Not quite a horror story... Over the course of about 7 years, I "amassed" options for about 100,000 shares ($0.10 each). I got laid off in the great recession

Not quite a horror story... Over the course of about 7 years, I "amassed" options for about 100,000 shares ($0.10 each). I got laid off in the great recession of 2009 and I was pretty annoyed at being laid off (I won't go into details, but I felt that there were many others who deserved the ax before I did). After being laid off, I believe I had 6 months (maybe 12) to exercise my options. Obviously, it would have cost me $10K to exercise everything. But I was still annoyed and I decided to cut off my nose to spite my face: I exercised TEN DOLLARS WORTH (100 shares) for the petulant reason that it would simultaneously demonstrate that I had no faith in their viability and that it would cost them more than $10 in postage to invite me to yearly shareholder meetings. Well, I got my 100 shares and two years later, I also got notice that they were GOING PUBLIC!!! My heart SANK. Acting like a petulant child was going to cost me hundreds of thousands of $$$. Possibly millions, depending on how the IPO went. Then I read the fine print. The IPO was going to involve a 6000:1 REVERSE split. In reality, I would have had about 17 shares if I had exercised everything. Then, a few months later, the IPO was canceled. Eventually, I received a check for $0.01 because the reverse split of my 100 shares amounted to essentially nothing.