Recently, a Redditor going by Deeba_ turned to the Malicious Compliance community on Reddit to share an incident at her former job when she worked as a receptionist for a community nursing service.

While the staff members were wonderful and Deeba_ learned a lot from them, the assistant manager Karen was a bugger with “fun personality traits that make a ‘Manager from Hell’”.

Now one day, the author received an email from said manager asking her to print the attached files. “One was a pdf and the other an mp4,” she recounted. Being sure that the manager had the pdf in mind, Deeba_ did what she was asked and handed in the copy.

To her surprise, the manager was far from happy and insisted on having sent two documents for printing. This is where the story took a maliciously compliant turn.

A woman recounted an incident she had with the manager “from Hell” at her former receptionist job, who ordered her to print out a video, to which she maliciously complied

Image credits:CoWomen (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Mahrous Houses (not the actual photo)

Image credits: deeba_

“Although this story ended well for the employee, and the irrational manager finally got what she deserved, I think this kind of approach, lowering yourself to their level and doing something that will publicly humiliate your boss, might often backfire,” Christine Mitterbauer, a licensed and ICF-approved career coach and serial entrepreneur, told Bored Panda.

According to Mitterbauer, “if you have a manager asking you to do irrational things, the first thing to do is to explain in a matter-of-fact way that it might not be the best way forward, and instead present some better options. If they shut you down face to face, try this over email.”

Moreover, if you feel this is a recurrent thing, the career coach argues, “it’s probably going to be a nightmare for you to work for this person in the long run, so you should either look for other roles or speak to senior management and explain to them the situation.” Mitterbauer added that the latter is easier said than done, and could take a long time.

“Until you land another role or see change on the horizon, it might be better to just do as you’re told,” Mitterbauer concluded.

Later, the  author added more details about the incident in responses to the comments

And  this is how people reacted to this whole story

Meanwhile, others took a chance to share their own similar stories

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