Many (many!) years ago I was working for a company that produced events. I worked for them for many months. The boss was an affable guy, but he was quirky, to say the least. Sometimes he'd not pay his crew, who then sat in the offices doing nothing for a couple of days, on the clock, until he gave them their paychecks.

I had designed custom equipment for the company’s event presentations. Once, we were on the road, and an event hadn't quite gone as planned (nothing do do with the quality of my work), and the boss decided to leave town without giving me, and others, our return plane tickets. This was the point at which I vowed to never work for this company again, and I, of course, paid for my own return flight. Somehow - I don't recall exactly - I was able to take a couple of my custom-designed pieces of hardware home with me, to hold until I got paid AND got my flight reimbursed; you know, some version of a mechanic's lien.

This took about 3 months, but I finally did get paid - probably 90% of what I'd been owed. BUT the company then told me that they didn't need my services any longer. I'm sure that I cost them too much. Of course I said "fine," but I made sure to tell the boss that they should assemble all the equipment and test it again before going back on the road. In any case, this is something I would have insisted upon myself if I'd kept working for them, given that some time had passed since the last road trip.

Surprise (cheap bastards that they were) they didn't test the equipment, which would NOT work without the stuff I had.

I still don't know where they found a tech who'd agree to go on the road with this stuff, sight-unseen, without testing it. It wasn't exactly plug-and-play.

I got a frantic voicemail some time later, while I was on vacation, and I called back. "We're on the road, and can't find the such-and-such!" I feigned ignorance ... "It should have been packed with the other stuff".. "We can't do the event without it!!".. "Gee, I'm sorry. I sure wish I knew. Let me know if there's any other information I can actually help with. Good luck." Click.

It actually made me hurt for a bit, but I held my tongue, and most likely the company lost tens of thousands of dollars, and took a big hit to its reputation. The hurt stopped pretty quickly, and I had a good long last laugh.

BTW, I let that custom equipment sit on a shelf in my offices, in plain sight, for years. Occasionally someone would ask what it was, and I said "It's something from the old NASA space program," or something to that effect. Might as well have been. I believe I finally tossed it.