Nobody enjoys getting passive-aggressive emails. Especially when your colleague is making illogical demands and ignores your attempts to clarify what they mean. Sometimes, the best antidote for this is a bit of malicious compliance—following their demands to the letter. Often, people quickly realize that what they asked for is far from what they actually wanted.

Redditor u/phantommichaelis shared how she taught her passive-aggressive coworker a lesson about courteous communication. The OP explained to the r/MaliciousCompliance community how she’d usually send out internal emails to Records, grouping patient information by type. However, a new employee demanded that she send each appointment individually, rather than all in one tidy email.

Eventually, the redditor relented and did just that. Scroll down for the full story and how her colleague reacted once she got what she wished for.

Bored Panda has reached out to u/phantommichaelis vis Reddit, and we’ll update the article as soon as we hear back from her!

Dealing with passive-aggressive colleagues can be a nightmare. Thankfully, a bit of malicious compliance can set things right

Image credits: ThisIsEngineering (not the actual photo)

An employee shared how she dealt with someone’s rude request concerning how she sends work emails

Image credits: Stephen Phillips (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)

Credits: phantommichaelis

In short, redditor u/phantommichaelis maliciously complied with her rude coworker’s request. She sent 60 emails back to back, instead of sorting everything neatly by type. It took 2 extra hours, but the payoff was pretty quick. After just 2 days of this, the passive-aggressive coworker quickly realized the mistake she made.

The result? A crash course in email etiquette: introduce yourself, say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you,’ don’t make demands out of thin air, and don’t ignore people’s attempts to clarify what exactly it is that you want. Politeness and basic civility both go a long way when emailing someone.

There’s also the possibility of calling the individual or meeting up with them in person to diplomatically get to the bottom of what’s going on. There’s no substitute for open and honest communication… though malicious compliance is often far more fun!

According to a study done in 2013, regularly dealing with passive-aggressive behavior leads to employee burnout. BBC Worklife notes that this sort of behavior has an overall negative effect on the company and those who work there. Productivity and workplace culture both suffer. In other words, passive-aggressive behavior is something that you really want to avoid at any company. However, dealing with it is another challenge entirely.

“Passive-aggressive behavior can be difficult for organizations to address because it’s often very subtle and indirect in nature. It’s fairly easy for someone exhibiting passive-aggressive behavior to deny any bad intentions behind their actions or try to manipulate the situation by claiming to be the ‘victim’ rather than the aggressor,” New York-based careers expert Amanda Augustine told the BBC.

She explained that some passive-aggressive coworkers are trying to get other employees to react to their remarks. They enjoy subtly manipulating others. The best approach here is to “control your emotions and force yourself to remain calm,” no matter what they say or do. You’re denying them what they really want: a reaction.

If that doesn’t work, talk to someone higher up in the company about what’s going on. Your superior or HR might want to look into how the other employee is behaving. However, before going into a group meeting to discuss this, be sure to have clear evidence about what your colleague has done. This will prevent them from denying everything you say as they try to pretend they’re the victim, weaseling out of the entire confrontation.

The author of the story responded to a few comments

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A few readers even shared some similar work stories

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