Woman unjustly laid off by boss turns tables on company after he asked her to clear out her things immediately

Getting laid off by one’s employer is a brutal experience, as it often leaves the fired individual completely shattered. While most employees have no choice but to wind up their belongings and leave, a handful of them stand resilient to fight their battles. This woman is one of them as she was fired unjustly by her employer. She decided to take the entire company down with her. The worker removed from her position—who goes by u/everybodys-therapist—took to Reddit to share how she complied with her bosses’ dictate.

The woman, employed as a professional media designer, worked hard over the years and shuffled through different roles. “This company held large events, and I was gradually assigned more and more unrelated responsibilities until I was effectively performing the roles of at least four people,” she wrote in her now widely circulating post. By going out of her way, the dedicated worker even spent her money from her own pocket buying necessary media equipment. “All of that equipment had my name on it to make sure that it wouldn't get lost if I lent it out,” the unidentified employee added. Over the years, she had accumulated a pretty impressive supply through second-hand purchases and by watching for deals.

The woman invested thousands of dollars into the business by purchasing high-end equipment by the beginning of her fifth year there. These tech tools were mostly used for the organization's promotion and event production. One day, the woman was told by management to meet her boss in his office. “They informed me of an upcoming downsizing and that they had hired a recent college graduate, with limited practical experience, to take over my responsibilities along with those of several other roles,” the post read. She was completely caught off guard and a colleague assisted in cleaning out her belongings and leaving the office space vacant. He specifically told the fired employee to “take everything that is yours, as you won't be coming back.”

The freshly laid-off employee claimed she did exactly what she was told. All the media equipment under the woman’s name was one by one getting loaded into her Ford Explorer parked outside the office. “With every box we loaded into my car, my boss grew increasingly panicked. At one point, he said, ‘You can only take things that are yours,’” the post explained further. Additionally, the woman maintained her cool by effectively communicating to her boss that everything she was taking was indeed hers.

The final nail in the coffin was when the worker finally told her boss that she would need access to the arena's AV Booth and the catwalk. “I still remember the fear in his eyes,” she said, adding that she went there unplugging all of her cameras lent to the events team. “I felt like the Grinch just walking around and taking all the random things in the building that had my name on them,” the heartbroken woman wrote.

“I had given 200% in every way, but they picked someone younger and fresh out of college to replace me. I won’t lie—the smug satisfaction of watching their faces as I stripped the place bare was worth it,” she noted during her drive back home. She went on to describe it as the “most toxic” job experience and within a year, the business fell apart. “The company only lasted another year before they folded entirely, and I like to believe that I had a hand in that,” she elaborated in her post, which received around 12K upvotes, sparking widespread reactions.

“Twenty years ago, I did almost exactly this while working as a Sales Copy Center Manager. My colleague and I left to start our own sign company and copy center, taking a significant portion of legacy customers with us,” u/AcmeCartoonVillian remarked. Adding to it, u/DracoDeVis recalled, “When my mother’s theater company laid off its production team before going bankrupt, her costume team discreetly retrieved thousands of costumes they had crafted, taking them back for themselves.”