Some years back I was working as a service engineer for a large electronic lock company near London. After a couple of years there, the company was looking to start building a network of field based engineers around the country, and the General Manager was looking for any volunteers to relocate. I had friends who had moved North and thought, well, why not.

Unfortunately the old service manager (my direct boss) had recently left, and the guy who was the longest serving engineer was taking his place, and we just really didn’t get along. Not sure why -- he was a fairly reserved type and I was not -- and maybe being new to the promotion, he wasn’t too keen on having engineers he couldn’t just call into his office when he wanted. That had been the custom under the previous manager. He told me that he didn’t want me to make the move and so I said fine, I won’t, but when the GM got wind of this, he persuaded me that it would all be okay, and so I went ahead and moved.

Big, big mistake!

From that day on, my new service manager tried his hardest to make this new based-from-home project unworkable. There were only two of us, me and another chap who had been taken on, both working the north of the country, and we found time after time we were being given jobs at locations much nearer to the other, resulting in hundreds of extra miles having to be covered daily. We would often talk to each other on the company mobile phones, over the many unnecessary hours of driving, and made a joking point of chatting as we passed each other going in opposite directions on the motorways. The company eventually had to provide us with a second car each for some years, because the mileage we were clocking up, was way too much for one single lease vehicle apeace, alone. I could list many other petty incidents that occurred over this time, but suffice to say this manager made it clear to me on many occasions, that he wanted me gone.

Time rolled by, and despite the runs-in and occasional threats from this manager, I actually stay for a further eight years with this firm, during which time three other engineers quit, and one had a nervous breakdown after a run in with this man. One day however, the inevitable happened. There was then a turn down in the economy, and I got a phone call from him, telling me that the company was going to be making some redundancies, and that my name was on the list. In fact as it turned out, mine was the only name on the list from his department, and was made pretty obvious he put it there.

Now thankfully in the UK, it is not that easy to ‘just’ make someone redundant. There are processes to go through, and the company has to show that it has been fair in selecting those to be laid off, reasons, and they have to provide this as part of the redundancy meetings, and as it happened I had been a fairly good employee. I had better qualifications than most of the other engineers, had a better sickness record, did more overtime (due to aforementioned manager making me spend many extra hours on the road), and had had no complaints or disciplinary action against me. With all the points this scored I was actually in the second most secure place on the chart I was shown, so how had they selected me ?

Well, there was an odd sixth catagory … ERIC … ? Never heard of it? -- well neither had I. Asking further, it turns out it stood for ‘Electronic Recorded Internal Complaint’, and I pushed ever further and said ‘huh?’ What he had done was to go back through his records, and find three E-Mails to me asking for paperwork to be returned, no mention of being disciplinary in nature, just ‘can you have your paperwork sent in for Friday’ sort of thing. Each had been given a -4 points rating (-12 in total), meaning that my score on the redundancy chart had now nose-dived from second top to a clear bottom! Not bad, considering my three years of day release college for a City & Guilds in Electronics, had only rated a +3 !

I did go to the redundancy meetings, but it was clear from the attitude shown at them that I was not going to be staying. Even the once-helpful GM was obviously set upon the outcome. He was older and weaker by then, and I think just looking forward to retirement. He seemed more concerned now about covering the manager he had to work with daily, than an engineer he saw maybe twice a year.

After the redundancy period finished, I handed the company car back, and accepted the redundancy money offered, which was just the minimum they had to pay under the law. I then did a little research, and posted off all the paperwork I’d gathered to ACAS, which is the body in the UK that decides if we have a case for an industrial tribunal, and looks at whether we have been treated fairly. They decided there was a case for my former firm to answer, as the firm had not in any way done ‘their’ paperwork correctly, and I eventually accepted an offer of £7,500 in extra compensation for what they had done to me.

I heard much later from one of the engineers still working there, who was also a personal friend, that the threat of a court case had caused the firm no end of problems. Managerial meetings, company solicitors, new staff Human Resources, new paperwork and appraisals having to be set up, with even their international parent company having to become involved, much to their embarrassment. For me though, much as I liked the top level pain I put them through, I still think making them pay in cold hard cash for my poor treatment, was by far my best revenge.