Woman's Revenge on Employer After Being Laid Off Applauded: 'Gotcha'

A woman has won widespread support online after detailing the hilarious prank she played on her former employers after being laid off.

In a video posted under the pseudonym Marchie, the woman, who works office jobs in between acting gigs, shared a story from a previous role she held in Utah which she ended up being let go back in May.

"I did not have an inkling that anyone in my department was on the chopping block," she said. "Ultimately, I was the only one in my department laid off."

Marchie said it left her "extremely upset and overcome with dread" as to how she would make ends meet. Thankfully, she had already booked an acting gig for the summer, so reckoned she had just enough to tide her over.

Even so, she came up with a way to exact a modicum of revenge on her former employers. Being laid off from a job can be a tough pill to swallow, but it's more common than most people realize.

In March, a survey of 1,002 Americans by personal finance site GoBankingRates found 20 percent of respondents had been laid off from a job in the past 12 months.

How we respond to adversity can often define us. Some bounce back to even better; others struggle to move on. Marchie was different though—she decided to make a joke out of it.

"Part of what makes being laid-off so horrible is that you have no control of the situation," she said. "I wanted to feel like I left somewhat on my own terms."

So, on her last day, she printed off 20 to 30 pictures of herself with a speech bubble. In each of the picture's speech bubbles, she wrote a phrase like "parting is such sweet sorrows" or "GOTCHA!"

Then she proceeded to hide the pictures all around the office.

"Some places I knew would be found immediately, like a coworker's frequently used tissue box, and others hidden behind paintings and such that I don't know if they'll ever be found," Marchie said.

"In a last-minute stroke of genius, I numbered them on the back but skipped numbers so they would never know if they had found all of them!"

Before she left, she wrote on a whiteboard in the office: "How many pictures are hidden around the office? There may be a clue on the back..."

Knowing that many of her former co-workers had "great senses of humor" she waited a couple of days before checking in with them to see how the prank had gone down with her employers.

"My work bestie informed me of the progress and building frustration of not being able to find all of them throughout the week," she said. "Apparently, some coworkers were becoming so obsessed with finding all of them, my previous boss had to ban looking for them altogether as it was disrupting everyone's ability to work."

Ultimately, it's given Marchie, her old work friends and countless millions on social media, a good laugh with the clip racking up 5 million views on TikTok already.

If she could go back and do things again though, Marchie said there is one thing she would do differently: "I would hide more."

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Correction 06/16/23, 02:00 a.m. ET: A previous version incorrectly referred to Marchie as being fired rather than laid off.