【海外の反応】「違法じゃないけど会社が詰む」同僚がやった一番エグい合法ムーブ集

Not a co-worker, my husband. We were expecting a baby and he had a ton of accrued sick leave. He worked in a high-stress job where managers constantly pressured and harassed employees to do more with less and faster, to the point that every time someone walked off the job, remaining staff half-expected them to “go postal”.

But, it was a fairly high-paying job with excellent benefits and overtime availability thanks to a union-negotiated contract. My husband told his boss that he planned to take a month off when our baby was born, only to be vilified for it. His boss even made snide remarks about my husband being pussy-whipped or less than a man for wanting a whole month off to bond with his baby.

That said, a careful reading of my husband’s contract revealed that he was entitled to 6 weeks of paid leave per year following the birth of a child. His contract also permitted employees to take 12 weeks of unpaid leave per year for their family member’s medical condition, similar to FMLA but with a guarantee that the employee would return to their exact job at their exact location, safe from retaliation.

It just so happened that the timing of our baby’s premature birth and the terms of his contract meant that my husband could alternate one week of paid leave with one week of unpaid leave for 12 weeks at the end of one calendar year, followed by 12 weeks of the same at the beginning of the next calendar year. His boss had no clue, but my husband had the distinct pleasure of informing him in person a few days after our baby was born.

Long story short, one month of paternity leave turned into six months, all because my husband’s boss just had to be an asshole. My husband became a hero to his co-workers, particularly the ones that made bank on overtime as a result.

My company renovates high-end homes. My coworker told me that he had an absolute asshole of a client that tried to wiggle out of payment every chance he got. Finally fed up, my coworker said he bought several battery powered smoke alarms and buried them in the walls right before drywall went up. A year or two later, he's getting frantic calls from that former client who absolutely cannot find the source of the intermittent beeping in his house. Absolutely diabolical.

I used to work for a small family owned nursing home company. I think they has maybe 3 buildings or so. The DON (nursing director) and I were the only two nursing managers so when nurses called in we’d have to either find another nurse to pick up or work the shift ourselves. It was the middle of Covid and the owners weren’t bringing in agency, then when they finally did they brought in these small agency companies that would cancel their nurses as soon as they found a higher rate elsewhere. We had 69 open shifts at one point in one month.

Anyway DON got fed up and told me she was going to leave so we both applied for jobs elsewhere. I put in my resignation first she opted to wait. Because it was a small company they didn’t really have systems in place to keep track of stuff. Like our PTO would never be listed on our pay stubs only HR knew how much we had.

Anyway HR happened to be off that week and she messaged the administrator to find out how much PTO she had left. He had to calculate it by hand (like how many years she worked vs how many days she used) and he texts her somewhere around 320 hours. It probably wasn’t accurate.

In our state they have to pay you out for PTO when you leave.

So Friday comes, and our company was owned by those of the Jewish faith who would not use electronic devices Friday nights for Shabbat. At around 5pm on a Friday she sends an email stating she’s resigning her position effective immediately and that she is expecting all of her PTO on her last pay check per our state regulation. She included a screen shot of the text of her hours. She then texts all of the nursing staff to tell them she’s no longer with the company.

I knew a guy who was ready to quit his job (Rob), and I was too, but we had this coworker (Justin) who was having a hard time. He was a young single dad with two kids, and was visibly stressed all the time, especially about losing the job because if he ever did, everything would collapse – his life was on a razor's edge and we all knew it.

So Rob said fuck it, let's talk to a local union rep and see about getting organized.
He said to us he'd bear all the blame if it went sideways, that he "pressured" us into unionizing.

So we got it done; ambushed the boss with it after months of quiet planning.
A significant portion of the company's branches were already unionized, and the company didn't blink, everything just quietly fell into place.

The boss was pissed, inordinately so – it seemed, given that the company was indifferent.
Until the shuffle to organize had uncovered the fact that he was fucking with all our hours and we realized why he was so mad about unionization, because he knew his bullshit could be stopped.

He got fired. There were an awkward few weeks where we just showed up without a boss and then Rob quit. Justin got promoted as the branch supervisor because he had the most seniority there, and nobody more senior in the company wanted to drive out to Bumfuckville every day, then I quit shortly after.
I checked in on Justin a couple years later and he was still supervising the branch, much more content and secure.

My mom sold new construction homes. In that business, it is 100% commission. Half paid when the contract is signed, half paid when the house closes. If you leave, you lose it all.

Her newish boss began making comments about her age, hiring more young people, how she used all her vacation days, etc. Then, she was forced to take on the job of multiple salespeople.

My parents were already thinking about moving, so they made their plan. My mom had a large commission check coming, so she had to keep in a secret. Her days off were Thurs/Fri.

She literally bought a house in another state, held out until her paycheck came through on Wed, left her laptop/phone at the office Wed afternoon, Thursday she flew out to the new house, transferred the $ to another acct, and then sent her letter of resignation on Friday morning. By Saturday, she was in another state, with her commission check, and they were SOL. They deserved it.

FIL was a few years away from retirement, he was the payroll manager for the company he worked at. He was accidentally Bc'd into an email chain that basically showed they were bringing in an external company to replace him in the next 6 months and sack him. 30 years service.

He had a fair amount saved, pension ready to go so took a few weeks to get his finances double checked by an expert.

His line manager was the company director, he emailed and printed a resignation letter on the first Monday of the month advising he was giving his 4 week notice. He also told his two subordinates what the plan was.

The boss was away on Holiday for a 3 weeks and came back to his payroll manager leaving, and no system to replace him, and his team looking for other jobs.

Worked for a small company years ago. The woman who was doing their books went on vacation for two weeks. I happened to run into her while at Genovese drugstore. She had taken a new job, but they didn't know it yet. "I got them good!" she seethed.

When they finally learned she wasn't coming back not only were their books behind, but we had a customer that placed orders only in Spanish and she was the only one there who could do it. So they lost that customer.

Turned out to be a situation where the owners treated their staff like garbage unless they liked you.

I'm not really sure if it's legal but back in the on premise Microsoft Exchange days the company I worked for had a client that would regularly be multiple months behind on their bills, despite being chased.

So my boss would just stop the exchange services on their server, which stops all inbound and outbound email.

The client would then call up saying their emails weren't working, my boss would tell them that we would be happy to take a look once they paid their bills.

Weirdly this was a regular thing and the client was a law firm.

The dumb thing was my boss was actualy really cool with letting clients with cash flow issues not pay bills for a few months but would tell them they need to communicate otherwise they are just not paying for no reason.

A coworker scheduled his resignation email for 7:59 AM before the Monday staffing meeting, didnt say a word, and 12 managers suddenly had no opener

what about something i did.  i put my two weeks notice in so it coincided with the release of a movie the store manager was excited for. he was a real dick and was sabotaging me because he wanted to hire his friend. on my last day as a gamestop assistant manager the store manager planned on not showing up and assumed i would just work a double. he didn't tell me but all the employees liked me more and so they told me. i knew the time he was seeing the movie so i called our district manager 30 minutes before the showtime and told him my shift ends in an hour and if he wasn't there i would just lock the doors up and put my keys through the mail slot. he then called the store manager and flipped out. store manager showed up and tried to yell at me and i just said you are not my boss anymore bye. 

a couple months later i saw him working at a Starbucks.  i reached out to a former coworker and he got fired because he hired his friend and that friend stole money from the safe.