Boss kept stealing credit for employee's hard work until it finally blew up in his face
He said, 'My team helped a bit.'
Stealing credit is one of the most frustrating things to experience at work. While employees put in long hours to complete their tasks, it's only fair for managers to give credit where it's due. However, when one employee's work was stolen by their boss, they decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. On November 5, u/Fantastic-Nerve7068 shared a story from their workplace that got the whole internet's thumbs up.
u/Fantastic-Nerve7068 works in a product team in a mid-sized tech company, where they lead a small internal project that fixes issues that would otherwise cost a lot of money. After working late days on the project, cleaning up data, and building reports, the employee was able to complete their task. However, the day before the submission, their manager, Steve, asked for a "quick summary" of the project so far. Assuming it was for review purposes, the employee sensed no harm and sent what their manager had asked for. However, on the day of the presentation, they learned the shocking truth behind their request.
The employee discovered that the manager had stolen credit for their efforts and presented the entire summary as his own. "The kicker? He said 'my team helped a bit.' Bro, helped a bit? I am the team," the author remarked. The employee chose to stay silent over the issue, but karma had its way of coming right back at him. A couple of weeks later, the company's Vice President asked them to follow up on some work. While Steve was vacationing, the employee decided to use it to their advantage. "I sent her the updated dashboard and casually mentioned, 'oh yeah, here’s the model I built from that analysis I shared earlier.' She goes 'wait, you built that?'"
This did not sit right with the VP, who wasn't too "thrilled" about the revelation. Fortunately, during the next review cycle, the manager did not receive credit for the "strategic contributions." Concluding their post with a valuable lesson, the employee wrote, "What I've learned is that document everything, keep receipts, and let management (like Steve) hang themselves with their own PowerPoint." In a 2022 study by Siyuan Chen, Daiheng Li, Chun Yang, Xijing Zhang, and Liang Hou, the researchers explored the detrimental effect of a leader claiming credit that rightfully belongs to the employees. Researchers noted that when leaders claim others' ideas as their own, it leads to reduced contribution and willingness to share ideas. By stealing the Reddit user's efforts and claiming them as his own, the manager had established power over his employee, which negatively impacted them until they took a stand for themselves.
Soon after the post gained traction, many online users stepped forward to share their thoughts. u/SarcasticServal shared, "Ohh I had one of those bosses. She left her questions in the comments on the slides and forgot to delete/hide them when presenting." u/Hondo_Bogart wrote, "As a manager I make sure that everyone’s contribution is fully recognized. Though as a manager he has the right to say his team built it, but poor form if he made out that he did it himself." u/Killathulu commmented, "So, Steve did nothing but steal your work for several months, whilst collecting a manager's salary, and didn't get fired? Guy is a genius, I hope you took notes."
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