What is the best revenge you’ve gotten after being fired or let go from a job?

I have only been fired once. I was very active in my college radio station and earned a degree in classical music, and was hoping to work in this niche. Plan was to go back to the urban market where I had grown up, but the day before graduation I got a call from a local radio station that was offering “beautiful music” with four hours of classical a day. It seemed a good way to launch a career, and I scrambled to find a place to live.

Three of us ran the station for 18 hours a day, seven days a week. Had to wear ties. We got paid every two weeks, but the owner’s wife was the bookkeeper and would hold our Friday checks until the following Monday because we were lo-life DJ’s and would drink it all up over the weekend.

We were not allowed to speak, played time and station ID’s from tape cartridges. Spun discs from approved piles. On Sundays I would play a classical show from the local library, they provided LP’s and an open reel tape of comments, with a script. One morning the tape was completely clean, except for “zap spokes” - it had been bulk erased somehow. I read the script over the microphone, fearful that I would lose the job. I should mention that in addition to hosting classical shows on the college radio station for years I had a work study job narrating educational slide shows. I could speak well. And had worked weekends at another local station my final year. Letting out breath, I did not get fired but was actually allowed to read the weather report once an hour!

Meanwhile on my minimum wage I found a $17k house to buy (it was 1978) and thought I was doing OK.

Sunday afternoons in the fall we would air Redskins football games. I listened for cues and plugged in the local commercials; there were 20 breaks scheduled, and I dutifully logged them down when aired. Except one time we were only given 19 breaks - it was the ‘Skins, perfection not expected… I reported this on Monday to the billing manager (the owner’s daughter). They told me to falsify the log so they could bill the customers, and I would not. (This was in the days of having to have an FCC license to operate on the air).

So, two days before Christmas I was fired. Note that I had graduated in June…

I had multiple offers from other stations in the area and did OK, learning a lot and even becoming an engineer and operations manager, so with the shackles off I could thrive.

But here it get’s interesting… It turns out that there was a government program called “CETA”, the Comprehensive Education and Training Act, which encouraged something like apprenticeships. Employers who took on unskilled workers and gave them training would be reimbursed 50% of the salary for six months. So these guys would hire folks but instead of training them drew from folks with some skill, largely from the local colleges, but some that had been professional broadcasters for many years, and then fabricate a reason to lay us off after six months.

It’s a few years later and I am working for a competitor down the road and some federal investigators looked me up. One of them actually blew out his coffee when he heard of my background. Turns out there were 18 counts of fraud for my old boss and his cronies…

My new boss HATED my old boss and gave me the day off WITH PAY to go testify at the regional Federal Courthouse. Still think of him every time I go to vote! So that was my “Revenge”.

BTW the assistant manager was featured on “America’s Most Wanted” a few years later for crawling out a bathroom window in another courthouse while in for bigamy charges.

Addendum … forgot to mention that after a few months the daily classical blocks got dropped. Owner’s wife’s bridge club found that the dynamic music interfered with their conversation…