20 Brilliant Workplace Revenge Stories From History

Michelangelo was nearing the end of painting the Last Judgment, a fresco commissioned by Pope Paul III for the Sistine Chapel. But the pope’s Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, complained that the nudes were better suited to a public bath than a church. Ouch. Michelangelo didn’t appreciate the insult, so he painted Biagio’s face on the head of Minos, the mythological judge of the underworld, giving him donkey ears and a serpent that bites his genitals.

Nikola Tesla got a job in 1884 at Edison Machine Works in New York, where he worked for inventor Thomas Edison. In his memoir, Tesla claimed that Edison had promised him $50,000 to re-engineer Edison’s DC (direct current) dynamos, but then pulled out of the deal by saying that it was just “American humor.” Instead, he offered Tesla a weekly $10 raise. Tesla left the company in 1885, teamed up with industrialist George Westinghouse, and helped AC (alternating current) power overcome Edison’s DC system.

Pope Urban VIII, Galileo’s friend and patron, agreed to allow Galileo to write about heliocentrism, the theory that Earth circles the Sun, provided he also presented the pope’s arguments against it. Galileo did so in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), putting the pope’s reasoning into the mouth of Simplicio, a character whose name means simpleton. When the pope read the book, he was livid.

In 1933, businessman Nelson Rockefeller hired Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to create a piece called Man at the Crossroads for Rockefeller Center. When Rivera painted Soviet ruler Vladimir Lenin into the work, Rockefeller had the mural destroyed in early 1934. Naturally, Rivera didn’t appreciate his art being ruined, so he remade the mural in Mexico City under the title Man, Controller of the Universe. The twist? He inserted a portrait of John D. Rockefeller Jr., Nelson’s father, taking a sip of champagne below an enlarged projection of syphilis bacteria.

This next one isn’t your typical workplace revenge story. Author Arthur Conan Doyle had a hit with his fictional detective character, Sherlock Holmes. However, he didn’t like that detective’s popularity was overshadowing his other work. So, he decided to get revenge on his own creation by killing him off. Yep, in “The Final Problem,” published in The Strand Magazine in December 1893, Doyle killed Sherlock Holmes by having him plunge to his death over Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland after an epic fight with the evil genius, Professor Moriarty. This revenge completely backfired, though, as over 20,000 subscribers reportedly canceled their subscriptions in protest.

Charlie Chaplin, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, was growing tired of being limited by how much a studio could pay an actor. In 1919, Chaplin formed his own distribution company, United Artists, along with actor Mary Pickford, actor Douglas Fairbanks, and director D.W. Griffith. When Metro Pictures executive Richard A. Rowland heard about the new firm, he reportedly sneered, “The lunatics have taken over the asylum.”

In 1611, painter Orazio Gentileschi hired an art tutor, Agostino Tassi, to teach perspective to his daughter, the painter Artemisia Gentileschi, in his workshop. Tassi assaulted Artemisia, and a 1612 Roman trial convicted him. However, the conviction wasn’t enough justice for Artemisia. That same year, Artemisia painted Judith Slaying Holofernes, which shows Judith beheading the Biblical general Holofernes. The revenge was in the details. Art historians have long remarked on how Holofernes’s face resembles that of Tassi.

The comedian W.C. Fields worked for Universal Pictures, which capped how much it would pay actors, but paid extra for screenwriting. So he submitted his own scripts for movies, like 1940’s The Bank Dick, under pseudonyms such as Mahatma Kane Jeeves. Some revenge doesn’t have to end nasty, as Universal executives knew exactly who was behind the pen names and cut Fields separate checks for each of them.

Dutch painter Han van Meegeren was rejected by critics in the 1920s. To prove that he was a talented artist, he devoted years to learning the art of forgery. In 1937, expert Abraham Bredius authenticated van Meegeren’s fake as the work of 17th-century painter Johannes Vermeer. Van Meegeren sold forgeries for millions before confessing in 1945 rather than risk a treason charge for selling a fake Vermeer to Nazi official Hermann Göring. Van Meegeren called it revenge against the critics who dismissed him, but he also couldn’t deny the financial benefits it had offered him.

In January of 1920, Vanity Fair magazine editor Frank Crowninshield fired theater critic Dorothy Parker for writing reviews that angered some Broadway advertisers. Her colleagues, Robert Benchley and Robert E. Sherwood, immediately quit as well. Together, they were already part of the Algonquin Round Table, a famous group of writers and critics in New York City, and the mass resignation became one of its most celebrated stories. Those are some real friends!

When shipping magnate Frederick Leyland hired painter James McNeill Whistler to paint the dining room of his London townhouse (today known as the Peacock Room) in 1876, he only paid half the artist’s 2,000-guinea tab. I’ll tell you one thing: artists don’t appreciate being stiffed. So, in 1879, Whistler got his revenge by painting Leyland as a peacock-monster atop Whistler’s own house. The work, titled The Gold Scab, shows the peacock sitting on Whistler’s roof playing the piano, with coins spilling out of his body.

Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez had been working for Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who was constantly postponing payment to him by saying, “Lascia fare a me,” which means “Leave it to me.” According to legend, Josquin took those vowels and set them to solfège, the do-re-mi musical syllable system, and built a whole Mass, Missa La sol fa re mi, around the mocking phrase, which was performed publicly in church. A 16th-century theorist recorded the story, though it may be folklore rather than history. Either way, this story is definitely reminiscent of the diss tracks we hear on the radio today.

When composer Hector Berlioz’s Requiem was performed at the Invalides in Paris on December 5, 1837, the conductor, François Habeneck, allegedly lowered his baton to take a pinch of snuff at one of the work’s critical passages, during which roughly 400 musicians were playing. Berlioz then decided to humiliate Habeneck by immortalizing the incident in his memoir, even stating that he had taken over the conducting from Habeneck. His account may be exaggerated, but sometimes the best revenge is making others believe something that never even happened.

Sir John Vanbrugh designed Blenheim Palace for Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough. The two had spent years fighting over it. Churchill disliked his extravagant, costly design. Vanbrugh got so frustrated by her critiques that he left the project in 1716. In 1725, when the palace was completed, Vanbrugh came back with his wife as a tourist to view his own handiwork, only to find that the Duchess had told the gatekeepers to shut him out before he even got inside. The message was clear: you refused to complete it, so you’re banned from seeing it.

The painter Thomas Gainsborough asked the Royal Academy of Arts in London to hang his portrait, Three Eldest Princesses, at eye level for the academy’s annual exhibition of 1784. The hanging committee refused his request and hung it above eye level. So, Gainsborough pulled out all 15 of his submitted paintings and never again exhibited with the Royal Academy.

In 1426, the masons’ guild constructing the dome of the Florence Cathedral in Italy went on strike to demand higher wages. Unfortunately for them, their plan backfired as Filippo Brunelleschi, the chief engineer on the project, fired them all and hired a new crew of stonemasons from Lombardy in northern Italy. After a while, the strikers begged for their jobs back and got rehired, but at lower wages than before.

From 1811 to 1816, English cloth workers were being driven into poverty by factory owners who installed machinery to reduce wages and replace expensive skilled workers with cheaper unskilled workers. They banded together as Luddites, named after a mythical leader called General Ned Ludd, and raided these mills at night to break the machinery. Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act in 1812, which made breaking the machinery a capital offense.

In 1824, Charles Dickens was only 12 years old when he was forced to work 10-hour days pasting labels at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse in London after his father was imprisoned for debt. As a novelist, he wrote about the abuse of his childhood in David Copperfield, serialized 1849-1850, creating fictional schoolmasters and bosses such as Mr. Creakle, based on figures from his own life. Imagine reading a best-seller and finding out the villain is based on you? Yeah, this is one revenge I can totally get behind.

In 1697, Parliament passed legislation to withhold half of architect Sir Christopher Wren’s salary, termed “the suspension of the moiety,” hoping to hasten completion of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Wren refused to rush and continued at a measured pace for another 14 years. Finally, when the cathedral was deemed completed in 1711, Parliament had no choice but to restore the entirety of Wren’s pay.

In 1945, Paramount Pictures needed Raymond Chandler to complete the screenplay for The Blue Dahlia before star Alan Ladd went off to war. Chandler had severe writer’s block and said that he could only finish the script if he was allowed to work from home while binge drinking. He also demanded that Paramount pay for studio guards and medical attendants around the clock, and chauffeur-driven limousines all day long. Surprisingly, they agreed to his terms, and Chandler turned in the script.

This content was created with the help of AI.