When the Zero-Bonus Employee Faked Submission to Outsmart the Boss

The year-end bonuses were announced, and the entire department erupted. Everyone got $60,000. I was the only one who got zero. My supervisor advised me, “Young people shouldn’t get so hung up on gains and losses. You need to see the big picture.” I nodded and went back to writing my code without another word. At the end of the year, the chairman called me in, beaming, to renew my contract—a direct offer for six years. “The company needs a workhorse like you.” I turned my laptop towards him. On the screen was the final version of the project I had just completed. The buyer was his arch-nemesis. At the same time, I placed a resignation letter and a request for a non-compete agreement waiver on his desk. “Mr. King,” I said, “my new employer offered me a six-million-dollar signing bonus. I’m done playing your games.”

1 My phone vibrated on my desk like a trapped animal. In the company’s tech department group chat, the red notification bubble glowed stubbornly, the number climbing from 99+ to a height I couldn’t be bothered to count. The mood was jubilant. The screen was a blur of digital red envelopes and bold screenshots of bank transfers. “Holy crap! $60,000! The company must have made a killing this year!” “Mr. King is the GOAT! Stick with him and you’ll eat well!” “Confirmed in my account! Thanks, team! Ready to give it my all again next year!” In every screenshot, the glaring “$60,000.00” was like a raging fire, searing the eyes of everyone who saw it and igniting a frenzy throughout the office. The air was thick with the cloying sweetness of money, mixed with the irrepressible excitement and boisterous laughter of my colleagues. I, Luke, was the sole outsider to this celebration. I opened my pay stub, my fingertip feeling a chill as it touched the screen. The page loaded. Every other line item was normal, until my eyes slid to the very bottom. Year-End Bonus. Followed by a number that felt like a cold, calculated insult. “$0.00”. No shock, no anger. In that moment, my mind was a complete blank. It was as if a deep-sea mine had detonated inside my skull, and in its wake, the world fell into a dead silence. All sound, all color, bled away. All that remained was that “$0.00,” burning itself onto my retinas like a vicious brand. “Luke, my office.” My supervisor, Leo Kane, stood at his door, beckoning to me. He wore that familiar smile—affable, yet permitting no argument. I stood up without expression, pulling back my chair and walking through the ecstatic crowd. My colleagues, who had just been cheering, now wore complicated expressions as they looked at me. Some pity, some gloating, but mostly, the detached amusement of watching a drama unfold. I didn’t care. I walked into his office and closed the door, shutting out the noise. Leo pointed to the chair opposite him and poured me a glass of water himself. “Luke, you saw the pay stub, right?” he began, his tone as calm and steady as a therapist conducting a session. I nodded, saying nothing. “I know you must be feeling like this is unfair,” he continued slowly, taking a sip of his tea. “But you have to understand, as a young man, you need to see the big picture. You can’t just focus on short-term gains and losses.” The big picture? A cold laugh echoed in my mind. Such a familiar phrase. When he made us work late into the night, he’d say, “Young people need to hustle to grow quickly. That’s seeing the big picture.” When he made us take over failing projects for free, he’d say, “With great ability comes great responsibility. This is the company’s trust in you. You have to have perspective.” Now, with those same words, he was erasing the blood and sweat of more than three hundred days and nights of my life. “You are the core of Project Zenith, the soul of the operation. The company sees it, and the chairman sees it,” Leo’s voice was laced with a persuasive power. “This, you could say, is a special test from Mr. King. He wants to see if you’re just in it for the money, or if he can truly entrust the company’s future to you.” “Pass this test, prove your loyalty and your perspective, and your future will be limitless.” He leaned forward, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial, solemn whisper. “Trust me, the company will never mistreat a true contributor.” I looked at him, at the face that seemed so sincere as he sold me this fantasy. I could see the calculation and contempt in his eyes. He saw me as a tech nerd he could easily manipulate, a fool who didn’t understand office politics, someone who could be placated with a few empty words. I didn’t argue. I didn’t question him. I just nodded calmly. “I understand, Leo.” My compliance pleased him. His smile widened. “That’s the spirit! I knew you were a smart guy. Go on, get back to work. Finish up Project Zenith, and I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you with the chairman.” I walked out of his office. The air outside still felt feverish. A few people were gathered around my desk. Evan, my college classmate and the lead of Tech Team Two, was at the center of the huddle. He saw me, pushed through the crowd, and came over to slap my shoulder hard. “Luke, man, don’t sweat it. It’s just a bonus, right? My treat tonight at The Gilded Lantern. I’ll make it up to you!” His voice was loud, dripping with charity, ensuring everyone around us could hear. I saw the brand-new Rolex Submariner on his wrist, glinting under the office lights. I saw the pristine, limited-edition Jordans on his feet. All bought with that $60,000, I presumed. Bought with my hard work. And his so-called “treat” was just an opportunity to parade me around as a pathetic charity case. I ignored him and went back to my seat. I opened my phone. The last message in my chat with my girlfriend, Jenna, was the “Good morning” I’d sent her. I sent a new message: “Bonuses are out.” A long time later, she replied with a single word. “Okay.” She didn’t ask how much I got. Not a single word of concern. I opened her social media. Her latest post was from ten minutes ago. A nine-photo grid of her and her friends shopping at designer stores. A new Chanel bag, a Cartier bracelet. The caption read: “Choice is more important than effort. So happy!” In the photos, she was smiling radiantly, a brightness I had never seen before. I shut off my phone. My heart felt like it was being squeezed by an invisible hand, tightening its grip until all the blood was forced out, leaving only a cold, suffocating ache. Humiliation, resentment, fury… a thousand emotions churned in my chest, threatening to shatter my composure. But I held them back. I took a deep breath, pushing it all down. I opened my IDE. The blue light from the screen cast a cold glow on my face. I typed a single command. git push A seemingly innocuous security patch for Project Zenith was calmly committed to the repository. Just then, in the department chat, Leo tagged everyone, then tagged me individually. He shared an article titled, Young Man, Your Perspective Defines Your Future. The group chat immediately filled with agreement. “Leo’s right!” “See the big picture, and your path will only get wider!” “We should all learn from Luke, not sweating the small stuff!” The praise felt like a thousand tiny needles piercing my heart. I closed the chat window without a flicker of emotion and opened an encrypted email client. An unread message sat in my inbox. I opened it. The body contained a single sentence. “The fish is off the hook.” The sender was Mr. Cole, CEO of Stratos Tech and Chairman King’s mortal enemy. My lips pressed into a thin line. I typed two words in reply. “Into the net.”

2 It was drizzling when I left work. I called Jenna, wanting to take her out to dinner, to talk things through. I had already booked a table at her favorite French restaurant and even rehearsed my opening lines. I wanted to ask her what had gone wrong between us. She answered, her voice edged with impatience. “Hello? What is it?” “Jenna, let’s have dinner tonight. I booked—” “I can’t!” she cut me off sharply. “I have to entertain a really important client tonight. You eat by yourself. If there’s nothing else, I have to go, I’m busy.” Beep… beep… beep… Listening to the dial tone, I stood at the entrance of the office building, letting the cold rain fall on my face. The wind bit at my skin. I laughed at myself, a bitter, hollow sound, and walked towards the parking garage. My car was in the furthest corner of the second basement level, a dimly lit, deserted spot. As I approached it, a ripple of tinkling laughter echoed from behind a nearby pillar. A voice I knew all too well. It was Jenna. I froze, my body rigid. Beside Leo’s new BMW 5 Series, Jenna, in flawless makeup and a tight black dress I’d never seen before, was laughing as she bent down to get into the passenger seat. She wasn’t carrying her usual Coach bag; a brand-new Hermès was slung over her arm. Leo gallantly closed the door for her and walked around to the driver’s side. As the car started, he rolled down his window, his gaze landing directly on me. He paused for a second, then a knowing smirk spread across his face. “Luke, still here? Good timing. I’m just giving Jenna a ride. You young people should communicate more.” His tone was that of a caring supervisor, but he stressed the word “communicate” with a heavy, suggestive emphasis. I watched the BMW’s taillights disappear at the garage exit, feeling as if I’d been turned to ice. The cold started in my fingertips, spreading inch by inch until it reached my heart, solidifying into a block of permafrost. So her “important client” was our supervisor. So “I can’t” just meant she couldn’t for me. So her post about “choice is more important than effort” was about this. I went home. The apartment was dark and empty. On the dining table sat a beautifully wrapped gift box. My anniversary gift for our three years together, something I had been planning for a long time. A Tiffany necklace. It had taken me three months of scrimping and saving to afford it. I had imagined her look of surprise a thousand times. How laughable it all seemed now. In her eyes, that necklace was probably worth less than a single tire on Leo’s car. On autopilot, I opened my laptop. On the desktop was a small program I had written myself, with an icon of an inconspicuous blue radar. I had coded a location tracker for her phone, worried about her walking home alone at night. She had accused me of not trusting her, and we’d had a huge fight over it. I deleted it in front of her, but I had kept a backup. I double-clicked the icon and entered Jenna’s phone number. A blinking red dot immediately appeared on the city map. The location was Miyabi, the most expensive Japanese restaurant in the city. The kind of place where a meal costs five figures. I stared at the red dot, the last shred of hope in my heart extinguished. I refreshed my social media feed. A mutual friend from the marketing department had posted something thirty seconds ago. It was a screenshot of a bill, the background clearly the private room at Miyabi. The name on the bill was Evan’s. The caption read: “Thanks for the amazing dinner, Evan and Leo! Best meal of the year!” Below it was a group photo. In the picture, Jenna sat between Leo and Evan, a wine glass in her hand, her face flushed and her smile dazzling. She was looking up at Evan, her eyes filled with a worshipful adoration I had never seen directed at me. In that instant, I could almost hear my own heart shattering. Not with a sharp, agonizing pain, but with a final, numb silence. I picked up the gift box from the table, walked to the door, opened the trash chute, and let go. A dull thud. Our past, buried with my own hands. I returned to my computer and opened the source code for Project Zenith. In the ocean of millions of lines of code, I found a core encryption module. And there, I left a mark only I could understand. The number “0”. The “0” from my zero-dollar bonus. The “0” that meant resetting everything to zero. It was a back door. A one-way door to hell.

3 A week later, the company was decked out in celebratory banners, the atmosphere electric. The award ceremony for the first phase of Project Zenith was being held in the headquarters’ largest auditorium. Chairman King himself was expected to attend. I sat in the back row, a ghost in the corner. The big screen displayed a polished PowerPoint presentation. Ninety percent of its content was what I had typed out, character by character, during countless sleepless nights over the past year. But now, on the “Core Project Members” slide, my name was listed last. And the presentation was credited to a single person. Evan. He walked onto the stage in a brand-new designer suit, his hair slicked back, looking every bit the triumphant “Project Lead.” The spotlight followed him, making him the undeniable star of the show. “Chairman King, esteemed leaders, dear colleagues, good afternoon.” His voice boomed through the microphone. “The success of Project Zenith is a testament to the company’s visionary strategy, the trust and support of Mr. King and our leadership, and of course, the tireless efforts of our entire team…” He launched into a grandiloquent speech, casually attributing my core algorithms to a “breakthrough” he had achieved after “repeated verification and overcoming significant challenges,” with the “able assistance of Luke and other colleagues.” Leo, sitting beside him, added helpfully, “Evan is truly outstanding and has a great sense of the big picture. From the very beginning, I knew he was the man for the job. It turns out my judgment was correct.” He painted himself as a discerning mentor, a master strategist. The two of them were a perfectly rehearsed act. In the front row, Chairman King beamed, nodding frequently. When Evan finished, Mr. King personally went on stage and clapped him on the shoulder. “Well done! This is the future of our company! Capable, responsible, and most importantly, has perspective!” his voice was strong and clear. “To recognize Evan’s outstanding contributions to Project Zenith, I am pleased to announce that the company will award him the down payment for a 1,000-square-foot apartment at The Waterfront!” The announcement was met with thunderous applause. Everyone looked at Evan with envy. The Waterfront was the most exclusive riverfront property in the city. The down payment alone was at least half a million dollars. I saw Jenna, in the front row, jump to her feet, clapping enthusiastically. She gazed up at the brilliant man on stage, her eyes shining with undisguised admiration. A look I once thought was reserved only for me. All eyes were on the stage. No one noticed me in the corner, also clapping. A placid smile was on my face, but my eyes were a frozen, bottomless lake. My phone was discreetly raised, aimed at the stage. The camera was recording everything. Evan’s lies, Leo’s hypocrisy, Mr. King’s foolishness, and Jenna’s adoration. It would all become evidence. After the ceremony, Evan was swarmed by a crowd, a conquering hero. He saw me and made a point to come over, putting on his “best buddy” act. “Luke, don’t be discouraged. This was mainly to boost morale, to concentrate our resources. I haven’t forgotten your contribution, brother. Next time, it’ll be you.” He “comforted” me with condescension, as if I were a junior who needed his guidance. I looked at his disingenuous face and nodded with a smile. “Congratulations, Evan.” My voice was quiet, but every word was crystal clear. “You deserve it.” He clearly missed the meaning behind my words, grinning smugly before being swept away by his admirers. I watched him go, the smile on my lips turning colder. Yes. You deserve it. All of you will get exactly what you deserve.