It's not something I'm necessarily proud of but....I can be a vindictive cunt when pushed to it.
Take, for instance, my final months at the next to last 9 to 5 I ever held......
It's 1997 and I've been running a boutique real estate asset management company as its EVP and Managing Director since 1991. The company manages a portfolio of about 50 largely triple A cooperative apartment building in NYC -- a portfolio of which I've grown, in the six years I've been there, from a firm handling fewer than 20 buildings.
The head of the company is a dipshit of 33 years of age who inherited the firm from his father who founded it (and who thought his son was every bit the dipshit I did) who loved to tell anyone who would listen that he was in Mensa with a tested IQ of 165.
Part of my agreed upon compensation -- in addition to base salary -- was a year-end bonus tied to revenue and new business development AND, if I were to broker the sale of any apartments in the buildings that we handled I'd be due a full commission -- since I had a New York Real Estate brokers license. A full broker's license, not just a sales license.
Over the years I didn't really involve myself in sales much because we had an entire department for that. Plus, I didn't want to take food off their tables by trying to wet my beak in their business. But at one point a friend of mine who lived in one of our buildings asked me to handle the sale of his apartment and I agreed.
We sold it toot sweet and got his full ask and that was that until it was time to get paid. At which point there was a bit of hemming and hawing from company ownership about whether I was actually due a commission or not. In the end I agreed to take a half of what I was rightfully owed and I filed the memory away in case I needed it for later. That later happened about 15 months later when another friend in another building asked me to list and sell her apartment.
Her apartment, at the Normandy at 140 Riverside Drive, was a massive combined penthouse overlooking the Hudson River with wrap around terrace -- at the time she was the restaurant critic for the New York Times and her hubby was an asshole master of the universe running CBS News. So the crib was expensive and the comp tasty, to say the least.
Recalling my prior experience trying to get paid by my firm's owner I made it a point to have the client specify me as exclusive sales agent for the apartment in the listing agreement and I informed my boss that I was selling the apartment and didn't expect any trouble from him this time.
Long story short -- I sold the apartment in no time and my boss fucked me.
When I went to get paid he said, and I remember it to this day....he twirled his fucking sideburn (an annoying habit he had that we all made fun of to his face) and said, "Right! Salaried employees don't get paid commissions."
And with that I stood up and left his office without saying a word and I went back to my office and back to work. As I did for the next four months -- just like nothing had happened. I was super friendly, and joked around as usual and acted like the whole thing hadn't happened. All the while I know for a fact that my boss was waiting for me toss a hand grenade into the room.
And then one day, four months later, that frag got tossed -- in the form of a bunch of letters that came to the office, all on the same day from 32 of the firm's biggest accounts and addressed to the head of the firm. The letters all said the same thing (because I had written them): Your company is fired with immediate effect and you are instructed to turn over all of our files to the new asset management company. Failure to do so expeditiously will result in civil litigation and the filing of a criminal complaint for fraud.......
And as I listened to the sound of shrieking coming from the president's office I smiled, stood up, grabbed an envelope I had waiting on my desk and walked into his office and tossed the envelope containing my resignation on his desk and said, "Salaried employees may not get paid commissions at this company -- but when you fuck us over we take your business away from you."
In the ensuing four months since getting fucked out of my comp I had spent that time laying the groundwork to take away all of the company's biggest most choice accounts. And I was able to do it because a year earlier I had discovered a sleazy little accounting trick the company was pulling that they had been perpetrating for decades and that had cost their clients several million dollars over almost 30 years. And I kept that knowledge to myself in the event that I needed it and then, when I did need it, I took that information around to all the clients I wanted to walk away with, pitched them, and signed them all up.
And then, after I had commitments from the clients I wanted to take, I went to two friends of mine who owned a top mid-sized asset management company and said to them, "I can bring these properties with me, essentially doubling your portfolio size and quadrupling your billable revenue. Are you interested?" And when they said yes I said, "Good! This is what you'll have to pay me in comp and this is what my year-end bonus going forward is. and this is what the comp on all this new business I'm bringing you is going to be and I'll take the check for the new business I'm walking in the door with right now please."
And that was that.
Oh, and the properties and clients that I didn't want to take with me? I sent them all a letter outlining the financial malfeasance I had discovered and within 6 months the company was completely out of business as a third-party asset management firm and within two years was out of business completely.
And that's how much of a vindictive cunt I can be.
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