Director kept pressuring IT worker to fake invoices. So he planted a secret 'hardware bug' — then sat at his desk eating Skittles

The desire for revenge can be played out in all sorts of environments, but there are only a few, if any, places where vengeance is sweeter than at work. So when one of the company's directors pressured a system administrator (u/_keyboard-bastard_) into altering invoices, instead of backing down, they came up with a plan. After handing in their notice because no action was being taken against the director, the person decided to go out with a bang. What they did next is a masterclass in office revenge, as they revealed the entire story on Reddit on August 8, 2026, garnering over 4,700 upvotes. 

The illegal request 

Knowing that the administrator, who was also the domain admin with access to user profiles and startup scripts, was also one of the two people in the company with access to Photoshop, the director approached them with a request: "Alter invoices after they were generated so clients would be billed for work that wasn't actually performed," assuming that the OP was "morally bent in his favor." The administrator explained in the post that they weren't and hence, not comfortable with forging the official documents.

Offender goes unpunished

Following this exchange, this employee decided to report the director to their boss. But to their surprise, no action was taken despite their complaint. Frustrated, the administrator put in their notice, deciding to leave the company for good. With two weeks left in their notice period, the director once again came to them asking to publish a bunch of invoices, but with a twist. This time, he claimed that the accounts department had cleared these invoices. However, that wasn't the case, and so the administrator refused again. 

The 'IT mystery'

After this latest incident, the administrator came up with a plan to get back at this director. They wrote a simple batch script that would randomly reboot a computer in 5-10-minute intervals. Then they proceeded to add this script to the director's startup profile. Even though the man knew that only the administrator had this access, he assumed it was a hardware issue. After about five random reboots, he lost it and called the administrator into his office to fix it. But instead of fixing the issue, the administrator just ate Skittles from the jar on his desk and told him, "I'd keep an eye on it."

Of course, he never did. But the most hilarious part wasn't that he never was able to catch him, but rather the fact that he didn't even know what startup scripts were. So, even a file named "cmosupdates.bat" was enough to trouble him. However, the story didn't end there. That is because after the administrator left the company, the director demanded they finish a project they had "committed to" for free because their replacement couldn't handle it. They simply ignored him and blocked his number. 

Majority don't report unethical behavior

This entire incident highlights why employees, despite witnessing unethical behavior in their organization, refrain from reporting it. According to a Gallup survey, 23% of American employees personally witnessed or have firsthand knowledge of a colleague or manager "demonstrating unethical behavior." Yet only 43% of these employees reported it either anonymously or to someone in the company. One of the major reasons why is that they feel no action will be taken against the culprit. 22% of employees believe this to be the case, with another 20% afraid of "retaliation." 

Should've asked for 3x money

This explains why people in the comments were happy with this administrator taking a stand. u/Cuneus-Maximus commented, "When they ask you to do work after you leave, that's when you bust out the 'consulting rate,' which is 3x what they were paying you before you left." Meanwhile, u/Just_Getting_By_1 suggested, "Your boss wanted you to conspire to commit fraud; that is pretty bad. And he is very lucky you only went for small revenge."

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