Worker Gets Brilliant Revenge After Runaway Boss Fakes COVID-19 Scare

Published October 15, 2021

Whether it's included in a work of fiction or not, we all love a good revenge story.

We'll often find that it's not usually worth it to pursue our more petty impulses against those who have wronged us. Yet that probably makes it all the more cathartic when we get vicarious satisfaction through someone else's golden opportunity.

And considering how many of the most popular stories of someone getting their just desserts happen at work, it's clear that so many of us have been through our share of sleepless nights thanks to certain coworkers and bosses.

As we're about to see, that need for vengeance goes double when the initial offense takes advantage of a nightmare that has impacted the lives of millions throughout the world over the past two years.

During the hardest and most time-intensive project one company has seen for the last five years, an important executive simply vanished.

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures via YouTube

And as an employee explained in a Reddit post, it would be at least a week before anyone found out what happened to him.

Eventually, one of the company's higher-ups told staff that the man had COVID-19.

Since the boss in question didn't send any communication for the eight weeks he was gone, most employees feared the worst because almost all of them had lost a loved one to the disease.

And if that wasn't enough to deal with, the bureaucratic vacuum he left behind put the project everyone was rushing to complete a month behind schedule.

Nickelodeon Network via YouTube

As a result, those who remained found themselves working overtime every day and that extra work also bled into their weekends.

To make matters worse for them, the dozens of extra hours that everyone logged were completely unpaid.

Whether the stress of this situation got the better of one of these staff members or the story just didn't add up for him, he voiced his suspicion that the boss didn't actually have COVID-19.

Instead, he figured that the man was simply using that as an excuse to take time off during an incredibly stressful period.

This drew some serious backlash from his coworkers, who asked how he could insinuate something like that and shunned him for days after he shared his theory.

But when the boss did finally return, our narrator couldn't help but notice that he looked remarkably well-rested, well-fed and tanned for someone who just went through a serious illness.

And while it's understandable that some survivors wouldn't want to talk about their experiences, he also deflected all questions about his.

But all of these lingering suspicions were confirmed for our narrator about four or five months later when their sister told them about a new reality show.

Channel 4 via YouTube

She thought that one of the contestants looked familiar and lo and behold, it turned out to be the missing boss. Considering how new this show was, it soon became obvious that he had lied about having COVID-19 as a means of taking enough time off to film it.

In the employee's words, "I sit and stew with this information, unsure of how to handle it."

But a few days later, they found their golden opportunity when the company's management suggested a virtual game night, trivia night, or watch party for their employees.

Wikimedia Commons | Andrew Krizhanovsky

This would normally be the last thing the employee would want to do in their off-hours, but they saw no better way to reveal the truth.

So they fought hard to watch the premiere of this show with everyone and offered to make special shirts for their coworkers to catch the attention of the company's executives.

Despite the fact that this person had arranged this from peer-to-peer to ensure the runaway boss didn't get suspicious, their gambit worked and 64 employees ended up signing on to this premiere.

Of course, they all recognized the boss and were initially excited that someone they knew was on TV.

That is, until one of the staff members present asked a very important question: "Wait, when was this filmed?"

Universal Pictures via YouTube

Once the boss' deception was revealed, staff members started logging off from the watch party in disgust. By the time the episode was over, only 15 out of the original 64 remained.

Some also asked our narrator if they had known the truth before they showed the episode and they simply replied with "Well, I definitely do now" because the boss had some close friends among the team.

Nonetheless, he was fired, a friend of our narrator's was promoted to his position, and they became an office legend in their own right for exposing him.

As they said, "It was almost worth the dozens of hours of uncompensated overtime that led to it."

Reddit | GranetBlanco

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