, my relationship, and my personal morals since I didn't want to sell faulty equipment. I would have mini panic attacks before work, and after three years, I decided that enough was enough."

"From the very first occurrence, I began documenting everything. When he smashed a candy machine, I took photos. When he brought and kept his gun at work, I took photos. When he berated a coworker's spouse, I called and got signed copies of the transcription.

I basically documented everything so that no one could tell me this wasn't happening , and I had substantial proof of this hostile work environment.

One day, I called our district manager out to lunch. I put the several-inch-thick Manila folder in front of him and informed him that either he fired and replaced our boss or everyone was walking out.

Given the evidence and after speaking with the other employees, our boss (who had been with the company for 10 years) was fired. I have never been more satisfied and proud of myself in my life."

— u/aKiDnamedMowgli

18. "I got promoted to sous chef by my head chef in a restaurant I worked at. I worked my butt off learning everything I needed to become the best sous I could. Flash forward a few months later, my chef walks out. Quits on the spot. Normally, the sous should take over, which I did. I worked overtime, came in at weird hours, and did everything and then some by myself for a month. The restaurant owner tells me he hired another chef over hiring me as a full-time chef. Some guy from a different state. This guy comes in and tries changing everything and starts RUINING the restaurant."

If you've ever gotten a terrible boss fired, tell us about it in the comments. You can also fill out this form to remain anonymous.

Note: Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.

If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453(4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.