My direct manager, surnamed Chen, was a greasy, pot-bellied middle-aged creep. The guy had a chronic habit of using “work discussions” as an excuse to slide into my DMs and hit on me.

The breaking point was when he texted me at 3:00 AM, demanding I analyze some ancient, obsolete block of code. His pathetic excuse was that he wanted to “check on my progress,” but let’s be real—the creep was just horny and looking for an excuse to text a woman in the dead of night.

At the time, I was drowning in three or four massive projects and was too swamped to even entertain his BS. Taking my silence as a green light, his harassment only escalated. Finally, I snapped. I dragged his ass during the all-hands company meeting:

“I sincerely hope certain leaders in this room learn some self-respect and stop using ‘work’ as a cover to harass female employees. I am a programmer. I sell my brainpower, not my smiles, and I am certainly not your late-night hotline. If you want to evaluate my performance, put it in writing through proper channels. As for those ‘midnight assignments,’ you can shove them—I absolutely refuse!”

Snickers echoed throughout the conference room. I stared dead at Chen. Honestly, unless you were blind, everyone knew exactly who I was publicly executing.

Word of my little call-out flew straight to the ears of his fiery wife. The two of them had a massive blowout that night. When Chen showed up to work the next day, he sported two vicious scratch marks trailing from his forehead down to his cheek. Yet, the bastard still had the nerve to claim his “cat” did it. Yeah, right—a two-legged cat, maybe!

Because of that, he held a massive grudge. Taking advantage of the CEO’s overseas business trip, he colluded with that HR witch, hiding behind the guise of “corporate restructuring” to kick me to the curb. Did he seriously think I was going to get on my knees and beg? In his dreams! I packed up my desk and walked right out the door.

I hadn’t even cleared the company gates when my phone rang. The second I answered, the CEO’s thunderous roar blasted through the speaker. “Tiao Tiao! What the hell do you mean you quit?!”

“Actually, Mr. Li, I was fired by HR,” I replied coolly. “Wait, didn’t Manager Chen report this to you?”

“Motherf—who the hell has the balls to fire you?! You get your ass back to the office tomorrow!”

Li Shenhao sounded like he was ready to crawl through the phone and devour whoever made that brain-dead decision. I clicked my tongue, putting on a perfectly pitiful, melancholic tone.

“I can’t, Boss. The termination paperwork is already finalized. If I come back, my seniority resets to zero—I’d be taking a huge loss. And honestly? The way this company chews people up and spits them out… they even stiffed me on my legally required severance pay. On top of that, that HR rep had the nerve to spout sexist garbage about me being an ‘over-the-hill single woman.’ I can’t deal with that kind of toxic workplace. I don’t dare go back.”

It sounded like the CEO had me on speakerphone in the middle of a meeting. Amidst the suffocating, explosive silence on their end, I heard the trembling, stuttering voice of Fatty Chen.

“B-Boss… Mr. Li, please calm down. Even with Tiao Tiao gone, our department is still full of talent! Those new guys we just hired are all top-tier grads with stellar degrees. As for Tiao Tiao… sure, she’s been with you since the beginning, but she only has a mediocre associate’s degree. Not to mention, women her age are emotionally unstable and temperamental. Her daily attitude was a problem, too—always gossiping on her phone and browsing the web on the clock…”

A terrifying dead silence stretched over the line for a solid minute. Even through the phone, I could vividly picture Li Shenhao’s face turning as black as the bottom of a charred pot.

I was so pissed I actually laughed. Oh, so what if I’m a woman? Is Chen’s mother not a woman? When I was pulling all-nighters, working so much overtime my hair was falling out just to meet project deadlines, I didn’t hear him complain about women then. But the second performance reviews and promotions roll around, they suddenly weaponize my gender to keep me down.

And that bullshit about me “gossiping on my phone”? Excuse me, but I was breaking my back maintaining relationships with our founding VIP clients and angel investors! Back when this company was a struggling startup, no one gave a damn about us. No management, zero HR structure. I was the one who accompanied the CEO to endless drinking sessions, rubbing elbows and charming clients until I was dead on my feet, single-handedly building the foundation for our current sales department. Aside from one big shot’s wife who loved texting me about her family drama, I had hand-delivered every other major client right to the sales team on a silver platter. And he had the nerve to say I was just browsing the web?!

Li Shenhao let out an icy scoff, cutting Chen off mid-stutter. “What was Zhang Tiao’s current salary?”

The HR witch standing nearby hurriedly squeaked, “Uh… eighteen grand.”

Li Shenhao’s voice dropped, dripping with lethal intent.

“I am approving a budget of fifty grand a month. Go find someone to take over Zhang Tiao’s legacy projects. I don’t care how you do it, but by the end of the month, those projects better be running flawlessly and launch on time. If not, you and Chen can write your own resignation letters. Or better yet, drag your thick-skinned faces over to her house and beg her on your knees to come back!”

Click. He hung up on them.

Not long after, I was scrolling through Facebook and saw that Fatty Chen had posted a wildly bitter status update:

Right as I finished reading that incredibly toxic post, my phone chimed with a new text message. It was from Fatty Chen:

Ah. It seemed that in his frantic rush to grovel to his HR mistress, the idiot had accidentally sent the text straight to me.

I gracefully replied with a highly disdainful eyeroll emoji, then promptly handed him a one-way ticket to my block list. Goodbye forever.