Employee’s Lunch Policy Gets Changed Because Of The Office Drama Queen, They Execute Malicious Compliance

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The Saboteur, the Complainer, the Aggressor; the office has many archetypes. And the antagonist of this story embodies at least a few of them.

Six days ago, Reddit user u/kathjoy made a post on r/MaliciousCompliance about a particularly annoying colleague they had at their former work, Mindy. More specifically, her constant desire to boss people around.

I don’t want to spoil the read but let’s just say that Mindy had such a strong fetish for enforcing the rules, she made enemies with pretty much everyone in the office. So when she needed to bend them, u/kathjoy found the perfect way to kink-shame her.

Continue scrolling to learn how it all went down!

Employee's Lunch Policy Gets Changed Because Of The Office Drama Queen, They Execute Malicious Compliance

Image credits: saimad (not the actual photo)

Bored Panda received permission to publish the story from its author

Employee's Lunch Policy Gets Changed Because Of The Office Drama Queen, They Execute Malicious Compliance

Image credits: kathjoy

u/kathjoy no longer works at the company; however, they had spent a couple of years there prior to this incident. “The story makes it sound terrible but actually it was a great place to work,” the Redditor told Bored Panda. “I had been in other teams in the department, and had had other managers, and they’d all been fine. None of my previous managers cared about when we took our lunch or if we were a little late back, as long as we hit our productivity targets. It was just bad luck my team got stuck with that manager and that colleague.”

Judging from the aftermath of the ordeal, u/kathjoy doesn’t think that Mindy changed. “She still took her notes. I think she was waiting for one of us to do something major so she could report us, and she still tried to report us for bullying when we didn’t bend to her will,” they explained. “She never got very far. When our new manager refused to deal with her tattling, Mindy put her energy into her other ‘hobby’ at work: gossiping. She was a notorious gossip and began to spread rumors about me, my colleagues, and our new manager. Her rumors about me were especially spiteful so I think she was really mad at me. She was still working there when I left. I have no idea if she is still there now.”

According to the 2016 Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Report by the Society For Human Resource Management, relationships with coworkers were identified as the top driver of employee engagement, with 77% of participants listing these connections as a priority. Managers should understand that people like Mindy are harmful to the entire organization. But clearly, mistakes were made.

“This was not the only BS policy [enacted by our] old manager,” u/kathjoy added. “He had come up with a bunch on the spot to appease Mindy. I do have another funny story about Mindy where her complaining … resulted in the manager creating a policy, where if any food was brought in there had to be a sweet vegetarian option and a savory one just to please her.”

People were glad that Mindy got a taste of her own medicine

Employee's Lunch Policy Gets Changed Because Of The Office Drama Queen, They Execute Malicious Compliance

Rokas is a writer at Bored Panda with a BA in Communication. After working for a sculptor, he fell in love with visual storytelling and enjoys covering everything from TV shows (any Sopranos fans out there?) to photography. Throughout his years in Bored Panda, over 300 million people have read the posts he's written, which is probably more than he could count to.

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I'm the Visual Editor at Bored Panda, responsible for ensuring that everything our audience sees is top-notch and well-researched. What I love most about my job? Discovering new things about the world and immersing myself in exceptional photography and art.

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What do you think ?

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Kari Panda 3 years ago (edited)

1) If someone tracked my bathroom breaks, I‘d be at my boss‘s door within a minute. My working place isn’t perfect, but such crap wouldn‘t be tolerated. 2) I have a Mindy at work. She repeatedly complained about every single person on our team (15 people all together). One time when my boss called me because Mindy hat complained about me again, I kindly reminded my boss that there isn’t a single team member Mindy hasn‘t complained about yet, and yet the rest of us never had any complaints about each other. My boss is very concerned with working atmosphere and you could almost hear the light bulb moment she had. Since then, she nipped Mindy‘s complaints in the bud.

43points

Caro Caro 3 years ago

Good for you Kari.

13points

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Ivana 3 years ago

Manager must have had too much time on their hands. I manage a staff of 7 and I don't have the time for someone to come to me every day with a new complaint. I have had a few employees who liked to rat on others about insignificant things and I always nip that in the bud. I also make it pretty well known that any issues are between me and the employee in question. If there is a major issue I will discuss the concern but then the details and follow-up are between me and the employee and no one else needs to be involved. Thankfully I have had nothing serious like racism or sexism so pretty much any real issue has been easy to address with a one on one discussion with the employee and additional training where needed. Not going to micromanage 7 professionals for minor things and I absolutely do not tolerate any gossip.

12points