Employee has the last laugh after ex-boss reaches out for help a month after firing them

Being laid off from a company that one has worked at for a long time is a scary thing. However, some employees turn out to be essential to the working of a company and they end up running back to the employee, begging them to help out. Reddit user u/Killwind went through a similar experience after being laid off at a company and being asked to do work for the same employer a month later. The post has got 1.7K upvotes and 97 comments. The individual begins by sharing that they used to be a senior manager for a telecom giant.

They share, "I was responsible for creating the environments that are used in presentations and the marketing campaigns. For example, if you were to see the ad on TV or on a website, my team and I built it." Such marketing campaigns also extended to the company's business websites and social media accounts. Basically, the individual produced content on any and all platforms where the company could market itself. Being the senior manager, they also kept a close tab on maintaining all this through "backend parts" that worked to keep systems running.

Things started to take a turn for the worse when the company began to have multiple rounds of layoffs. The individual managed to survive the first two rounds. Realizing how dire the situation was getting, the individual began to look for other jobs during March. As expected, they were called into an HR meeting in July. They write, "My boss is freaked out the HR person can't make eye contact with me when they tell me I can't be saved and that they are going to package me out."

The individual had worked there for three and a half years, but the company still opted to let them go. They did not fight it and paid their team for all of the completed work. The individual also provided their employer with a handbook that would guide them in maintaining all the systems after they were gone. Days go by and the individual leaves while reminding the company that all services would shut down if the monthly payments were not done on time.

Thankfully, they had another job lined up, so they decided to take a few months of vacation before returning to their new job. The incompetent team who had come in to replace the individual unsurprisingly failed to make the monthly payment, which meant all their marketing services came crashing down. They receive a panicked call from their former boss begging them to help out. The individual informed them that they would now need to pay them a consultant rate of five times what they used to pay them. Furthermore, they could not get on a call because they were in the mountains enjoying their time off.

They were so desperate that they inquired if anybody from the individual's old team could help out, but the individual informed them that everybody had been fired. The individual finally tells them that they can discuss contract rates and that they will fix everything for the company once they return from vacation in a few months. They somehow kept systems somewhat functional with some backups that the individual had put in, but that would also fail in some time as the individual owned them. People loved the way everything turned out and voiced their support in the comments section.

This article originally appeared 11 months ago.