Man Discovers His Old Job That Fired Him for Low Performance Was Still Using His Work

A man fired by his company under the pretext of “low performance” gets the shock of his life after discovering they were still using his work years later.

Recently, a guy caught the internet’s attention on Reddit’s popular “antiwork” subreddit after recounting how the company that fired him still used his work without his knowledge.

Around three years ago, the man in question with the username This_Manner_256 on Reddit said he was a videographer working on social media content for a world-class 7-figure company.

As a freelancer desperate for money, the Original Poster (OP) expanded his calibers, but the workload was too much to the extent that he was making 50 videos a day.

Despite the insane amount of workload, he never gave up and kept pushing through. He worked his best for the next six months in an office where he felt the management intentionally ignited issues to watch staff stage a fight. The guy thought it was their way of being entertained at work and kept away.

However, he couldn’t get over the fact that he was pretty underpaid. Naturally, the time came to propose a raise in pay, and this is where his story turns sour.

The videographer pitched to the seniors how his videos made an immensely positive difference to their sales chart.

He showed them graphs of interactions plus a few direct links that boosted the sales on the website because of his videos’ popularity.

Some speculated that OP may get caught in a dire situation for meddling with the content.

He then asked for a bit of increment in his pay, adding how it would still be less than what he should be paid and that he would continue working for them.

However, he was fired hours later for “not pulling his weight” and not showing satisfactory results on social media. The guy was suddenly unemployed and struggled for months to get another job.

Three years after the incident, he browsed through his old Google drive and found out his former company still had access to his work.

He saw them active on the files he’d created containing the templates, presets, and even the video content he’d made while employed with them.

After rummaging through the history, he found that over 18 people were using the drive daily to continue their social media campaigns. OP was furious as he’d paid for the cloud service, and it was entirely his work. He came up with a plan to surprise his former company the next day.

He copied the files to a local version, then deleted everything online, making it impossible for them to access his video assets, including the files they were working on.

He then posted the incident on Reddit and stood out with over 168K upvotes from people who even reposted his story asking if he’d done something wrong.

Redditor AlexiSWy cross-posted OP’s story, asking the online community if the videographer potentially committed a crime deleting the former company’s video assets.

“Probably, really depending on the employment contract,” user The_Great_Roberto agreed, adding:

“The product that the employee creates is usually the property of the company under which someone is employed, not to mention that they got rid of the stuff that was not their creation as well.”

“I actually think you could have just removed their access, and it would have had the same effect. Just make the whole drive private, since you’re the owner,” wrote Redditor tayl0rs.

The person also emphasized that Google Drive and Dropbox retain files around for 30 days so that users can easily undelete files, and OP’s former company wouldn’t enjoy this feature as long as he owned his drive.

“Turns out you’re right! I’ve done exactly that just to be safe,” OP responded to the person.

Meanwhile, some users added that it would be helpful if OP kept the content and access to his drive private. Redditor fairygirl255425 stated:

“It’ll be good to keep it private, so you can see the logs in case you need to take legal and protective action.”

Some also speculated that OP may get caught in a dire situation for meddling with the content. After rummaging through the responses, the videographer had a minor update concerning his contract with his former company.

“My contract with them states that anything I filmed for them was and is my property even after the contract ends,” OP recounted.

He recalled his company bringing this up once and that they were okay with it as they had no intention of firing him at the time.

“I’ll update the post if I hear further! I am weirdly excited to hear from them,” he stated, leaving all his curious commenters in a frenzy for an update.

Questions to Ponder:

Is it okay for companies to use employees’ work after firing them?

OP claimed his contract stated that anything he filmed for the company would remain his work even after the contract ended, which apparently indicates that he owned his work regardless of his employment with the concerned company. How would you react after discovering your former company still uses your work when you’re no longer employed with them?

Do you think the company would reach out to OP after discovering they lost access to his drive?

Some people online speculated that the company would have no clue how they lost access and would turn to their IT to figure out a solution. However, OP promised an update on what happens next, and it’s still guesswork if the company would even contact him to regain access to his drive as they’d been doing it for years without his consent. If you were OP, in what other ways would you have dealt with the situation?

If you liked this story, here’s how a man’s bold move landed him in deep trouble after messing with his lady boss and her toddler.

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