Hypocrisy Workplace Short Stories & Novels

Robert Schmidt's company is on the verge of bankruptcy. He decides to get a divorce from me in order to not drag me down. I refuse to divorce him. Since then, I work during daytime and take on part-time jobs at night just so I can help Robert tide over the financial crisis. Heck, I even work eight jobs per day. But when I head over to Robert's company to seek him out with the money that I've painstakingly gathered, I accidentally overhear his conversation with his assistant, Ellie Gordon. "Robert, when are you going to divorce that hag? I can't wait any longer!" "I didn't know she'd be this hard to shake off! I already lied to her about my bankruptcy, and yet she still refused to divorce me!" Only then do I find out that Robert isn't bankrupt at all. He's just pretending to be bankrupt so that he can divorce me and give Ellie a proper title by his side. I end up dying from an aneurysm that gets triggered from my overwhelming fury. After my death, Robert has the gall to use the money I've worked so hard in earning on buying Ellie jewelry and a house. Later on, they have a whirlwind marriage and live happily ever after. As for me, I don't even get laid to rest in a proper graveyard. My corpse is left rotting somewhere unknown. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Robert pretends to be bankrupt. This time, I sign the divorce agreement without hesitation. On top of that, I also apply for a patent before reporting Robert's company for infringing my copyright on the products. Since he likes pretending to be bankrupt that much, I might as well make his wish come true!

When the kiss cam swept across the stands at the baseball stadium Warren Doyle, a married investor in the league, had his arms around his PR director and was kissing her. The two of them went up on the jumbotron, and the crowd erupted in hoots and cheers. Warren stormed into the camera bay and demanded I hand over my camera. I told him the camera pointed wherever the control room told it to. He stared at me for a few seconds, then suddenly let go and let me leave. I thought that was the end of it. The next day, audio from the crew channel shot to the top of the news feeds, with nothing left in it but two ambiguous lines from me. "Camera locked on row seven. Keep rolling. Don't cut." Overnight I became the shameless camera operator who'd filmed them on purpose. I was suspended from my job, my father's food cart was trashed, and Warren sued me for a million dollars. But he didn't know that the recording he was using to convict me could only ever convict him.

A king crab in the company's storage is about to die. In order to prevent the company from suffering a loss, I decided to buy it at the price of 480 dollars and treat my friends to a nice feast. The next day, my boss, Mitchell Wright, calls me to his office. "Ms. Langford, it's true that the net price of a king crab is 480 dollars. But the company has a rule that states that if an employee buys the company's products, they still have to pay according to the selling price." While I'm quite displeased, I still transfer an additional 400 dollars to the company's bank account. But Mitchell raises his voice at me. "Stop being a smartass! The selling price of a king crab is 88 thousand dollars, not 880 dollars!" I do my best to refute. "But we give all of our customers a 99% discount! Surely you can't force me to spend 88 thousand dollars on a crab!" Mitchell just chuckles icily in return. "Rules are rules! While customers are always right, you're nothing but a corporate slave! What makes you think you deserve to receive the same treatment as the customers? "If you refuse to pay the selling price for the crab, then don't blame me for being ruthless!" As I watch Mitchell, who keeps yelling at me with spittle flying everywhere, I find myself filled with an eerie sense of calm. I hope that Mitchell will still be able to chuckle when he finds out that my dad is the biggest seafood supplier.

"You guys know what the situation is like in this industry this year. I need to cut our end-of-the-year bonus by half in order to overcome this difficult period." My boss, Peter Hurley, claims that things are difficult in the industry right now, yet his wrist still showcases the luxury watch that he's just bought. My 20,000-dollar bonus is reduced to 700 dollars. In addition, I also received a plaque that says "Award for Outstanding Contribution". "This plaque is worth a lot, Soren. It represents the acknowledgement this company has for you. Don't be so petty when it comes to money." As I stare at the plaque in my hand, I can't help but scoff furiously. "Fine. I won't be that petty when it comes to money. I hope you won't be that petty either when you're paying next month's rent." Peter is stunned momentarily. "What do you mean by that?" I toss the plaque into the trash can. "What I mean is, I'm the landlord of this building. From next month onward, the rent will be increased ten times. If you refuse to accept the new rent, you can pack up and scram."

When I took my diagnosis of heart failure to my boss and asked for time off, he shot me down with two words. "Not approved." I pointed to the diagnosis. "I could drop dead at any moment." He pushed the report back to the edge of his desk. "But you're not dead yet, are you? This project is at a critical stage. Don't even think about slacking off and trying to get out of work." I stared at him for two seconds before nodding. "Fine. You win." The next day, I walked into the conference room right on time with a portable medical oxygen tank. Everything suddenly went black while I was presenting the fourth version of our proposal to the client. I had collapsed face-first onto the conference table. My boss finally froze when he saw that I was on the brink of death.

It is 1:00 am, and I'm still in the inspection office in the suburban power plant, compiling the equipment defect records for the week. Suddenly, there's loud kicking at my door. Brad Greer's panicked voice rings out. "Sam! Come with me right now! The pressure-regulating valve on the main steam pipe of Unit 4 is completely stuck! "The automatic pressure relief device didn't get activated! If it explodes, the three maintenance workers in the control room next door will be burned to a crisp!" Just as I grab my hard hat and am about to rush out, an anonymous encrypted email pops up on my office computer. It said, "Don't go there. The three maintenance workers have already been burned to death by the gushing steam. "He is the one who violated regulations by performing the pressurized maintenance after replacing the valve core with a substandard one, and now, it's completely stuck. He's just trying to make you take the blame. "If you touch the valve even once, you'll get your fingerprints all over it. The CCTV footage will show only you fiddling with it. You're going to take the fall for him and spend the rest of your life in jail. "You're going to have to pay tens of millions of dollars in compensation, and the victims' families will even have the right to sell off all your assets for compensation. You'll never have a peaceful life in prison either." The kicking at the door continues, and the hinges on the wooden door are about to fall off. "Samuel Williams! What are you dawdling for? You're the only one in the whole plant now who's received valve debugging training! You're the only one who can do it! "If you come out any later, those three maintenance people are going to be cooked!" I grip the computer mouse and withdraw my hand from the doorknob. I then say, "I'm sorry, but I'm only an inspector, not a maintenance technician. You need to call the plant's emergency number right away."

At the company's annual awards ceremony, my boss personally presented me with the "Employee of the Year" award. The bonus was ten million dollars, and he promised it would go through immediately, right there on the spot. Hundreds of my coworkers rose to their feet and applauded. Champagne and confetti rained down around me. But the next morning, the police showed up and took me from my own home. The company had reported me, claiming I suffered from a severe delusional disorder, that I'd not only imagined receiving a ten-million-dollar bonus but had also attacked the finance system in an attempt to siphon off company funds. I pulled up the transfer record and the gala footage on my phone, only to find they'd both turned into garbled nonsense. I went to every coworker I could find. All of them looked at me with the same pitying eyes and said the same thing. "Man, wake up. You got drunk and made a scene onstage at the gala last night. There was never any ten-million-dollar bonus." In the end, I was locked away for attempted fraud and mental illness, and I died there, tortured to death in a psychiatric hospital. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of the gala, and my boss was walking toward me with a wine glass in hand, smiling.

An earthquake suddenly hits the company. I rush into my girlfriend's office, only to find it completely empty. I cover my head and frantically call her phone over and over. Suddenly, someone grabs my arm and leads me through the emergency exit. I look up and see my girlfriend, Leona Sampson. Her blouse is torn, and a man's suit jacket is draped over her shoulders. Her cheeks are flushed, and her legs are trembling. "Where were you just now?" I ask, my eyes burning red. Among the crowd, I spot a shirtless man. He's holding the scarf I gave my girlfriend. I recognize him. It's Matt Ryder, the new intern at the company. It suddenly hits me that the woman who claims to love me deeply is cheating on me. I quietly call my best friend, Ryan Duffman. "I'm in. I'll go abroad with you. Let's start our own business."

I find a slip of paper on the back of a flyer I'm holding during the first day of club recruitment. It says that the president of the dance club, Donna Shaw, will announce in front of more than 100 people that I'm pregnant. She's got everything ready—ultrasound reports, hospital records, and even eyewitnesses. Henry Baker, her boyfriend and president of the Student Activities Board, will step in to save the day in front of everyone. Consequently, the whole school will condemn me, and I will be expelled. I stare at the paper, wondering what kind of lame prank this is. I turn the paper over. The smile on my face fades when I see that the handwriting is identical to my own. I slip the paper into my pocket. At 3:00 pm, I make my way past the dance club's booth. The second I stop, Donna points at my stomach, her eyes red. "We don't accept people with no morals… I saw it. Your belly is already showing." Everyone looks at me, and someone gasps. I look down at my completely flat stomach, then back at her. I smile. My voice isn't loud, but everyone can hear me. "I'm pregnant? Are you sure about that? "I'm a guy. Tell me. How exactly did the baby get inside me?"

At the New Year’s team-building event, the intern, Lilith Woods, did not obtain my approval and changed our suburban trip to a seven-day tour of Baline. “Mr. Lucian Stone, I hear a change of scenery can really spice things up. Don’t lock up tonight. I’ll come by for a deep dive into our collaboration.” She pretended to be drunk and fell into my arms while slipping the room key into my pocket in the process. To avoid suspicion, I did not return to the hotel. However, in the middle of the night, the police called me in for questioning—someone had reported a dine-and-dash. Only then did I realize that the reserved budget of $100,000 for the accommodation had long since been exceeded. Lilith had upgraded their room to a presidential suite, feasted on high-end seafood buffets, and even used company funds to buy luxury handbags! When I showed up at their private room, the interns were still casually taking king crabs and several unopened bottles of the Macallan Whisky with them. “Mr. Stone, you’re just in time. Could you please settle the bill?” Lilith looked utterly righteous as she said this with a grin. “Young people like us make mistakes, while adults help to pay the price. You’re not exactly short on cash, anyway. Just think of it as buying my happiness.” I stared at the $700,000 bill and paid it in silence. The next day, the payment invoices made their grand entrance in the group chat, accompanied by my pinned message. [Upon financial review, this team-building event does not meet reimbursement criteria. All expenses will be shared equally among the seven participants.] [Each person will need to pay $100,000, payable immediately. If payment needs to be deferred, please print the proof and submit it to the President’s Office.]

The meeting was nearly over when the company's newest programmer projected a screenshot of a document bearing my name. "Mr. Stark, I'm reporting Lina for misappropriating company assets. She put her personal name on the company's core algorithm." Every head in the room turned toward me. I almost smiled. I had built that algorithm on my own years earlier and later lent it to the company. Misappropriation? The accusation was almost laughable. I expected it to collapse under its own weight. I did not expect my boyfriend, the CEO, to nod in agreement. "Lina, this was a collective effort in the end. Update the credit to the company's name after the meeting." I struggled to process what I was hearing. He had come to me in tears, begging to use that algorithm. He had built the entire company on it. I had trusted him completely, so I had never put a single word in writing. Now that trust had become the very thing he used against me. A chill settled in my chest. I picked up the USB drive and set it down hard on the table. "Fine. Change it yourselves." None of them knew I had filed for a patent the moment I finished the algorithm. Unauthorized use of someone else's patent was a serious offense. People went to prison for it.

I became a trending topic online in the middle of the night after a Gen-Z employee complained about me, citing that I had blurred the lines of the company's working hours by implementing flexible hours. However, the truth was that it did not matter to me what time the employees started work, as long as they completed the standard working hours at the end of the month. Many netizens even reported me to the Department of Labor. When I was given the order to amend the company's working hours, I agreed right away. "Our company will take the feedback and change accordingly." After that, I texted the company's group chat. [In accordance with the request of the Department of Labor, our company will now have strictly fixed hours from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Employees will be penalized for being late, even if it's just one minute. The company's electricity and internet will be automatically turned off right after working hours.] Less than one minute after I sent the text, everyone in the group exploded with agitation.

On our seventh wedding anniversary, my husband—Don Enzo Cavina—suddenly put a motion before the family council: The Donna would be barred from taking part in family affairs. “One vote in favor.” “Two.” “Three.” The motion passed unanimously. Being forced off the council just as I completed seven years meant the family no longer had to honor its promise to grant me the twenty-percent stake that was about to vest. I had been reduced to nothing more than an appendage to the Don. My fingertips turned cold, but my gaze remained steady as it swept over every face around the long table. “Why?” Jack was the first to stand. “You’re nothing but an outsider who married into this family, yet you’ve controlled the port, the banks, and the union for seven years. Who knows how much you’ve skimmed for yourself?” James sneered. “If we let you take twenty percent, sooner or later, the Cavina family will become the Medici family.” I turned to my husband, Don Enzo, seated at the head of the table. “Is that really what you think?” Enzo came to me and pulled me into his arms. “You’ve given seven years of your life to this family. I just can’t bear to watch the council drain you any longer.” “You won’t have to sit through these pointless meetings anymore. But you will always be my wife.” Without a seat on the council, I had no say in any decision. But the Cavinas couldn’t manage their dealings with the Five Families without me. So that was it. They still expected me to bear every risk—they just didn’t want to give me the share I had earned. I smiled, slipped off my wedding ring and family badge, and slapped them both onto the long table. Three days later, Enzo came to me with every elder who had voted for the motion. Together, they knelt before me, begging the “outsider who did nothing but steal everyone else’s credit” to come back and save them.

As the Donna of the Moretti Family, I paid out of my own pocket to build a high-security school for the children of our fallen members. But the widows repaid me by dragging my name through the media. Worse, they leaked the locations of three safe houses, dealing the Family a devastating blow. They claimed the school was never a benefit at all, but a “hostage camp” where I kept their children to force them to remain loyal to the Family. While Don Lorenzo Moretti was away, they even filed an impeachment motion with the Family Council, demanding that I shut down the school and hand its operating funds directly to them. Fine. I signed the closure order that very day. But the moment the notice went out, the widows swarmed the estate gates, crying and begging me to reopen the school. Only then did they understand— What waited for their children beyond the school gates was never freedom. It was a rival Family’s hit list.

After I help my boyfriend register his company and successfully land his first deal, he finally decides to make our relationship public. But his junior from college, who's always had this weird hostility toward me for no reason, beats me to it by sliding into the seat next to him. She leans against my boyfriend's chest, her voice smug and satisfied. "Didn't you say you'd wait until the company officially launched? So why the rush now?" My boyfriend says nothing. Instead, he hands her a share certificate and announces to the entire room that she's the company's largest shareholder. The room explodes. Everyone starts whistling and cheering them on. The junior takes the opportunity to kick me while I'm down, throwing insults my way. My boyfriend doesn't just fail to stop her. He actually joins in with his own snide remarks. "Sure, you helped me set up the company and brought in our first client, but she's the one who can actually take us somewhere." I don't get angry. I graciously acknowledge the junior's new position. I want to see how far they would get without me, their biggest asset and most valuable connection.

My father started out hauling cargo on the docks. By the end, he'd carved out seven city blocks, three harbor warehouses, and two casinos along the East Coast. I was six when he died. His will was a single line: “The family belongs to Luca. Let them choose who runs it.” The Family Council appointed Isabella Conti, my father's most trusted lieutenant, to run the family in my place. Isabella was good at it. She pulled the Vitale name back from the edge of ruin and made it the most respectable crime family on the East Coast. And me? I only came back to the estate for two weeks each summer, to soak up the sun, drink red wine, and do absolutely nothing. Then Isabella married an outsider named Riccardo Falco. On their wedding day, he cut off my access to the estate. “We're turning this place into a reception hall. Find yourself somewhere else to live.” After that, he set up a holding company in my name, with Isabella running it. Last night, in front of everyone, he had the nerve to say, “Luca, you're not a kid anymore. Time to learn to stand on your own two feet.” “Your distributions are over. From now on, you get three thousand dollars a month.” “Learn to manage your money. Stop wasting it.” Isabella raised her glass and nodded. “Riccardo's only looking out for you.” I looked at them and almost laughed. Three million dollars a month in payouts, slashed to three thousand? All thirty-seven of the family's businesses ultimately belonged to me.

At half past two on Friday afternoon, I walked past the break room when snippets of hushed conversation drifted through the half-open door and caught my attention. "Have you heard? Steven is keeping a college girl on the side." "What?" "Issac posted pictures in the executives' group chat last night. Steven was spotted outside a hotel late at night with a girl who looked barely 20." "No way. Mr. Lane always seemed like a decent guy." "The pictures do not lie. I heard the director brought it up at today's meeting and said the company would investigate the matter thoroughly." I pushed the door open and walked inside. The two interns turned deathly pale the moment they saw me. "M-Mr. Lane." "Go on. Do not let me interrupt." I filled a cup with water, then turned and walked out. My phone vibrated. A message from Issac appeared in the department group chat. [Someone's been engaging in some seriously questionable behavior outside of work. The company needs to investigate this thoroughly.] He attached three photos. I tapped them open and froze for a moment. In the pictures, my wife, Kayla Stone, and I stood outside a hotel. Her arm was linked through mine, and a sweet smile rested on her face as she leaned against me.

Out of sheer boredom, I randomly clicked into a livestream titled "Taming an Innocent Housewife." In the stream, a woman in a silk chemise was lazily puttering around the kitchen. When the camera finally showed her face, I was completely stunned—it was me. Not only that, but on the public chat, the top donor was spamming gifts like crazy. [Make her drink that spiked milk.] Soon after, a man groveled in response: [Thanks for the gift, bro. She'll drink it right now. I promise you a hell of a show tonight.] I'd recognize that voice anywhere—it was my husband, Jake, who was supposedly on a business trip overseas. My own husband had turned our home into a hidden-camera setup, treating me like his personal reality show star. And now, he was trying to feed me illegal drugs just to rake in donations. Most people would've broken down or called the cops. But I'm what you'd call the ultimate pro at playing nice—everyone in our circle knows I'm the queen of manipulation. I picked up that glass of milk, looked straight into the camera, and gave a fragile, tantalizing smile. "Since my husband's not home, drinking this milk all alone feels so lonely... I wish some strong, capable guy would come take care of me." The chat exploded. Donations went through the roof. Later that night, Jake burst through the front door, ready to "discipline" me—but froze in his tracks. There I was, sitting in lingerie on the lap of the top donor, grinning at my husband. "Honey, you're back! I helped you hit your goals tonight!"

When the company’s bionic robot was announced to the public, its stock price skyrocketed tenfold overnight. As the Principal Engineer, I received a year-end three-hundred-thousand-dollar bonus. The next day, an intern named Alaina Zeller and the company’s vice president, Vincent White, cornered me at the restroom entrance. Vincent scowled and glanced at his watch. “Joel, you were in there for fifteen minutes. You mind explaining that?” I did not grasp what was happening and answered casually, “I was using the restroom.” Alaina reacted as if she had caught me red-handed. She pointed at me and shouted, “See, Mr. White?! Mr. Lakely is literally getting paid to take a dump!” Completely bewildered, I tried to explain myself. “It’s Sunday. I’ve been pulling all-nighters for three days straight, fixing bugs. Can’t I even go to the restroom now?” Vincent ignored my explanation and said pointedly, “Your behavior is completely unacceptable. As the company’s Principal Engineer, you’re setting a terrible example for the entire team. “Your entire year-end bonus is hereby withdrawn. Consider this a warning to everyone.”

I had been managing the company’s warehouse software for five years. Then the new manager came to me out of the blue, saying I didn’t understand frontline operations and that I was being fired. Looking at the five-thousand-dollar severance, I just nodded. “Fine.” He patted my shoulder after seeing me so compliant and started lecturing. “Young people should be out on the line, moving boxes! What’s the use of sitting in the office staring at data every day? “We’re a logistics company. Strength is what matters, not a tech geek like you!” I glanced at the high-end gaming computer in his office and obediently replied, “Yes, Mr. Fuller. Lesson received.” Maybe I had been too comfortable these past few years, and he thought I was dispensable. So, I handed over my ID badge and casually deleted all my personal login keys from my computer. Little did he know that the entire warehouse logistics, inventory management, and route planning software had been coded by me. I had let the company use it for free simply because the place was close to home and the work was easy. Now that I was gone, the system running on my personal cloud server was naturally inaccessible. Tens of thousands of items in the warehouse ground to a halt. As for any commercial software that could replace my system, a year’s subscription would cost exactly one thousand times my severance.