Entrepreneur Shares How 'Spite' Motivated Employees To Work On Weekends: 'Greatest Incentive'

A Bengaluru-based entrepreneur has caught social media's attention after revealing what motivated his employees to work faster. Vikram Pai, CEO and co-founder of ReferRush, shared the unusual workplace story on X (formerly Twitter), highlighting that 'spite' was the greatest incentive of all time for his employees after one of the customers treated his team badly.

Pai also shared a screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation with one of the employees, who promised not to take off on Sunday and work for the next three weeks at least.

"A customer of ours who treated my team terribly decided to go build a competing product," wrote Pai, adding that he had offered everything ranging from bonuses and incentives to his employees previously.

"I've tried everything to make us move faster: bonuses, incentives, deadlines, equity. Nothing has worked quite like this," said Pai.

Pai said the employees were now working nights as well as weekends, adding that spite was probably the one motivating factor that they all needed.

"My team is so pissed off they're voluntarily working nights and Sundays. Turns out spite might be the greatest employee incentive of all time, and as a founder I'm way too happy about this," he added.

Check The Post Here:

A customer of ours who treated my team terribly decided to go build a competing product.

I've tried everything to make us move faster: bonuses, incentives, deadlines, equity.

Nothing has worked quite like this 😂😂

My team is so pissed off they're voluntarily working nights… pic.twitter.com/zKUKTcUk0t

— Vikram Pai (@vikpai) August 31, 2026

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Social Media Reactions

As the post gained traction, one of the social media users said: "And people wonder why wars unite countries unlike anything else." Meanwhile, another added: "I tried this too but my employees spent the time DDoS'ing his product."

A third commented: "Bro these merchants are sometimes extremely annoying. Some merchant started blaming me because their storefront theme was creating a problem with our product ui. Turns out he intentionally edited the theme just for fun."