Voted Out, Then I Took the Company Down

At the end of the year, the company made employees vote on who would be laid off.

In front of the boss, the votes were read aloud one by one.

Natalie Reed. One vote.

Natalie. Two votes.

Natalie... thirty votes.

All thirty people on my team had voted me out.

I clenched my fists and looked around at my coworkers.

Every single one of them avoided my eyes.

Maggie Turner was the oldest on the team. I knew she had to pick up her kid, so whenever she could not finish her work and had to rush to her kid’s school, I stayed behind and cleaned up after her.

Dylan joined last year. He was losing sleep every night over money for his wedding. I squeezed time out of my own schedule, helped him complete his project, and got him a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus.

And the trainee closest to me started trembling the moment I looked at her.

She looked just as timid as she had when her hands shook and spilled wine all over a client.

Back then, to fix the mess for her, I apologized to the client and drank until I had a stomach hemorrhage. Only then did she pass probation.

I could not help feeling hurt.

The boss looked at the result and asked if I had anything to say.

I took a deep breath and asked everyone on the team, “Why did you vote for me?”

My timid trainee suddenly found her courage.

“Because you always pretend to help people, then steal our credit.”

“Otherwise, how could someone as useless as you become the top salesperson?”

I laughed, took off my employee badge, and placed it on the table.

A week later, my boss was kneeling outside my door, begging me, the so-called useless one, to come back to the company.

I had been with the company for five years.

Every month, I made a $5,000 base salary and about $5,000 in commission.

On paper, it looked like a six-figure job.

But only I knew how many nights I had stayed up for that money and how many major deals I had closed for the company.

I sighed softly. When I lowered my head, I caught sight of the heavy dark circles under my eyes on my phone screen.

All at once, exhaustion swept through my whole body.

My coworkers seemed to be waiting for me to make a scene.

But faced with the result of the vote, I did not argue with any of them. I quietly took off my employee badge and asked my boss, “My performance this year already qualifies me for the million-dollar year-end bonus. If you fire me before bonuses are paid, what happens to that money?”

My boss sneered. “Getting fired is your problem. The company won’t pay any severance. And like you said, bonuses haven’t been paid yet. When the bonuses are calculated, you naturally won’t have anything to do with them.”

“What exactly did I do wrong?”

I challenged him, but he answered as if he had every right.

“If there were nothing wrong with you, would the whole team have voted for you?

“If you’re unhappy, go ahead and take it to the labor board. You were voted out. I’m not paying you that money.”

“Stop clinging on shamelessly. Pack your things and leave before you affect everyone else’s work.”

That one word, shamelessly, made me think of the day I first joined the company.

Back then, he had been so eager to persuade me to stay.

The company was not doing well at the time.

To keep me, he promised that if I could bring in ten million dollars in sales within a year, he would give me a million-dollar year-end bonus.

But after I actually brought in ten million dollars in sales, he no longer wanted to pay that bonus.

He still did not understand that what I had given this company could never be matched by a mere million-dollar bonus.

“Fine. I’ll go.”

I did not argue with him any further.

After I said that, whether this crumbling company survived or collapsed had nothing to do with me anymore.