I had an awful job, some years ago. Started out well, but the owner’s husband took against me (probably when I didn’t return his flirting). He started a campaign to make me quit (so they didn’t have to pay my notice period). Every day he delighted in sending out office-wide memos with new directives, aimed at me. One day he’d ban a certain brand of mobile phone (that only I owned). Next day it would be some nonsense micromanaging new daily report, that only people with my exact job title would need to provide.
When none of it managed to send me into a tantrum (misconduct) or a flounce off, he announced that I was henceforth demoted and was to concentrate on my new role of cleaning out the storeroom until he ‘decided what to do with me.’ Mind you, I’d started the day as the National Marketing Manager 
.
I turned up the next day in overalls, a headscarf and rubber gloves, armed with every cleaning product I could lay my hands on. I sang cheerily as I worked, and expanded my cleaning to the rest of the building. By closing time, I had the whole office Team staying back to clean with me. Some in solidarity as to how badly I’d been treated, but others because I’d made it so fun! He walked in to find us all singing and scrubbing and went purple. He wrote me the biggest cheque ever, and frogmarched me to the door. He couldn’t speak for rage.
I turned and gave everyone a cheery wave and said ‘see you all at the pub Friday!’. He tried to ban everyone having drinks with me, until his wife put her foot down for making her look like she’d married a lunatic.
I made a point of dropping into their after-work drinks sporadically for years, knowing how much it irked him that they were bitching about him to me.
When I told my next employer why I couldn’t offer a recent reference at the interview, they hired me on the spot.