I’m going anon here because I know several of the individuals involved in my story frequent Quora, and I don’t want to risk besmirching the rep of some of the good people here. I’ll try to be as clear as possible without being too vague. It’s the first time writing here so my apologies for any errors.

Several years ago, I was hired as a Business Development Manager by this tech company (we’ll call them Company X) who headhunted me out from a competitor (Company Y). They were several leagues above company Y, and being young and ambitious - I jumped at the opportunity. I then discovered that they had a high turnover rate, but it didn’t really bother me at the time because I was pretty naive and cocky, and got along great with most people there. Company X had somewhat of a small workforce, around 40 people. The CEO, CTO and General Manager ran a pretty tight ship and were very involved with everyone, micro-managing almost all aspects of the business.

Several months down the road, I had already closed several new accounts and brought in new revenue streams to the company. Then one day, they announced that they were going to shift the company strategy. It’s been awhile, and I can’t fully remember all the details, but the plan was pretty risky, and had everyone on edge, simply because it involved putting everyone under financial strain for almost a couple of years until the strategy matured and Company X would blast off exponentially. This meant no salary increment, no bonuses, no inflation adjustments and so forth. For the next potentially couple of years, we’d all be working on a stiff. They promised everyone compensation for their patience and loyalty, but at the end of the day, this was a decision made on their end and we didn’t have any say in it.

A week after the announcement, my General Manager tells me I need to head up to meet a panel of companies who were vendors to one of our biggest clients. The deal was that these companies were required by our client to use our tech if they wanted to keep their contracts, as part of their standardisation protocol. These companies had already installed some of our tech, and my job was to head over and provide training on using our tech, as well as upsell on more of our stuff.

It was primed as a troublesome job. The panel companies were already unhappy about being forced by our client to engage our tech because it meant additional work and cost on their end. And I had to sort out 14 companies across three states over a period of five days. It seemed like a nice challenge and I was gung ho about it. I went off to meet with the panel and it turned out a success. Frankly I was very proud of myself. I built pretty good rapport with each of them, and had even upsold on our packages and units.

I came down with a fever on Monday after returning to work, most probably brought on by exhaustion. I came back to work on Wednesday, submitted my clinic issued medical cert to HR and continued with my job. After lunch, I was called in by HR and was advised that I have been terminated due to faking a medical cert. It was absurd! Even the HR lady looked sad about it. I asked what the hell was going on and she could only reply it wasn’t her call, but my CEO’s.

I confronted my CEO demanding an explanation, and he said that he KNEW that I wasn’t sick and that I had lied to the company. I told him that was ridiculous and flat out wrong. And even IF I had faked it, surely my contributions to the company and my most recent success would have made up for it. But he wasn’t hearing it, and gave me two days to pack my stuff and sort out my affairs.

Devastated, crushed and totally embarrassed, I went outside for a cigarette. The HR lady and another manager joined me shortly after. It was then that I found out that the bosses, as part of their shift in strategy, wanted to let go of employees to reduce the overheads but did not want to offer exit packages. The trip to the panel companies was meant for me to fail, and used as grounds for termination. But me succeeding merely meant more revenue streams for them and they just had to fire me over whatever trivial grounds they could find.

I was furious! I spent the next couple of days continuously being furious over the matter. I spent another day or so at home wallowing in self pity over my stupidity, ignorance and sheer naivety. I wanted sue on wrongful termination, hostile work environments and so forth, but I decided that it would take too much time and effort because the labour laws here are shit, and I needed to focus on rebuilding my career.

But they still needed to feel my vengeance! So I decided to be petty instead. I was their Business Development Manager for f*cks sakes! I had my own copy of their data, inner workings, client list, and so much more. I contacted my ex colleague over at Company Y with whom I still had good relations with, and told him what had happened, and what I wanted to do. I was going to sell them the full set of information, which I had valued close to USD175,000 (amount converted) of potential revenue, for only USD5,000. Charging this low meant that Company Y could afford what I was offering, all in cash, so there would not be any digital traces, it could be done within a day, and ultimately, it would be an insult to company X.

And that’s exactly what happened. I dropped whispers to Company X that it was me, but there was no way they could prove it, and by then I was already well beyond their radar. I don’t regret it the least, and quite honestly, I had fun doing it. It felt so dangerous, so undercover.

Last I heard of them was they were forced to file for bankruptcy because they were swindled out of a deal by one of their Senior Managers. It’s Karma b*tch.