I wouldn’t say I got revenge, but there was definitely some schadenfreude going on :)
A few years ago, I was running the commercial cookery section of a small hospitality team at a govt run training facility that mainly trained front line staff for our tourism-based town. A new front-of-house teacher arrived, very adept at the govt system and lots of credentials but couldn't carry 3 plates. She decided that we would refocus to hospitality management training for line managers (more her bag) and the employers could train their own staff as training waiters was frankly, a little beneath her. She starts to build ‘strategic partnerships’ with the big hotels & resorts in town and gets lots of smiles from head office for the new approach of ‘nobody comes to the campus, do your own training’ because the college is still keeping all the govt funding for the training ... just not doing it. Instead, we will send assessors out to your workplace (i.e. criticize what you’ve taught instead of doing it ourselves) and sign them off.
Meanwhile, much to her ire, I kept on with bringing my apprentices on to campus for traditional training. Not all apprentices work in the same level of establishment, or get the same amount of training, some restaurants don’t have the same range of activities to learn, so college provides facilities, equipment and a constant baseline for learning according to the National Training Package. There is also a prevailing attitude amongst chefs that you come to work to work, and you go to trade school to learn. I tried the ‘new way’ with three hotels, (including her favourite), that I thought would do a good job of the training and it failed miserably. They didn’t train them and the apprentices fell behind in their learning which then became my fault.
As I mentioned, the lady was a skilled player in the public service and I am but a simple chef. She did a great job of painting me as someone who was stuck in the past, unwilling to accept change. Head Office believed that my cookery section was dying thru lack of numbers even though they had figures that said otherwise; I was sent on a change management course.
A previous manoeuvre of hers had been to get them to offer me early retirement, which in effect means retire the position I held as it was no longer required. There was a substantial payout being a govt job and much to her delight I later decided to ask for it, I was sick of the game and was over working for a training organisation where the students were unimportant; I learnt that all govt departments that bring in revenue work to a budget, including the cops with their tickets! They couldn’t replace my position for 2 years once it was retired.
My last day the boss came down from head office, partially to find out what was going on with commercial cookery and to transfer the few remaining apprentices to other campuses. “Tell me about cookery” he says to the office manager. “well, there are 98 active apprentices in the filing cabinet upstairs, and another 35 new ones on chef’s desk waiting for someone to go out to the workplace and sign them up”. Not bad for a one-man team! Everything she spent 18 months selling him was a total lie - he visibly collapsed onto his desk and put his head in his hands. Then the calls started coming in from industry .. what’s going on there? … where’s chef gone? … what are you doing about training my apprentices? They had 2 years of having to bring chefs in from other campuses, provide them with transport, accommodation, living away from home allowances to cover the training. It cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That was the schadefreude .. my pleasure in someone else’s misfortune.
The revenge? As I mentioned, she ingratiated herself into some of the big local players and that ultimately led to her downfall. Our heroine’s husband set up a contract housekeeping business supplying maids to properties around town, and in due course a miracle happened. The 5 star hotel that the college partnered with decided to sack all their live-on housekeeping staff (it was an island resort) and change to contract staff that would commute early to the island every day on the staff boat. Guess whose business got the contract? U-huh!!
‘Someone’ made a call to the State Crime & Misconduct Commission about a possible corrupt use of a government position in influencing the award of a contract to her husband. She literally flew away in the middle of the night, house packed up and gone within 24hrs over the weekend. Last I heard she and her husband were living across state lines in a small remote town on the far coast of Western Australia, no doubt trying to be a big fish in a small pond once again.
The college, and cookery? It survived and flourished. Not only did our heroine get her comeuppance but her boss Mr Head-in-Hands also retired early due to stress some months later. Change of govt, change of priorities and senior staff and twenty years later the place is as busy as ever, refurbished restaurant, new kitchen equipment ~ I dined in the training restaurant last week, it was great!