Man fired unfairly devises perfect plan to teach annoying manager a lesson and get a year of pay

Bosses often take their employees for granted and give them tasks that are impossible to finish in the given timeline. A manager at a university also did this but it, unfortunately, backfired. A man, u/fluffy_supermarket_6, shared on Reddit how his boss gave him an immense amount of work despite being the only person in the content creation team. On top of that, the manager got the employee fired just after a couple of months so the employee made sure to teach the manager a lesson.  

The employee started with some background about his work. He wrote that it happened in the early 2010s and he was hired as a content creator for a university that wanted to "leverage" YouTube to use it for their branding campaign. He said, "The pay was low (roughly $2,200) and in those days, there were not that many video content creators around and the process usually took a long time from start to finish." The man shared that on his second day, his manager told him he had to make 85 videos around 3-10 minutes in 52 weeks. He told the manager that it was not possible, as it was not one person's job, but she assured him that if the videos were good, the quantity wouldn't be much of a problem. "Hearing this, I agreed to give it a try," the employee wrote. He then shared that he was treated well in the first month of work until the manager learned that he was a smoker. She started to question him on everything, from smelling like cigarettes after his breaks to coming in late to work. 

Five months later, he was called into the Director's office, where his manager was sitting there with a "displeased and gleeful face." The director informed the employee that she was disappointed with him that it was almost half a year and his videos were less than half of the 85 videos, which were part of his KPI (Key Performance Indicator). The content creator asked him if they fired him and how were they going to meet the KPI and his manager replied, "We'll find a professional  house to finish your work." The director also agreed with her. 

That's when he came up with an idea. As he was the content professional in the office, one of his jobs was to have a database of production houses. He shared, "So, I changed the contact numbers and messed up all the emails on all entries except one. The one, I had a friend working as a junior director. I gave him a call and told him of my plan, and sure enough, within two days, they were called to come in to pitch." Both thought it was a win-win situation as the junior director would get promoted for bringing in so much business and the content creator would get a standard finders fee of 15%.

"He agreed instantly and immediately put me on the line with his general manager who upon realizing this was to be 6 months of work for a high 6-digit payout, instantly agreed and drew up a contract," he wrote. He gave them a step-by-step guide on how to work the pitch out, which they called the "perfect fit" as they understood the university's needs and style. He shared, "The director and my former boss were amazed that my friend's production house was so familiar with their content that they signed them up on the spot."

The company produced 50 videos in 4 months, which also meant they were paid double to triple the employee's per month salary for each video. However, the man gained a 15% finders fee, about 15 months of his salary. He wrote, "This allowed me to put money aside for a holiday and the rest to further my studies with a respected film school overseas." After the project with the university ended, the man learned from one of his former colleagues that the management fired his former manager. Also, the director was blasted by the Chancellor of the University.

The reason was they exceeded the assigned budget by over 10 times for the project. He shared, "My former manager was so desperate to ensure that her content creation project could be completed that she had thrown caution to the wind, paying anything to get the job done so that she could show my director that she had completed the project and had approved the massive spend without getting consent from the director."

People in the comments applauded the content creator for his master plan. u/LordNite commented, "That's a real win-win situation...well, not for your manager, but she earned exactly what she deserved!" u/cfwdirk wrote, "That was a fun read! Awfully nice of your former manager to set you up for success." u/teambrendawalsh said, "Kudos to you! You were honest with your former employer and gave 110% while there, but your manager decided that she hated smokers more than her job. They used your database, which they didn’t pay for, and got what they deserved. And so did you: a big ol payday. I hope your friend got their promotion!"