My manager tried to take credit for my 8-month project in front of the CEO and I had one slide that ended his whole career

So this happened last Thursday and I'm still kind of shaking.

For context I'm a data analyst at a mid sized logistics company. About 8 months ago I noticed we were hemorrhaging money on fuel costs because of inefficient routing. Nobody asked me to look into it, I just did it on my own time because it genuinely bugged me. I built an entire optimization model, ran it through several quarters of data, and calculated we could save roughly $2.3 million annually if we restructured how we assigned delivery zones.

I presented it to my direct manager, Dave, back in February. He told me it was "interesting" and that he'd "loop in the right people." I followed up three times over the next two months. He kept saying it was "in the pipeline."

Fast forward to last week. Big quarterly review with the CEO and all the department heads. I wasn't even supposed to be in the room, I was only there to help set up the AV equipment.

Dave gets up and starts presenting MY project. My data. My model. My savings projections. Word for word from the doc I sent him. He never mentioned my name once. I watched him take a question from the CEO about methodology and he fumbled it badly because he didn't actually understand how I built it.

Here's the thing though. When I originally sent Dave the model I also emailed it to myself with a full written breakdown of the methodology, timestamped, and I had version history in Google Sheets going back to last July showing every single edit I ever made.

The CEO asked "who put this together" and Dave said "my team worked on it collectively."

I don't know what came over me but I said "actually I can walk you through the methodology if that helps, I built it."

Dead silence.

The CEO looked at Dave. Dave went pale. I pulled up my laptop, connected to the projector and walked through the entire thing for 25 minutes. The CEO asked me follow up questions I answered every single one. At one point he asked Dave something simple about the data source and Dave literally said "I'd have to check on that."

After the meeting the CEO asked me to stay behind. Dave left without making eye contact with me.

I now report directly to the VP of Operations. Starting next month. Dave is apparently being "restructured" out of his role.

Eight months of being ignored and one accidental invitation to set up a projector changed everything.

Always document your work. Always.