Boss Fires me for Attending My Mom’s Funeral.. I End his Career! r/Prorevenge

[00:00:00]Hey guys, welcome back to r/pro revenge Reddit stories. In today's rap stories video, my awful boss made me pick between attending my mom's funeral or keeping my job. What he didn't know was that his little power trip was about to unearth a corporate scandal that would end absolutely everything. Here is what happens when you mess with the wrong employee. Let's dive right into the video. And the first one is titled boss fires me for attending my mom's funeral and I and his career posted on r/pro revenge. So I worked at an architectural firm doing drafting and project coordination. I'd been there for about 3 years when all of this went down. The pay was actually decent and the work was interesting enough and most of my co-workers were pretty cool. I actually enjoyed going to work most days, which I know is rare. And my a-hole boss, let's just call him boss, had been with the company for almost a decade. He was one of those guys who climbed the ladder by being friendly with the right people rather than actually being good at his job. You know, the type, always sch smoozing with upper management, taking credit for other people's work, that sort of thing. But he was not terrible to work for initially at least. and he mostly left us alone to do our jobs, which was fine by me. My mom had been sick for a long time. Unfortunately, it was cancer, the kind that just keeps coming back no matter how many times the doctors think that they have gotten it all. And she had been fighting it for years. And honestly, she was the toughest person I've ever known. She never complained, never acted like she was suffering, even though I know she was. She just kept going. About 6 months before everything happened, her condition got worse. a lot worse. The doctors said it had spread and there wasn't much else they could do except just make her comfortable. I took it hard, obviously. I mean, my dad had passed away when I was younger, so it was just me, my mom, and my younger brother, and we were tight. I told my boss what was going on because I knew I would need some flexibility with my schedule for doctor appointments and hospital visits, and he seemed understanding at first.

[00:02:10]He said all the right things about family coming first and how the company would support me through the difficult time. Standard corporate sympathy speech if you will. But then I actually started needing that flexibility. The first time I asked to leave early for a doctor appointment with my mom. Boss pulled me aside and said you know I gave you the time of last week. We really need you here for the full day. I mean I was confused at first because he had literally just told me that family came first. But I said okay and rescheduled the appointment. My mom was a bit upset but she understood. She did not want me getting in trouble at work. The second time I asked for a half day to take her to chemotherapy. My boss sighed really loudly and said again. Look, I'm sympathetic to your situation, but we have deadlines here. The Riverside project needs to be completed by the end of the week. The Riverside project was literally 2 weeks ahead of schedule.

[00:03:04]I'd been busting my butt to make sure of it specifically, so I would have some breathing room for family stuff. But I did not argue. I just found someone else to take my mom. But then came the day my brother called me at work. I was in the middle of reviewing some building plans when my phone rang. I almost didn't answer because we were not supposed to take personal calls during work hours, but something told me that I should better pick up. My brother was crying like sobbing so hard he could barely speak. She's gone. He finally managed to get out. Mom is gone. She passed about an hour ago. I've been trying to call you. Everything just stopped around me.

[00:03:43]I remember sitting there at my desk phone pressed to my ear and the whole office just faded away. My mom was gone.

[00:03:50]the woman who raised me, who worked two jobs to put me through school, who never missed a single one of my baseball games, even when she was exhausted, just gone. I don't really remember walking to my boss's office, but I must have because suddenly I was standing in his storeway and he was looking up at me, annoyed, like I was interrupting something important.

[00:04:12]He was eating lunch at his desk. Some kind of sandwich. "My mom just died," I said. My voice sounded weird, distant. I need to go home. My boss stopped chewing and looked at me. And for a second, I thought I saw something like sympathy cross his face, but then he swallowed and said, "I'm sorry to hear that. When is the funeral?" "I don't know yet. My brother just called. I need to go be with him and start making some arrangements." My boss nodded slowly and then glanced at his computer screen.

[00:04:40]"Well, the thing is we have the presentation for the Morrison account tomorrow morning. You're the only one who knows that project inside and out."

[00:04:46]I stared at him. My mom just died. I understand it. I'm very sorry, but this presentation has been scheduled for weeks. The client is flying in specifically for this. If we postpone, we could lose the account. My mom just died. I heard you the first time, my boss said, and his voice had an edge to it. Now, look, I'm not saying don't go to the funeral. I'm saying we need you here tomorrow for this presentation.

[00:05:09]It's a few hours, and you can leave right after. I couldn't believe what I was hearing here. Are you seriously telling me that I cannot leave right now to be with my family because of a work presentation? I'm telling you that you have responsibilities here. We all have personal problems and we cannot just abandon our work whenever something comes up. Something came up. He literally called my mom's death.

[00:05:30]Something that came up like it was a flat tire or a missed dentist appointment. I'm leaving right now. I will deal with the presentation later.

[00:05:39]Boss stood up from his desk. If you leave right now, don't bother coming back. The words just hung there in the air between us, around us. The office had gone quiet. People were pretending to work, but I could tell that everyone was listening.

[00:05:52]You are firing me for going to be with my family after my mom died. I'm firing you for abandoning your responsibilities and being insubordinate. You have a job to do and you're refusing to do it. I should have said something clever, something maybe devastating, but I was honestly too shocked, too griefstricken, and too angry. So, I just turned around and walked out. I grabbed my personal stuff from my desk, ignored the stairs from my co-workers, and then left. And the next few days were just awful for me, not going to lie.

[00:06:25]My brother and I made funeral arrangements. We went through mom's things. We cried a lot. and we sat in her house surrounded by all her stuff and tried to process the fact that she was really gone. The funeral was beautiful in a sad way. Lots of people showed up. Mom had touched a lot of lives. We played her favorite music and told stories about her and it was awful and perfect at the same time. Through all of it, I kept thinking about boss, about how he had fired me for wanting to be there when my family needed me the most, and about how he had called my mom's death, something that came up.

[00:07:00]And yeah, the anger was building underneath the grief, growing stronger each day. About a week after the funeral, I got a text from one of my old co-workers. She said my boss had told everyone that I had quit without notice and left them in a terrible position. He had apparently given the Morrison presentation himself and totally botched it. The client was furious and threatening to pull their business. Boss had blamed me and said I had left the project in disarray and he had to step in at the last minute with no preparation. But that was a lie. The project files were immaculate. I documented everything obsessively because that's how I work. There's just no way he could not have given that presentation unless he just didn't bother to look at any of my work. But what really got me though was the quit without notice part. He was telling people that I had abandoned the company, making himself look like the victim and me look like some irresponsible snowflake who couldn't handle the pressure. And I was done being sad. No, it was just mad. My mom had always told me that living well was the best revenge. But she had also told me that sometimes you need to stand up for yourself. That letting people walk all over you does not make you noble. It just makes you a doormat. So I decided to stand up and first I filed for unemployment. Boss's company contested it claiming I'd been fired for cause due to insubordination and job abandonment.

[00:08:18]I submitted my response with a detailed timeline of events including the fact that I'd been fired for leaving work after being notified of my mom's death.

[00:08:27]The unemployment office approved my claim almost immediately. But I was not done yet. Not even close. I started making some calls. I reached out to every co-orker I'd been friendly with and asked them what really happened with the Morrison presentation. And it turns out that my boss had indeed tried to give the presentation using my materials, but he didn't understand the project well enough to answer the client's questions. He had gotten defensive when they pushed back on some design elements, elements that I specifically noted had been requested by the client. And basically, the whole thing had fallen apart and Morrison pulled their contract. The company lost a six-f figureure account because boss could not be bothered to actually learn the projects his team was working on. I also found out that I wasn't the first person my boss had treated badly. Three other people had left the company in the past year because of him. One woman had been denied time off to attend her sister's wedding. Another guy had been written up for taking a sick day when he had the flu. Boss apparently had this philosophy that personal lives should stay personal and never interfere with work, which sounds reasonable until you realize he meant it literally. Like he expected people to be robots who only existed for the company. And none of these people had filed formal complaints, though they had just quit and moved on because that seemed easier than fighting. So I decided to do something different. I filed a complaint with the state labor board and I documented everything. And by the way guys, just to quickly interject here, if you would have been in an OP situation, what would you have done? How would you have dealt with this awful boss? Let me know in the comments. And if you still enjoy these stories about terrible bosses and workplaces, please don't forget to like the video and maybe post a comment if you want to go the extra mile and support my channel. Thank you so much for the support. the timeline of my mom's illness, boss's initial promises of flexibility, and every time he had denied my requests for time off or made comments about my family situation, interfering with work, the conversation where he had fired me, including the exact words he had used. I had texts and emails, and I had messages from my co-workers confirming what had happened. I even had the unemployment decision, and I built a case. The Labour bought investigator called me. She said my complaint had been forwarded to their discrimination division because firing someone for taking bereiefment leave potentially violated several employment laws and she asked if I would be willing to give a formal statement and I said yes.

[00:10:51]The investigator was thorough. She asked me about everything, how long I had worked there, what my performance reviews had been like, every interaction I'd had with boss regarding my mom's illness, what exactly was said that day I was fired, whether anyone else had witnessed it, and so on. And I answered everything honestly. I gave her names of co-workers who could corroborate my story. I provided copies of all my documentation. And then she asked me something I was not expecting. Did you know your employer doesn't actually have a bereavement leave policy? I didn't know that. I had just assumed they did because I mean every other place I had worked had one. Under state law, they are required to provide at least 3 days of bereavement leave for immediate family members. The investigator continue. They don't have to pay you for it, but they cannot fire you for taking it. Even if they didn't have a written policy, the law still applies. So, not only had boss fired me for wanting to attend my mom's funeral, but he had done so in direct violation of state law.

[00:11:47]Just perfect. The investigator said she'd be in touch and that the labor board would be conducting a full investigation of the company's employment practices, and she thanked me for coming forward and said that these kinds of complaints often reveal larger patterns of problems. And I felt good after that call, like I was finally doing something instead of just sitting around being angry and sad. A while later, I got a call from a lawyer. She said she was representing two other former employees of my old company who had been fired or forced to quit due to the boss's harassment. And she had heard about my labor board complaint and wanted to know if I would be interested in joining a civil suit against the company. and she explained that the company could be liable for wrongful termination, harassment, and creating a hostile work environment.

[00:12:32]The fact that boss had specifically targeted people with family obligations or health issues created a pattern that made the case even stronger. So, I signed on. At this point, it was not even about the money. Though, I won't lie and say that was not a factor. It was about making sure that boss faced consequences for treating people like garbage. The legal process took forever, and it turns out boss had been warned by HR before about his management style.

[00:12:56]Multiple complaints had been filed over the years, but upper management had always sided with him because his teams generally hit their deadlines and stayed on the budget. Never mind that people were miserable or that turnover was high. The numbers looked good on paper, so they ignored the problems. It also turns out that the Morrison account was not the only client my boss had lost.

[00:13:15]Two other major clients had dropped the company in the past year. both citing dissatisfaction with the project management and communication. My boss had blamed his team members both times, but the clients had actually complained specifically about their interaction with boss.

[00:13:32]The company was losing money and reputation because of one guy's ego and incompetence, but they'd been covering it up and making excuses. And our lawsuit changed that. Once everything became a matter of legal record, the company couldn't hide behind corporate PR anymore. Their lawyers tried to settle early on, offering each of us a decent chunk of money to go away quietly, but we said no. We wanted this to go public. The damage to their reputation was severe. Several more employees came forward with their own stories once they realized people were actually listening. And the local business paper ran an article about the company's toxic culture and management problems. Their stock price took a hit and boss, well, my boss got thrown under the bus really hard. The company's legal strategy basically became blaming everything on him.

[00:14:18]They claimed that he had been acting outside of company policy and against explicit directions from upper management. And they said that they had been unaware of the extent of his behavior and were shocked and dismayed to learn how he had been treating employees. It was all corporate backside covering obviously, but it meant that they had to fire him to make their argument work. So my boss was terminated and the company issued a statement saying they had parted ways and were committed to fostering a respectful workplace culture. Translation, we are firing this guy to save our own skin.

[00:14:51]However, I heard through former co-workers that boss actually tried to fight it. He claimed he was being scapegoed, threatened his own lawsuit, but the company had documentation of all those HR complaints and client issues.

[00:15:02]They had him dead to rights, and he knew it. The settlement money helped though it was not life-changing money or anything, but it was enough to cover my expenses while I looked for a new job and dealt with my mom's estate.

[00:15:14]More importantly, it felt like validation, like someone official was saying, "Yes, what happened to you was wrong, and yes, you deserve better. I found a new job as well, another architectural firm, but smaller and with a better culture."

[00:15:28]During the job interview, I was honest about what had happened at my last job, and I figured if they were going to have a problem with it, better to know upfront. But the owner just shook his head and said any company that would fire someone for attending their mom's funeral deserved whatever they got. That was a few years ago now, and I'm still at the same company. And I actually got promoted last year, and my boss is great. When my brother got sick last year, I told her I might need some flexibility, and she said, "Of course, family comes first." And she actually meant it. Imagine that. I think about my mom a lot though. I wish she was here to see how everything turned out. I'm not angry anymore. And honestly, I feel kind of sorry for boss now. Not sorry enough to wish things had turned out differently, but sorry in the way you feel sorry for anyone who destroys their own life through their own actions. And yeah, guys, I got to say to OP, I'm so incredibly sorry for your loss, but your boss played stupid games and he won the ultimate stupid prize. Firing someone for taking bereiefment leave is not just cruel, it is simply illegal in most places as your boss found out the hard way. And a user in the comments said, "Look, I get that losing a parent is sad, but you literally abandoned a multi-million dollar account on the eve of a major presentation. Your boss was right. You left him high and dry. You could have easily done the two-hour presentation the next morning and then gone to cry with your brother."

[00:16:50]No comment about that stupid comment.

[00:16:52]Anyway, another Reddit user said, "I've worked under a manager like this, and the pattern is always the same. They don't actually manage projects. They manage blame. If something goes well, they let the team, but if something goes wrong, suddenly they barely knew what anyone was working on, and some poor employee failed to communicate and then needs to take the fall." And another comment from Reddit said, "Your boss did not get destroyed because you were petty or something. He simply got exposed because he was already doing fireable, illegal, and deeply stupid things. You did not manu You did not manufacture anything. You simply documented what happened, told the truth, and other people finally felt safe enough to speak up. And yeah, guys, let me know what you think about this story in the comments.

[00:17:36]And the next one is a malicious compliance story which you don't want to miss. It is titled Act Like a Contractor. Okay, so a bit of background before I dive into the story. I'm the head of my department and when the company wins a project, it comes to me for a project review with the current workload and the time frame it is required if I cannot fit it in that we send it out for a contractor to do instead. We are bought out by a multinational company after being locally owned. So, as with all these situations, more and more scrutiny is now on budgets and meeting budgets thanks to the bean counters. to help comply with this. I'm now told that I will be involved in job tendering so that if we win the work, the budget should reflect our in-house hourly rate and a lot of time that I've worked out it should take. The only problem with this is that the tenderers also go out to contractors to get the pricing also as a check is what they are telling me.

[00:18:29]Fast forward to a meeting with my boss and he basically tells me to run my department like a contractor in if I cannot meet the time or allotted budget for the job to then pass it off to the contractor and that has priced it as such regardless of what is happening in house so that we don't blow the budget and have to explain why to the bean counters. Sure enough, as months go by, I don't get as involved in this pricing process as no one comes to me. And the contractor's pricing is what I'm told I have to make work, which in some cases is not too far off internal pricing, I would think. So, I push my team and we get it done. But then one day, the estimator comes to me with two jobs that he submitted pricing for and asks me if I can check the prices they used for my department's work. I have a look and the combined price of the two jobs is less than what I believe one job should cost to do. basically tell him, "Whoever the person that priced that must have been smoking some good stuff that day, and don't come to me if we win it because I cannot make it work, and you're stuck with that contractor." About a month later, our internal workload is slowing right down to the point that a few team members are booking time to training.

[00:19:32]This is just a code we book time to upskill. Or basically, if we have nothing to do work-wise, we use as a filler when it comes to internal cleanup or whatever. So, it just doesn't blow job budgets for unrelated items.

[00:19:44]I go to my boss asking for more work basically as we don't have much going on and I don't want him coming to me asking why so much training time is happening.

[00:19:52]His response is we have these two new jobs we have won just finalizing the contract and we'll pass them down for you to review. Okay, great. I think this will keep us busy for a short while.

[00:20:02]Couple days pass and I see the jobs come through and start looking at them. And this is when I realized that they were the jobs that had stupid budgets and I couldn't make work at all without a big lecture at the end on how budgets were blown. So I pass on them like I was told and let that be that. Well, a couple days later, we have our management meeting and I inform the room that we are pretty quiet. So if anyone has any work, let me know and I could see what we could do. To this, my boss pipes up and goes, "Hey, I just gave you two good jobs. What happened to those? You should be on them." To this I say, "Well, you told me to look at jobs and if I couldn't make the budgets work to act like a contractor and pass on them." So, I did just that as the budgets were ridiculous. He just went quiet and that was that. So, my team kept throwing hours into so-called training until something came along which we could make work. He worked out pretty fast that a blown budget was better than throwing money into training hours as that came straight out of the company pocket. and he would have to explain to his higherups why our department had a lot of training hours and not much productive hours. And the next one is a malicious compliance story that you definitely don't want to miss. It is titled won't get paid if I go home. Okay then. So this one is kind of in progress. I'm a company truck driver and if the truck breaks down, I get breakdown pay because obviously I cannot make money if I'm paid by the mile. So cue the malicious compliance. Truck has broken so I call in and offer a way to save some money. I live on the other side of the state I'm currently in, so why not just go home until the truck is fixed and instead of spending a bunch of money on hotel, just buy me a bus ticket back. Dispatcher says if I go home, I won't be eligible for breakdown pay. So I say, okay, I would rather go home anyway. No point sitting around doing nothing. So I think, wait a minute, I can have my cake and eat it too. And this company has already stiffed me on about $1,700. Unrelated. So I call the dispatcher back. Yeah, that plan won't work. I'm going to need a hotel room.

[00:21:54]Okay. Meanwhile, I just enact my original plan to pop home and back to attend an event I wanted to go to and make sure my cats get some attention from me after checking into the hotel room and throwing out the do not disturb sign. At least this way, I have it ready when I get back to it. This also means I get that breakdown pay because I didn't go home. Edit: The dealership the truck is at told me it would not be gotten to until Monday. And when I got there on Friday afternoon, I'll be playing games all week. I expect until it is done while they make one more hotel reservation per night and make me walk back and forth. Whatever. Also, if they fire me, all it will do is make me happy because I know that I can probably get another job fairly easily at that point.

[00:22:34]Edit number two. It all worked out great, exactly as expected. And surprise, surprise, they did not fire me. Malicious compliance for the win.

[00:22:43]And yeah, guys, thank you so much for watching. Please don't forget to subscribe and I will see you again