Karen Ceo Fired Me For Taking Sick Leave.. Forgot I Own The Source Code!

The Silicon Startup and the Modernizer

Hey guys, welcome back to more malicious compliance stories. Imagine building the entire backbone of a company and then getting fired for taking sick leave and going to the doctor.

No severance, no apology, just a letter demanding you hand over all your code for free. What they forgot was one tiny clause in a dusty old contract that could eventually ruin them.

The first story is from r/maliciouscompliance and it is titled “Sure I will keep my mouth shut.” This happened years ago, but it still makes me grin Grinch-style.

I was working on a really big project at the time. The VP was aware that I was the main resource on the project, so he included me in the status meetings.

My manager did not like that. She did not want anyone else getting any kind of recognition for the project, so I was instructed to sit there and just keep my mouth shut.

The next status meeting came around, and I did just what she told me to do. I sat there taking notes and saying nothing right up until the VP started asking questions about project details.

She couldn’t answer because she was the only person attached to the project who didn’t actually work on the project. Yes, she was furious, but I mean what could she do?

After that disaster, I was allowed to attend and participate. The next one is the title story.

When I joined this company, it was not really a company yet. It was just a founder, a couple of sales guys, and me in a cramped office in the back of a logistics warehouse in the capital.

They had a dream to build a software platform that would connect all the regional transport companies, warehouses, and exporters in one system. Dispatching, invoicing, customs paperwork, tracking—all of it.

The problem was they had no software, but I did. Prior to joining them, I had built a logistics platform on my own under a tiny one-man company I registered.

At first, it was just a side project for a friend’s trucking business, and then a couple of other companies wanted in. I didn’t want to sell the whole thing, so I licensed it out.

When these guys found me, they were desperate and we signed a proper contract. My little company owned the source code and the IP.

Their company got a perpetual license as long as they paid a monthly maintenance fee and kept me on as a consultant or senior engineer. There was a specific clause that if they stopped paying or terminated me without cause and didn’t renegotiate, the license would lapse after a notice period and they would have to stop using the system.

Well, back then, nobody cared much about the wording. They just wanted it to work and they were happy that I even agreed.

Yes, for years it was great. We grew and we moved from the warehouse back room to a real office with glass walls and fake plants.

I hired younger devs and trained them. I explained why you don’t mess with the invoice engine on Friday afternoons and I got a reputation as the old guy who knows everything.

I was not ancient, but in a dev team where half the staff still lived with their parents, I felt like a grandfather. People respected me, though.

When something broke at 2:00 in the morning, I would be on the phone in my kitchen, tea in hand, fixing it. But then the investors arrived.

With investors came professional management, and with professional management came our villain. She was the new operations director who everyone quickly started calling Karen behind her back.

Obviously, that was not her real name, but you know the type. Loud heels on the tile floor, designer clothes she kept mentioning were not cheap, and a voice just a little bit too loud for the office.

It was like every conversation was a performance. Worst of all, she had a huge chip on her shoulder about lazy old people stuck in their ways.

On her first day, she gathered everyone in the meeting room.

“I was brought in to modernize things,”

she said

clicking her new pen like it was a weapon.

“We are too dependent on legacy stuff and legacy people,”

she said.

“Legacy people,”

she repeated while making eye contact with me.

And then she smiled like it was a joke. I kind of laughed politely, as I’d survived worse managers already; usually, you just wait them out.

She flipped through some printouts someone had prepared for her and frowned at one page.

“And who is our senior architect?”

she asked.

“The one with the special consultant contract.”

Everyone looked at me.

“That would be me,”

I said.

She squinted at me like she was checking if I was real.

“How long have you been here?”

she asked.

“Since before there was a here,”

I replied.

A few people chuckled.

She didn’t, though.

“Right, well,”

she said.

“We will be cleaning up these contracts. I don’t like special treatment. Everyone should be an employee with the same rules. No more of this old Soviet-style specialist nonsense, okay?”

I could feel the founder, who was sitting in the corner looking tired, shifting uncomfortably. He knew exactly what contract she was talking about and he knew why it existed.

After the meeting, he came to my desk and quietly said,

“Don’t worry, we’re not changing your contract. She just likes to make noise.”

He was wrong, though. Over the next few weeks, Karen started changing everything that wasn’t nailed down.

New dress code: no hoodies, this is not a student dorm. New time tracking: if you arrive one minute late, it’s 30 minutes of unpaid time.

Then she started going after sick leave.

“We are losing so much productivity to people being sick,”

she said in one meeting, complete with air quotes.

“From now on, no sick leave is allowed without three days’ prior notice approved by me.”

One of the junior devs raised her hand and said,

“But you cannot always know three days in advance that you will be sick.”

She gave him the kind of smile you give a child who asks why the sky is blue.

“That’s why you learn to take care of your health,”

she said.

“We are adults here, not babies.”

I could feel my forehead veins starting to complain.

“You know there are labor laws about this, right?”

I said.

“You cannot just forbid people from being sick.”

She didn’t even look at me.

“There are also laws about people actually showing up to work they are paid for,”

she replied.

“If you’re not here, you’re not working. Simple.”

The HR lady looked like she wanted to sink into the floor. Anyway, I thought it was just noise.

People like her always come in with the idea that they will change everything, and then reality hits them. Reality hit me first, though.

The Sick Leave Ultimatum and the Termination

One morning, I woke up with a chest pain that felt like someone parked an old ladder on my ribs. I’d had heart issues before, so my wife immediately said we were going to the clinic.

I called HR on the way there, voice shaky, telling them I’m going to the doctor and will send them the note. The doctor checked me out, did some tests, and said I needed to stay home and rest for at least a week.

It was nothing dramatic, but he didn’t want me stressing in front of a monitor with coffee and energy drinks again. I sent HR the photo of the medical certificate from the waiting room and told my team lead in our chat what was going on.

Everyone sent the usual “Get well soon, don’t die, we still need you to fix the billing” messages. But that evening, while I was half asleep on the couch, my phone rang with an unknown number.

I picked up and heard her voice.

“Why are you not at work?”

Karen demanded.

No hello, nothing.

I blinked.

“Well, because I was at the cardiologist and he told me to stay home,”

I replied.

“We have a policy about sick leave,”

she snapped.