Boss fires 'redundant' employee; makes him delete his data, costing company $2.5 mil.

Getting laid off is the worst, but at least a severance package is nice. Lay-offs happen, and it's not always apparent that it'll be you. Seldom do you get to stick it to your company or boss for letting you go.

On a popular Reddit thread in the Malicious Compliance Subreddit, one man gets laid off after his new boss treats him terribly and eventually gets revenge.

His friend writes:

So I have a friend Ted who six-seven years ago was 64 and considering retirement. Ted worked in Health analytics for a large metro health organization. He would look at patient data and see ways to improve patient outcomes and gain funding.

He would email the relevant department heads data and links for government grants or funding applications each month. Twelve months before this Ted got a new boss Sally who didn't appreciate what Ted did. Sally ignored Ted except for a simple instruction that all data and reports go to her and no one else. She would deal with it.

The organization declared a restructuring with lots of layoffs. In the restructuring, they decide that Ted is redundant. In a meeting, Sally tells Ted his work is worthless, and that he is useless to the organization. She says she hasn't opened one of his email reports in 12 months, clearly showing he doesn't matter to the organization.

He will be let go in three months and receive a handsome package(over a year's pay). Sally was pretty rude to Ted, and HR asked her to leave. It was decided that Sally will longer deal with Ted.

The union was putting up a decent fight in slowing down the restructuring. Ted makes the offer to HR that he will not fight the redundancy if they pay him three months of sick leave and after that his redundancy. They agree but insist that he does a full data clean for patient confidentiality reasons in the next two days, and then his sick leave starts. Cue malicious compliance.

Ted backs up a copy then rings IT who deletes every file and physically destroys his hard drive. He also asked them to search through any unopened emails he had sent and delete them from the server. IT wipe every last trace of Ted from the system. Ted gave the internal auditors a copy of his data on his last day.

On Ted's last day, he also discovered that Sally didn't know he was going on sick leave the next day. She rings with a sweet-as-pie voice saying 'Hey Ted I need to look at those numbers you sent me as I can't find them. The auditors say we are 2.2 million short of funding this year and you might be able to help.' Ted replies sure but ring me tomorrow. Ted leaves and retires happily ever after.

Sally apparently could not find Ted's data in the coming weeks. Ted ignored her calls as he was on sick leave. The internal auditors found that Sally had cost the organization over 2.5 million in funding. At the same time, department heads complained about Ted's redundancy.

Someone forwarded Ted an email from the CEO a couple of months later stating 'after a brief conversation with Sally she has decided to look for other opportunities.'

The internet has comments:

HMS_Slartibartfast says:

I've seen the result of one too many 'Sallys.' I knew a programmer who was instrumental in an organization's biannual reporting. In his case, 'Sally' couldn't figure out what he was doing for over a year and worked to have his services terminated.

About six months later, when the reporting was required, NO ONE in their organization knew how to do it. They offered about 200K USD (the late 1990s) to get someone to generate and certify their numbers, but they had about ten days to complete it.

Especially with that type of money and the requirement to have it CERTIFIED, no one was touching it. Too little time and too much liability. They missed their timeframe. They lost over 60% of their revenue immediately. The company went under shortly after. It seems their 'Sally' didn't know contracting with government agencies often has unique requirements.

MegaTrace says:

I always wonder how these people manage to get in these positions, the only explanation I can think of is being friends with higher ups, but that can't always be the case.

Another_New_Day says:

God, I wish they'd offer me even a six month package to retire. I'd leave behind a puff of smoke like the Roadrunner and spend my days chuckling thereafter.

Ted is a king and we should build a statue of him.