Mad as Hell, and Not Taking It Anymore

The following stories are excerpts from postings on disgruntled.com, a Web site for employees to vent their frustrations about work problems. The excerpts provide insight about just how angry employees are, and describe the ways in which they’ve taken out their aggressions on their employers.

Remembering a Former Employer
An aviation security company I used to work for has a CEO who’s an absolute [jerk]. He rips off his customers, pays his employees [crap] and strings his vendors out for 120 days. He was constantly changing departmental bonus plans to keep more money for himself.

His shenanigans personally cost me over $3,000. Plus they stiffed me six days vacation pay. When I left the company to hook up with a former vice president who had been stiffed on $10,000, we decided to make things a bit unpleasant for the owner.

We started by getting in touch with a former information systems director, who had been trying to get the company “legal” with all of its software. This guy had been told by the CEO that the governing groups didn’t know what they were doing and they would never be caught.

We took this audit information to the Business Software Alliance and the anti-piracy group. They threatened to come in and shut down all of the company’s computers and perform an audit. If only these groups had been stronger or more insistent, they could have made the company go under. Instead, the offending company has spent $30,000 to try to get everything legal. A nice start, but we’ve only just begun to torment this guy.
— Posted December 23, 1996

Let Your Fingers Do the Walking
I worked at a big hospital, where I retaliated against my tormentors by making several thousand prankster calls. I also made a false alarm in a building, causing them to evacuate the building. I know this isn’t enough to solve the problems that their false statements have done against me, but I shall continue using it for as long as there’s no concrete solution to oral defamation.
— Posted July 10, 1998

Inquiring Minds
I once worked for someone who tried to intimidate employees into silence because of his numerous failings as a manager. When verbal bullying didn’t do the trick, he’d write outrageous claims against employees.

Feeling a write-up coming on, I wrote to various supermarket tabloids, asking them for copies of their writers’ guidelines. When human resources told me I was allowed to rebut his claims against me, I first pointed out that on the date of his accusations, I was out sick. I then added that there were better places to publish fiction, and attached the writers’ guidelines.
— Posted July 15, 1998

Not Unemployed, Karmaployed
Let’s just put it this way: Every company that has downsized (or fired) me in the past six years is in dire straits (going under, bought out or just out of business). Karma works wonders!
— Posted March 28, 1999

SOURCE: Reprinted with permission of Daniel S. Levine, author of Disgruntled: The Darker Side of the World of Work (Berkeley Boulevard Books, 1998) and owner of disgruntled.com.