Excel-lent Revenge

A few years ago, I was working as a data and reporting analyst, doing all the ad hoc reports for the company. My boss is useless. She’s always late, leaves early, and takes days off at short notice. The only thing of value she does is the regular reports: sales, revenue, etc.

We all suspect she gets away with it because she’s having an affair with her boss.

The CEO is actually a decent bloke. He’s big on cost-saving initiatives and regularly pays out bonuses for the best ideas. [Boss] is very keen to submit ideas for this program and constantly encourages us to automate our work so she can take the credit.

One day, both [Boss] and [Her Boss] are “off sick” at the same time. The CEO comes around desperate for the weekly sales report that [Boss] usually does. 

CEO: “Can anyone get this together for me today?”

Me: “I’ll have a look. See what I can do.”

Normally, [Boss] spends two to three days a week putting it together, but the CEO wants it by the afternoon. I take a quick look at the data, and it’s obvious it can be automated. A couple of hours later, I’ve got the report generated, formatted, and sitting on the CEO’s desk.

He’s not just impressed that it’s done in record time; he’s over the moon that it can now be refreshed on demand.

CEO: “This is fantastic! Can you do the same for the revenue report? Churn? The other weekly summaries?”

I spend the rest of the afternoon automating every single report [Boss] is responsible for.

The next morning, [Boss] and [Her Boss] are both back, but immediately get summoned to the CEO’s office. Minutes later, they’re suspended and sent home.

Turns out the CEO has known about their affair the whole time. He also knew all their sick days, early finishes, and sudden emergencies were excuses to sneak off and have sex. He hadn’t acted before because those reports were too important.

Now? With them automated, he finally has the leverage to fire them both for gross misconduct over all the time they’d taken off.

And me? I get a nice fat bonus.