Yes, I think I did. There was this certain big boss who had been in China for years before coming back to Germany, and he was used to employees having no rights, doing whatever he wanted, not talking back….egomaniac’s dream.

Things don’t work like that in Germany, unless you’re dealing with a bunch of spineless cowards, such as most of my former colleagues. So the boss clown kept pushing the limit, far beyond what he was allowed to do. He was pushing, pushing, pushing, and when I pushed back, he complained about me constantly challenging him. Like all bullies, he was a coward at heart, so whenever I wouldn’t play ball, he had someone else do the dirty work. That included ridiculous accusations about “refusing to integrate into the team” (after not doing what he wanted, such as driving his company car to the garage - I told him “your car, your problem”), and occasionally pure comedy. Here’s the best example.

Since 2009 I have tinnitus in my left ear, a constant tone around 6,5 kHZ which of course nobody but me can hear. One consequence of this is that if several people start talking over each other, the whole thing dissolves into meaningless noise. Shouldn’t be a problem with grown people, right? Far from it. One day there was a somewhat pointless meeting of the entire IT department (minus the absent big boss), and nobody, absolutely nobody got to finish as much as a single sentence before somebody interrupted. That increased the volume, and at some point I stood, said “call me back when you learned to let others finish talking”, and left the room. All I had heard in there was “wah wah wah wah”, and I could feel my blood pressure rising (yes, I really did) because talking over others is among the things I absolutely can’t stand.

Next day another department meeting was called, this time with the big boss present. He started out by waffling about team effort, and team performance, blah blah blah, and then came up with this gem: “So I what find absolutely unacceptable is disrespecting the team effort.” He turned to me and continued: “You now have the chance to apologise to the team.” I’m somewhat infamous for not reacting the way people expect me to, so instead of falling on my knees to beg for mercy I started laughing. He asked what was so funny, and I said (in front of everybody): “This is the most ridiculously constructed attempt to stick it to me I have ever seen in my working life.” Quickly he shooed the others out because this absolutely moronic ploy had backfired (it’s also extremely close to mobbing, if not beyond that). He tried a number of other things to pressure me into obeying his every word, and all of them failed because he was as subtle as a rockslide. In the end he resorted to two written warnings, both badly constructed and easily refutable, but at that point I had a new job secured. I just smiled when I got these two warnings, because I had already made an agreement with the Managing Director about not having to stay for the contractual three-months termination period because I had no interest in taking any more of this shit. I was on good footing with the MD, so after listening to my reasons for wanting to leave, he said that he wouldn’t like it, but understood that the situation was not resolvable in any other way. Come Thursday of the next week, I sent my resignation effective the next day to him. He responded that this was indeed a bit short, but since he had given his word, I was free to go.

Now for the revenge part.

After receiving my e-mail, the MD called the big boss to his office and told him that I had quit as of the following day, and this was done and dusted. The big boss went back (as I was informed later, he was livid), called the other members of my team, told them I would be out by the next day and added: “This is what happens if someone goes up against me”, as if he had fired me. Two minutes later my phone rang, a colleague asking “what, you have been fired?” I said no, I had quit, and anybody claiming other reasons was simply lying. On the next day I went to the main office to return my things (I had been on “punishment detail” at the company warehouse), and went to the MD’s office to give him the signed original of my resignation, and get his signature in turn. The big boss came towards me and said: “Come with me, you don’t need to go to the MD, I have everything here.” I walked past him, explaining that the resignation was addressed to the MD, not to him, so that’s where I was headed. That upset him visibly. “I am giving a direct work order, go to <meeting room> now.”

I stopped and turned around. “Look, apparently you haven’t understood. Contrary to some strange rumours, I have decided to leave the company and resigned. No matter how much you bluster and threaten, I don’t care. I’m out, and nothing you say can change that.” With that, I kept walking towards the MD’s office. He ran to the HR director immediately because he didn’t want it publicly known that I hadn’t been fired, as he claimed. These two geniuses came up with the stupid idea of barring me from all floors rented by the company except one meeting room and the restrooms (mainly to stop me from doing a good-bye round and telling people what had really happened). Both overlooked the fact that until the end of my contract I was also a member of the Works Council, and that room was out of their “jurisdiction”. Whoops.

A couple minutes later I was outside for a smoke, and the MD came out. He was very embarrassed and said: “Look, I’m so sorry for all this.” I told him not to worry since I knew he had no part in it, and due to my time ending after the exit interview which was scheduled 30 minutes later I wouldn’t be bothered at all, rather be highly amused by the antics of certain people. There was a bit of an aftermath to this (so I was told later) when the big boss came up to the MD and said he would sit in for the exit interview. The MD told him in very clear words: “No, you will not be in that room, and this is not open to debate.”

So I had robbed him of all the planned chicanery to make my working time miserable, I had robbed him of his great moment to put me in my place despite all his desperate attempts, I had completely bypassed him and the HR clown by negotiating my exit with the Managing Director, I had told him in front of others that he could shove the threats, and since I had by far the most experience and knowledge in IT administration, he lost about 60% of the team abilities. Oh, he hated every second of it.

That was delicious.