Not a revenge story, but back in the 80s I worked for a financial planning company that didn’t plan its finances right. I was doing database entry of potential clients, and every night I backed up the database onto floppies. The database manager gave his notice and on his last day the backup crashed and three months work was lost. He refused to even look at the problem.

I had been working under the table, but at this point they hired me full time to do clerical work. The company’s business plan was this: they charged a thousand dollars (not an insignificant amount at the time) for a financial plan. When they presented the plan, they invariably noted that the client could have his or her money better invested. Have you ever considered historic rehabs? Historic rehabs, what’s that? Well, I just happen to have a prospectus right here…

The company wasn’t doing well but the officers were making money hand over fist from their commissions. In any case, the SEC was investigating them and they were told they could not use any money from commissions in the day-to-day operation of the company.

Previously I had been paid out of a separate bank account, but once I started full time I got paid from the same payroll account as everyone else. On my first payday, everyone received a check and immediately ran out of the office. I was surprised by this behavior, waited a day or two, then went to deposit my paycheck at the bank.

It bounced.

After that I made the payroll rush like everyone else, but the financial issues facing the company became more and more apparent. This was when I learned you could do stuff as a company that you could not get away with for two seconds as an individual. They would contract with an office supply company, not pay their bills for a few months, then just get a new company when the old one cut off their credit. I used to answer the phone when the secretary was out to lunch and would regularly have conversations like this:

“Hi is Bob in?” [Bob was the Executive VP]

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“This is his Uncle Fred.”

“Bob, your Uncle Fred is on the line.”

“I don’t have an Uncle Fred. Tell him I’m not here.”

“I’m sorry, Bob is in a meeting. Can I take a message?”

“YOU TELL THAT BASTARD IF WE DON’T GET OUR MONEY I’LL SUE HIM SO FAST HIS HEAD WILL SPIN”

When our office building threatened to evict us for non-payment of rent, they simply found nicer offices in a different building, with all new furniture.

It all came to a head one day when the secretary, like everyone else in the office, decided to look for a new job. We were using a Wang Word Processing system, so it was a daisywheel printer that took a significant amount of time to print out a single page. Rather than printing her resume once and getting it copied, she decided to print out fifty copies and left the printer running overnight. Bob came in the next day, found the printout, went ballistic, and fired everybody in the office except for a friend of mine who had clued me into the job in the first place.

I signed up with a temp agency the next day and a few days later received a phone call from them. “We have the perfect position for you! It’s a small financial planning company where they need clerical work and Wang word processing.” My old company. I called my friend at the office and told her what had happened. She checked with Bob, who told her it would be weird to have me back, so I called the temp agency and told them it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to take the job, since it was my former employer. I didn’t tell them that if they placed someone there, they’d never get paid. They found me a different position within a day or two, and then my friend called again: Bob had thought about it and it made sense for me to come back. I told her it was too late, I’d found something else.

A couple of weeks later, I dropped by the office to see if I could get my last paycheck out of them. The lights were off and there was police tape everywhere. The people in the office next door said the SEC had shown up one day, seized all the computers, and shut the place down for non-payment of employment taxes.

But there’s more! I never received a W2 from them and, improvident artist that I am, hadn’t a clue as to how much money I’d made above or below the table. I called the IRS with my problem; they were very interested, and told me to make a good faith effort to get in touch with the officers of the company. I managed to track down Bob, who told me he only communicated with the president of the company through their lawyers, and gave me his last known address. I figured you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, so I sent the president a letter (I’m not going to mention his name because it’s rather unique and features later in the story):

Dear ______,

I’m sorry to hear about the dissolution of ________ Financial Planning. I just want you to know I bear you no ill will. I learned a lot on the job and I’m using that knowledge in my current position.

By the way, could you send me a W2?

A few days later, I received a hand-written W2 and a letter written on second page letterhead:

Dear Marc,

As I sit here amid the ruins of my life, it’s nice to hear someone benefited from their time at _______ Financial.

This all happened nearly forty years ago. Just a few years ago I was thinking about this and I wondered, what happens if I Google this guy’s name? He had a rather unique name, which is why I didn’t mention it, and sure enough, when I hit Enter a picture of him came up looking tanned, rested, and relaxed. After his stint in Club Fed, he got a job with the PGA and is apparently doing all right for himself.

The moral of the story? If you’re going to steal, steal big.