u/Particular_Sir_3525

I’ve been waiting a while to post this until the ink was dry on everything, but I finally can. I just took my former employer to the absolute cleaners, and it feels incredible.

A bit of background: I was a full-time, permanent employee in Scotland. A while back, I accepted a temporary promotion to a senior role. When things started getting shaky at the company, I knew my head was on the chopping block, but I also knew my management team was incredibly shady.

When they called me into a Microsoft Teams meeting to let me go, I had a gut feeling they were going to try and screw me over. I opened a recording app on my phone, put it next to my computer speakers, and hit record.

In that meeting, they explicitly told me I was being made redundant. Since I was a permanent employee, this meant I was legally entitled to a decent redundancy payout.

But then they got greedy.

A few days later, they changed their tune. They sent over paperwork claiming my employment was just an "end of contract" situation, meaning I was entitled to absolutely nothing. Their logic? They claimed that by accepting a temporary senior promotion, I had somehow magically agreed to stop being a permanent employee. Which makes zero sense, is completely illegal under UK employment law, and they didn't have a single shred of paperwork showing I’d resigned from my permanent contract.

To top it all off, they had the absolute nerve to ask me to train my replacement before I left. I called my union immediately. My rep basically laughed and said, "Absolutely not. If they’re arguing your contract is over and the role doesn't exist anymore, you aren’t doing a single second of work training someone to take over a job that supposedly vanished." So, following union advice, I told them no.

Next came the internal informal and formal grievance processes, followed by ACAS early conciliation. Throughout all of it, the company doubled down on their absolute lie that I was never a permanent staff member. They completely fabricated timelines and conversations to justify it. I played completely dumb and didn't mention the recording once. I let them put every single lie in writing.

Eventually, a tribunal case was officially raised, but the actual hearing was still a long way off. We were in settlement negotiations, and the company smugly offered me a measly £3,000 and refused to budge a single penny further. They thought they had won.

That's when I dropped the hammer.

I told them flat out that I had recorded the entire initial Teams meeting. I advised them that I would willingly share a word-for-word written transcript of the call right now, but I would be reserving the actual audio recording for the tribunal judge to listen to if they wanted to take that chance.

The recording completely, undeniably proved that they had lied through the entire grievance and ACAS process, and that they were trying to defraud me out of my redundancy.

They went completely silent. It took them a full week to get back to me, and when they did, the corporate arrogance was completely gone. But they still managed to show an unbelievable amount of audacity.

They tried to save face by telling me I should accept their new offer because it "kept the door open for me to come back to the company someday." They claimed that secretly recording a meeting was "gross misconduct" that would normally make me ineligible to ever return, so they were doing me a favor. My union rep and I just laughed. You already sacked me! You can't claim gross misconduct on someone who doesn't work for you to justify a lowball offer, you absolute geniuses.

Realizing they were completely trapped, their new offer was a slightly more than 10-fold increase on their original £3k plus the redundancy I would have gotten anyway.

Because I held all the cards, I got to dictate every single term:

- I walked away with a high five-figure settlement.

- They had to sign off on a legally binding, glowing, fantastic employment reference for my future job hunts.

- A letter stating that I was made redundant so I could prove I wasnt just dismissed (important when applying for future jobs as sometimes that looks like you were fired with cause).

- I didnt have any obligations to keep quiets and refused any terms that would make it difficult for me to speak about what happened.

If they had just been honest and paid me my standard redundancy, I would have walked away quietly. Instead, their greed cost them an absolute fortune, all because they thought they could outsmart a worker.

Always record your meetings, folks

[REQ] £200 (Edinburgh, UK), Replay £250 by 31/07, Paypal

[REQ] £250, Edinburgh, UK, willing to consider return amount, bank / paypal

Not sure if malicious compliance, but I let my company lie all the way to the tribunal doorstep before dropping a secret recording.

[REQ] £200-£250, Edinburgh UK, will repay £275-£325 on 30/06 or £300-£350 over installments

[REQ] £200, Edinburgh, Uk, can pay back 250 on 30/06 or 300 in two installments of 150 per month.

Happily married ladies of Reddit, what does your husband do that makes your day? And what could he do better?

[REQ] £200, Edinburgh UK, Repay £250 on 30/06, bank transfer

[REQ] £150-£250, Edinburgh UK, PAY back £200-£300 by 30/06, bank transfer

[REQ] £100-£250, Edinburgh UK, repay £100-£250 by 06/30, bank transfer, bills

[REQ], £100 - £250, Edinburgh Uk, Pay back £150 - £300, Pay on 31/06, Bank

Anyone looking for a friend ...