Company Fires Person After Asking Them To Work Late The Night Before, They Maliciously Comply

Being let go is never fun, but it’s possible to leave a company—or be terminated—without burning bridges. That is if both sides are on the same page about it.

This redditor might have reacted differently to being let go if it wasn’t handled the way that it was. Having received no sympathy, no acknowledgment, nor a severance package, for that matter, the employee decided to burn the bridge at their end after all, and left without having revealed important information that the company needed.

Scroll down to find the full story below, where you will also find Bored Panda’s interview with the OP, who was kind enough to answer a few of our questions.

In an interview with Bored Panda, the OP shared that what upset them the most was the company dragging an extra night of work out of them, knowing full well that they wouldn’t have to compensate the employee for it, since they were letting them go the next morning. “That, after nearly a year of hard work and long hours, no severance or notice,” they said.

“In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. It was a small startup with a very tight-knit group of friends at its core. I was on the outside from the get-go,” the redditor added, sharing that the main reason they kept the passwords to themselves was the severance. “More than anything, I needed severance to cover the gap in employment, and it was the only leverage I had. Given their nastiness, I didn’t feel like I owed them any favors.”

Being let go from a job can seriously shake up a person’s world. Losing a source of income, especially if they have other people depending on them, can not only compromise their financial stability, but unlock new levels of worry, due to the uncertainty unemployment brings. As professor and expert on workforce and unemployment policy at Rutgers University, Dr. Carl Van Horn noted, “Losing a job and being unemployed for a long period of time is a psychological trauma and a financial trauma, and the two are closely intertwined.”

For some people, the thought alone of losing a job can be stressful enough. Known as layoff anxiety, the feeling is well known to as many as one in three employed Americans, according to a 2025 survey by Clarify Capital. Fearing layoffs, a third of the survey’s respondents said they would take a 10%-20% pay cut to avoid being let go. Close to seven in ten said they’d rather have job security than career growth opportunities.

Bearing in mind the surge in layoffs just last year—when the tech industry alone laid off more than 124,000 workers—it’s no surprise that people are feeling anxious about keeping their jobs and income. According to the aforementioned survey, 13% of Americans have no savings, which means no safety net if they were to be said goodbye to. (Roughly 14% say they have enough savings to last them up to a month, and 19% are set for at least one to three months of unemployment.)

Some people might not know what layoff anxiety feels like, especially if, like the OP, they did not see the layoff coming. A nationwide survey from 2022 found that as much as three in four workers in the US have been let go with no warning beforehand. To make matters worse, only one in three of the laid-off workers received severance pay.

It’s safe to assume that being let go without a warning can be equally—if not more—stressful than experiencing layoff anxiety, especially when it adds to the never-ending list of worries people experience on a daily basis.

Talking about the stresses of life in a piece for Psychology Today, a licensed psychologist and expert in mindful cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), Dr. Seth J. Gillihan, noted that many people are overwhelmed by stress nowadays, be it related to the pandemic, war and suffering around the world, people’s financial situation, or the day-to-day demands of being alive. But he notes that there are ways people can try to manage it all.

Dr. Gillihan shared that when trying to manage stress, he relies on three research-based methods coming from mindful cognitive behavioral therapy (MCBT) that he refers to as “Think Act Be.”

“Think, the cognitive part of MCBT, helps us challenge the thoughts that drive stress. With the Act component, the ‘behavioral’ in MCBT, we lower stress by doing (or not doing) certain activities. And through Be, the mindfulness part of mindful CBT, we practice being in the moment and letting go of resistance to our circumstances,” the expert wrote.

Judging from the story, it looks like the OP took all three steps to manage the stressful situation: they thought it through, acted by “playing their final card,” and let go of resistance to the circumstances, as well as of any ties to their old job. In an interview with Bored Panda, the redditor shared that they’ve since found a new job and that they are much happier now than they were at their old workplace.