It is perhaps difficult to find a phenomenon in the modern history of humanity that has affected our way of life and work as much as the coronavirus. Some might say “the internet,” but the World Wide Web has been with us for more than thirty years, and it was the COVID-19 pandemic that broke the office work paradigm that had been established for decades.

It turned out that remote work can be quite effective, and distance learning, the benefits of which had been talked about for years, suddenly became not a fad, but a necessity. However, even then, in the midst of a pandemic, there were bosses with a bit of an outdated mentality – like this woman, who was told about by user u/Momsgotprobsbrah in the Reddit Malicious Compliance community.

The author of the post gave birth to her baby late in 2020 and returned to work after her short maternity leave

Image credits: SHVETS production (not the actual image)

However, the author’s boss turned out to be a nasty and nitpicking person

Image credits: u/Momsgotprobsbrah

The boss demanded the staff attend classroom corporate training in another state despite all the quarantine restrictions

Image credits: Sarah Chai (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/Momsgotprobsbrah

Employees wanted to have this training online, but the boss told them it was impossible

Image credits: CoWomen (not the actual image)

Image credits: u/Momsgotprobsbrah

The author, however, found out there was an option for a remote course, so she announced this publicly – and then quit on the spot

The Original Poster (OP) says that she gave birth to a child at the end of 2020, when the pandemic was blazing and quarantine restrictions were at their toughest. We will not talk about efficiency now – the most important thing is that the author of the post rightly feared for her health and the health of her newborn baby, so when she returned to office after the end of maternity leave, she took all possible precautions. Unfortunately, this did not apply to all of her colleagues…

The direct boss of the OP acted as if nothing was happening in the world. So, for example, one day she demanded that the entire author’s department go to a neighboring state for a special corporate training. Moreover, despite the fact that, according to the author’s own words, at that time there was a mandatory two-week quarantine after entering their state, the boss demanded that the employees be present in the office nearly the very next day after returning from the training.

The golden rule of office situations like this is that if your boss asks you to break the law in some way, just ask for their written order in return to protect yourself from any further legal trouble. The main difficulty of this situation was that no official order from the higher-ups guaranteed that the OP or one of her colleagues would not get coronavirus during the trip or training. Viruses in general, you know, tend to listen poorly to any official orders…

To the OP’s reasonable idea to try to take the training online, the boss objected that this course did not provide for a remote option. However, the author had previously noticed that the boss regularly found fault with her over trifles, and only the fact that the Original Poster was a really key employee kept the boss from direct conflict. However, health is more important in any case – so the OP simply threatened that she would quit otherwise. The boss feigned agreement, apparently convinced that the employee was bluffing.

But she wasn’t. Having prepared her 2-week notice in advance, the Original Poster decided to make her quitting as spectacular as possible. Having contacted the company that organized the very training, the employee suddenly found out that the option of remote training in fact existed, but their boss, for some reason, kept silent about it. And so, having come to the office, the OP announced to the deathly silent team the information about the opportunity to take the training online, and then, with a spectacular gesture, handed her notice to the beet-red boss. The perfect moment to put those same credits: “Directed by Robert B. Weide”, don’t you think?

Image credits: EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA (not the actual image)

It would be generally strange to assume that a company providing corporate education services at the end of 2020 would not provide for the possibility of conducting training online (of course, there are specific industries, but this is nothing more than an exception to the general rule). For example, according to Weforum, the number of new students on the world’s largest online learning service, Coursera, increased from 44M in 2019 to 71M in 2020 and 92M in 2021 – that is, during the active fight against the pandemic, there was an increase of more than than twice.

If you look at the total number of enrollments, then the numbers will be even more impressive – from 76M in 2019 to 143M and 189M, respectively, in 2020 and 2021. “Paths for greater access and opportunities to online education have now been forged, and there is a clear route for the next generation of adopters of online education,” notes Barbara Lockee in her study “Online education in the post-COVID era,” published in January 2021 in Nature. So the original poster correctly presumed that there was still a possibility of remote learning, and the boss simply hid it for some reason.

Most people in the comments were also raving about the grace with which the original poster put the obnoxious boss in her place – even at the cost of getting fired. In the end, your health and the health of your kid are way more important, and besides, justice is important as well. “That image of you reading that email in front of everyone – I’m dying of laughter here,” one commenter simply wrote.

However, some people in the comments believe that the author of the post should have gone further and simply reported this situation to the board. “Honestly, you would have bitten the snake, first, if you’d have reported her for violating the law,” the commenters suppose. By the way, what do you think about this?

People in the comments praise the author for spectacularly putting the boss in her place, yet suggest that she report this case to the board

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