The fluorescent lights of the office hummed, a stark contrast to the storm brewing inside Maya. Her ex-boyfriend, Mark, a recent hire in a different department, had just delivered a passive-aggressive jab in the shared kitchen that left her fuming. “Still struggling with those spreadsheets, Maya? Some things never change,” he’d sneered, loud enough for their colleagues to hear. Her face burned. She’d spent weeks mastering a new data analysis program, and his comment felt like a deliberate attempt to undermine her confidence and professional image.
All morning, his words echoed in her mind, sabotaging her focus. She made a few minor errors, snapped at a well-meaning intern, and generally felt her usually calm demeanor unraveling. By lunch, she knew she couldn’t let it stand. But how to retaliate without stooping to his level of pettiness? She needed something subtle, yet impactful, a revenge dish best served… in the cloud.
Suddenly, an idea sparked. She remembered Mark’s obsessive pride in his perfectly organized digital files, a trait he’d often bragged about during their relationship. His system was complex, with nested folders and elaborate naming conventions, all designed to make him look indispensable. If even one file was out of place, he’d spiral.
Maya, with her advanced tech skills, knew a backdoor. During their relationship, she had helped him set up a complex shared cloud drive for his freelance work, and she still had administrator access – an oversight on his part. She logged in, her fingers flying across the keyboard with a renewed sense of purpose. She didn’t delete anything, that would be too obvious and traceable. Instead, she began a meticulous, surgical reorganization.
She started by taking his most frequently accessed project folder, “Q3_Reports_FINAL_v2,” and moving it deep within a subfolder named “Archived_Legacy_Projects/2018/Misc_Files/Unsorted_Backups.” Then, she renamed another critical folder, “Client_Presentations_DO_NOT_TOUCH,” to “Funny_Cat_Memes.” She didn’t stop there. She found his meticulously crafted “Budget_Forecasts_2024_Master” and subtly changed the file type extension, making it unreadable without specific software, which she knew he didn’t have installed.
