We’ve all had that one colleague at some point who’s a complete jerk but gets away with it. You know, the one who passes on their duties to others and who talks behind everyone’s back – as soon as you cross their path, you’re in their crosshairs, too.

Last week, u/Certain-Scarcity-442 submitted a post to the ‘Petty Revenge‘ community, sharing a story of how she dealt with a “Negative McGee” who barked up all the wrong trees. “She proceeded to rip me a new one in a personal Slack [chat],” she wrote, teasing readers of what’s about to come.

After one ‘sneaky’ colleague got criticized for her lazy work ethics, she started smack-talking everyone who was involved

Image credits: Yan Krukau (not the actual photo)

Little did she know, she was barking up the wrong tree

Image credits: MART PRODUCTION (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Certain-Scarcity-442

Image credits: Christin Hume (not the actual photo)

We’ve all encountered toxic people in our workplace that we’ve been forced to deal with whether we like it or not. These bad apples come in all shapes and sizes, doing all in their power to do as little amount of work as possible and remain in the good books of the boss. And while 73% of American workers say they have to endure passive-aggressive comments from their colleagues (including superiors) on a weekly basis, according to Boston-based language-tutoring service Preply, we can’t say that we are really surprised to learn that most blame their managers for letting it flow. In fact, an astounding 44% of workers in the US say a toxic work environment is a manager’s responsibility.

Workplace toxicity ain’t a novel problem, however. Coworkers from hell have haunted offices since the dawn of organized labor. They’ve inspired great concepts for TV shows and movies. But in the world of business, teamwork is the lifeblood and there’s only so much of it that can be sucked out by them. Teams got to be collaborative, adaptable, and proactive on a whole new level. And when you add a dysfunctional, scheming teammate into the mix, they can wreck the whole damn team’s results.

In a comprehensive study conducted by Harvard Business School, where they examined a whopping 50,000 employees, the findings revealed something eye-opening: steering clear of a toxic coworker or transforming them into an average performer has a far more significant impact on overall performance than replacing an average worker with a superstar. And while crossing paths with them costs us nothing but a few fried-up nerve receptors, half-hearted employees can cost companies an eyewatering $450-500 billion each year.

Dr. Jody J. Foster, the co-author of ‘The Schmuck in My Office: How to Deal Effectively with Difficult People at Work’, discovered that there’s a few common types of stinky coworkers. The Narcissus, for example, is pretty self-explanatory and is characterized by egocentricity and a self-centered attitude. Then there’s the Venus Flytrap ones who manipulate and cause drama by cycling between overvaluing and devaluing others. “The Flytrap can cause tremendous drama in the office, the type where people feel they need to walk on eggshells around them so as to not set them off,” he explained to VICE. Sounds familiar?

If there would be no Joker, there would be no Batman. No Yin, no Yang. That’s how it goes, dear pandas. And while the world – at least our offices – would be a better place without double-dealing coworkers, like the one in u/Certain-Scarcity-442’s story, how else would we get our daily dose of petty revenge stories?

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People applauded the author for handling this “negative McGee” the way she did

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