IT Admin’s Petty Revenge Is Watching His Old Boss Hire Six Replacements in a Year

Sometimes, the best career advice comes from your worst boss. This systems administrator, burnt out from years of micromanagement and abuse, was struggling.

When he refused to add a grueling three-hour daily commute to his workload, his manager launched into a lecture, insisting the employee needed to “take a long hard look at [himself] and gain some perspective.”

The employee did exactly that—and quit two weeks later after finding a new job with a raise. The best part? The boss begged him to stay, only to spend the next year cycling through six unsuccessful replacements.

Now, read the full story:

The level of satisfaction OP must have felt delivering that final, mic-dropping line is unparalleled. It’s the ultimate career closure: proving a toxic manager wrong, securing a better future, and watching the inevitable chaos ensue after you leave.

This entire situation screams of a manager who fundamentally misunderstands the modern employment relationship. The boss was relying on fear and shame to keep his employees in line, believing that loyalty should trump self-preservation and work-life balance.

When OP refused the grueling commute, the boss defaulted to emotional manipulation instead of practical solutions, proving he deserved exactly this outcome.

OP’s experience is a textbook example of poor retention driven by bad management.

The saying “People don’t quit jobs, they quit lousy managers” is more relevant than ever. When a company experiences high turnover in a single role (hiring six replacements in a year) the problem is rarely the applicants; it’s the workplace culture and the person running that team.

High employee turnover, often caused by toxic managers, is incredibly costly. According to a report by Oxford Economics, the average cost of replacing an employee is around £30,614 ($38,000), factoring in recruitment, onboarding, lost productivity, and training.

In OP’s case, replacing him six times likely cost the company over $200,000, all because the manager refused to treat the original employee with respect or address the core workload and abuse issues.

As executive coach Dana Brownlee, writing for Forbes, explained, employees are most likely to leave when they feel undervalued or micromanaged. A bad boss often equates performance with total availability, viewing refusal to work extreme hours—like adding a three-hour commute—as a moral failure rather than a logical decision.

The boss’s decision to lecture OP about “perspective” was a desperate attempt to maintain control. When that failed, the desperate begging to stay proved the boss knew exactly how valuable OP was, a value he was only willing to acknowledge when it was too late. OP’s departure was a success story in setting career boundaries.

Check out how the community responded:

The entire community stood and cheered for OP, focusing on the ultimate satisfaction of proving a bad manager wrong.

Several commenters reinforced the central theme that employees quit managers, not companies, and noted the irony of the boss’s inevitable denial.

Users chimed in with their own satisfying tales of quitting and watching their former employers suffer the consequences.

One user shared a darkly amusing anecdote about the caliber of OP’s replacements.

Finally, one user shared a deeply satisfying anecdote about taking terrible advice to heart.

OP not only achieved professional freedom but delivered the kind of delicious, low-key revenge that proves the value of self-respect. His former manager is now paying a six-figure price for his arrogance. That’s perspective we can all appreciate.

If you’ve ever left a toxic job, what’s the single most satisfying thing about your new role? What was the final straw that made you realize it was time to quit?