California firm replaced its employees with AI. Four months later, the boss was begging them to return — but not for the reason you'd expect

In today's world, we are constantly being told that replacing human workers with artificial intelligence will make businesses not only faster but also cheaper and better. While that is true in some cases, when a California-based company bought into this hype, it backfired pretty quickly. Within four months of laying off a bunch of employees, including a 31-year-old woman's (u/MsRothArtist) cousin, David, something unexpected happened, forcing them to crawl back to their former employees. The entire detailed story was narrated by this woman on Reddit and gained a lot of traction, attracting over 1,500 upvotes since being posted on June 4, 2026.

David moved to California

Well, the entire incident started in June last year when David moved with his cousin to California for this job, and also used that address for his emergency contact. Everything was going pretty well for David and his cousin, who was a tattoo artist. However, one day in February, everything suddenly crashed when David, along with a few of his coworkers, was let go by the company following a change in management in December. David was devastated by this.

Nonetheless, he quickly shrugged this off and started looking for other jobs. Eventually, he got a job in New York close to his home. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, David's cousin received a few letters addressed to him. When she informed him about this, he said it was nothing serious. But just a couple of days later, David's manager, whom her cousin addressed as Ryan, called. 

The manager made a frantic call

The manager was all over the place on the call and eagerly wanted to talk to David. However, his sister informed that he'd left for New Jersey months ago. After hearing this, Ryan was livid. He had been trying to get a hold of David for the longest, asking him to rejoin the company. As soon as this call ended, David's cousin gave him a call and told him about this conversation, but he already knew about it. As it turns out, David's company tried to overdo this AI takeover, so much so that they did everything from making reports to even holding meetings with clients through AI. "The company even tried to pass off AI as actual employees to speak with shareholders and clients, but that didn’t go down too well," the cousin said.

The AI caused an immense blunder

While it wouldn't have been an issue if the AI were flawless, that wasn't the case. On the contrary, it made plenty of mistakes in all the reports. The last straw came when the manager used an AI employee to hold a meeting with the clients who flew all the way from France to San Francisco. They couldn't let this go on any longer, and all these mistakes needed to be pinned on someone, as the company was facing lawsuits over providing false information to their client.

Companies regret firing employees for AI

So, the manager thought, who better than their former employee, David? However, David was smart enough to know better and didn't fall for this trap. Nonetheless, while David escaped this, the firing and hiring because of AI has become a growing issue in the corporate world. According to a report by Forbes, about 55% of employers regret their decision of firing employee because of AI within 18 months. Meanwhile, 29% companies report already hiring human replacements for the jobs that they had allocated to AI. 

This not only highlights the fact that AI still is not near its full potential, but also the short-term vision of these companies. That's why people were happy that David took a stand against this culture. u/glimmerpopii commented, "If they're getting sued over AI-generated work, the last thing David should do is step back into a situation where they can make him the scapegoat." At the same time, u/fsocietyfr noted, "From speaking with many customers, they do NOT want to talk to automation or AI. They want to talk to a real person. But companies don't care. They won't care until customers start to leave."

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