Work hard, stay loyal, and good things will come to you, right? Sadly, that’s not always the case. The world is full of ungrateful bosses who use their position of power to treat their employees any way they like. Luckily, some people manage to keep a level head and come up with a plan to stick it to their condescending employer, and this post is exactly about that.

Reddit user CallMeSwellington received his wife’s permission to share her story with the r/ProRevenge online community. You see, while the woman spent 15 years of her life building the business and making it successful, the owner made promises he didn’t intend to keep. On top of that, he showed a serious lack of respect for her efforts.

Well, there’s only so much an employee can take. When evidence of the boss exploiting the woman became evident, she decided to take a stand and start a new company on her own. Be sure to read the whole story below and let us know what you think about it in the comments!

A husband shared a story on r/ProRevenge about how his wife, who went above and beyond at work, took a stand after being exploited by her ungrateful boss

Image credits: Daria Pimkina (Not the actual photo)

Image credits: CallMeSwellington

We managed to get in touch with the author of this thread, CallMeSwellington, who was kind enough to have a little chat about this whole situation. “I initially wrote the story because I thought it’s just such a great treatise in terms of coming to the realization that your mentor may not have your best interest at heart,” he told Bored Panda.

The husband noticed that most of the revenge stories on Reddit are “either fanciful or low grade smaller stories.” That’s why he decided to write out the whole incident exactly as it happened. “It wasn’t a capricious act. She spent a long time before she realized she was going to have to start her own company,” CallMeSwellington explained.

While the thread has collected more than 11.5K upvotes, he revealed that they did not expect to receive a big readership at all. CallMeSwellington believes that the story “resonated with other Redditors who may have experienced the same type of situation” or users who “knew of other people that had the same thing happen to them.”

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When asked why his wife’s ex-boss exploited her when she was so valuable to the company, the author doesn’t think he intentionally misused her. “He was confident that her loyalty to him will allow him to pursue whatever he wanted for the future of the company regardless of any commitment he had to her.”

“Earlier on, my wife was a more demure, more of a pleaser person,” he mentioned. Luckily, one day she admitted that “she had more worth to the business than her boss was willing to acknowledge.” It seems that the owner “had a lot of narcissistic tendencies as well, and he thought he was the center of the company and its most valuable asset.” Well, after reading the story, it becomes clear that when the user’s wife walked away, the firm started to crumble.

Later on, the author explained his wife’s approach in the comments

The author revealed that this situation happened some time ago: “It’s been more than a decade, and my wife’s company is doing quite well.” It seems that the woman proved to her previous boss and herself that she can achieve her goals no matter what comes her way. “She has good trade contacts and even with COVID-19, she continues to have a very successful enterprise,” the husband shared.

CallMeSwellington said that her previous boss never tried to get back at her. “To his credit, he never openly lashed out at her. He took his lumps,” he said. Hopefully, the owner has learned his lesson and acknowledged “that she was entitled to and earned her right as the head of the business.”

While his wife received a lot of praise from the Pro Revenge community for standing her ground and being successful with the transition, the author had one disappointment in the response to the story. It seems there were several readers “who didn’t think it was plausible.”

“I don’t know if it’s just naivete or they haven’t been in the workplace long enough but it’s a very old story: you go to work for somebody, learn the business, the person who hired you doesn’t do right by you or some other scenario by which your key employee becomes your chief competitor. That’s business ownership 101,” he said. So let’s hope that after reading this thread, more employers will understand just how important it is to keep their promises and show respect to their most valuable employees.

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Here’s how Redditors reacted to this whole situation

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