Quick story about some sweet sweet revenge I got on a bad employer who screwed me over unfairly.
I started working for a tree removal / arborist company with no experience as I just needed the money to get on my feet. I soon found out this is not a job for the faint hearted. It's ball breaking, heavy duty, devastating physical exercise 8-10hrs a day lifting chopped up tree trunks and dragging branches into a giant wood chipper. It's also super dangerous because if one branch catches your glove or clothing it can drag you into the chipper and you'll literally be spat out the other side in a million pieces, there was actually a few close calls with it catching and dragging me until I ripped away. Regular near death experiences for $20 an hour.
Anyway, after months of this and getting up to speed where I was eventually considered an “excellent worker”, we got a call on Friday to go to an emergency after hours job where a storm caused a giant tree to fall on top of a house. Me and my co-worker, who was an awesome lovely guy, already put in a full day of back breaking work and now as it was getting dark and cold we had to pysche ourselves up to go to this emergency job that could potentially take all night.
Long story short, we do the job in 2.5-3hrs which is shorter than expected e.g. job well done. We're absolutely exhausted afterwards and starving beyond belief as we only had lunch that day. My coworker who has worked for this small company for years says let's stop at McDonald's on the way home and grab some Big Mac's and fries. I eagerly agree obviously and the two of us cheered up on the way late at night at the thought of some tasty grub. We sit in the McDonald's car park and munch away feeling better with ever bite and then cruise home.
Monday morning rolls around and we're in the garage before we head out laughing and telling the others about how shit Friday was and that we had to treat ourselves to McDonald's on the way home as a pick me up. Before we leave the boss calls me into his office for a chat.
He sits me down and says how disappointed he is about how long we took to do the emergency job on Friday night and he thinks we dragged it out because we were getting 1.5 hourly rate. He was also confused why it took us longer to get back to the garage after the job and I instantly told him because we stopped to get food as we were ravenous but he can feel free to not pay us for the stopping time, that's fine. But it was too late, he'd made his mind up and said he's sorry but because of the “dishonesty” he was going to have to let me go immediately.
I asked if there's anything I could do but he didn't want to hear it. I told my coworker who was friends with the boss and he immediately went in to explain the situation and that we weren't trying to extort money by dragging the job out, in fact it was the opposite because we were hauling ass to get home as quick as possible! But he wouldn't listen and still let me go. Bear in mind, this was an emergency job that he would have easily cleared $15k-$20k profit on and he was furious me and coworker, who did the hard labour for him, got an extra $100 each.
A few weeks later
Still unemployed looking for work. My phone rings, it's my old boss who just fired me.
“Hey how you doing?! Hope you're well. Hey listen, I have this really big job coming up and we need all the hands we can get. Are you down for one Saturday of work?”
“Are you offering me my job back?”
“No no just one day and that's it. Is that ok? Same rate as before. I'll just pay you cash in hand this time.”
I say let me think about it. That's when I thought, time to get this fucker back. I text him back saying I'm in and I'll see them there bright and early Saturday morning. Well, Saturday morning rolls around and I decide to have a nice little sleep-in with my phone on silent. When I finally decide to roll out of bed, I check my phone and there's a million missed calls and text from him:
“We're going to be there in 15mins. See you soon.”
“Hey we're here. Are you far away?”
“We're starting now. Hurry up!”
“Hey are you coming? What's going on?”
“Are you playing games? We need you here ASAP!”
“We can't do this job one man down…please show up.”
Then they just stopped dead. I think he got the message.