Years ago I had a meeting with my boss about an "incident" and flat out said I told a coworker to go fuck themself, twice and I wouldn't apologize for it. And then asked for a 20 percent raise. It was completely justified and my boss knew it. I also got the raise.

Gp is right about wage slavery, sometimes people actually need to stand up for themselves.

Nah they eventually got me on a technicality. 3-day per week gig, but they kept pushing me into doing a 5-day week. I was the "innovation manager" funded by a government grant. So I was a one-man show expected to build, market and sell new profitable internal startups with zero resources or equity.

On a Friday I found out the largest startup conference in Sydney was happening the next week. So I let the boss know I'd be going to that. No response. I went to the conference. When I got back to work they fired me for "not giving 2 weeks leave notice" as was in my contract lol.

The story of how I got fired from the second job was even more sketchy. Involves the largest employer in the crypto industry. HR lied about giving me a warning about "behaviour" (never provided any evidence to the claim) and later admitted to having never contacted me. Small cartel of middle managers in a supposedly "decentralised company" fired me 2 weeks before a 6 month probation without any knowledge or consensus from my regional team or primary team. HR lady was fired 2 months later. They then strung me along for 2 months with a "soon to be proposed" rehire offer. Now they ignore my emails. Classy.

Hah. I hope not. If more people stood up to these things they wouldn’t happen so often.