“A Monkey Could Do Your Job”: Karen Manager Orders Employee To Print A Video File, Gets Fired
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
!["Karen Complains To HR About My Body, I Uno-Reverse Her Complaint, [And Now] Everyone Hates Her"](https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/coworker-complains-to-hr-about-womans-body-revenge-latest.jpg "\"Karen Complains To HR About My Body, I Uno-Reverse Her Complaint, [And Now] Everyone Hates Her\"")
Just keep in mind that not all seniors who return to the work force are like this Karen.
I have a friend at work who is older and completely technologically disinclined. He would always come to me for help. The difference was, he would take notes, and try to do it himself next time. He would never try to p**n off his work, he just didn't understand the technology. I always helped him and he was very grateful. He now has an assistant that can help him with that stuff, so now he only asks me questions even the assistant doesn't know.
I love that sort of technology ignorance. Not having needed to know it before so didn't learn is so different from having had the opportunity to learn but doesn't want to!
Yeah, 90% of his work is hands on, and only 10% on the computer. He is way more than qualified for the non-computer part. I wish I had time to learn some of his job.
Speaking of technology, I just need to know why the word "p**n" was censored.
I wondered the same. P a w n is not a “naughty word.
W***y Wonka agrees 🤠👍
I watched that TV show about the "P**n Kings" and I found it pretty obscene.
Since when has "p@wn" been a dirty word?
Butt not porn 🤷♀️
Your confused. 'P**n' was the word you were looking for, not 'porn'. Ok. Now I'm confused.....why is the word p.a.w.n. banned but not 'porn'?
Might be dialect? 😅
I wonder what other non-bad words are edited
Knőb, Maine Cöön cats and f***y...butt not porn, pussy, c**p or dipshit 🤷♀️🤦♀️
Ahh, they've added crăp to the list.
The thing is, this person was at least trying to learn new technology. And taking notes on what he was learning was a big help.
I spent some time working at a well known technical school and some of the emeritus professors and late career tenured professors would swing by and chill for a bit and usually teach me something about the technology in the lab that I didn't know. I was a technical instructor, so my knowledge base in that area was (and is) generally pretty good to begin with. These were not Comp Sci professors BTW, but they still sometimes had a better handle on tech and troubleshooting than some of the newer professors who I supported in more lecture based classes (to be clear, I'm not throwing shade on anyone, I was pretty much never the smartest person in the room unless I was alone).
Thanks for pointing this out. I'm 60 and I have a degree in Computer Information Systems. I keep the knowledge base current.
Just like my favourit client. I started working with her when she was 6 years before retiring. She was/is a no nonsense woman that was just happy we reduced her work and offerd her no unnecessary add ons that would have been to much. Damn I miss her and her strong dialect and frank words.
Agreed. This is the beauty of hiring those people who are semi-retired. You get the benefit of their years of experience in their field. Plus, they have a good work ethic. If I was an employer, that would likely be my first choice in hiring. Also, there are so many people in the 50+ age group who lost their jobs due to downsizing, etc. No one wants to hire them because of their age. Trend is to hire the young, so they don't have to pay as much in salaries. That's a shame.
Well of course not. That's why the ones that do are called Karen's. Hell one of my favorite coworkers was retired for about 7 years, but had to go back to working with how insane medical bills and inflation are. I call him when I start having computer issues before I even consider IT because this guy is easier to understand and less cranky lol
There are some older people I know they're on the ball and can still deal with all this stuff, and there are others that know nothing about it. Though the ones I deal with are usually the ones that are willing to admit that they don't know and just ask.... And if you give them a logical explanation, they listen
For sure. In my experience, most aren't.
If she wanted to get really malicious, she could have opened the video in Premier Pro and exported each frame as an individual page. At an average frame rate of 24fps, a 5 minute video would have been 7,200 pages. You'd have to wheel that thing into her office on a dolly (or two)!
How fast does this run? I wish I had that when I was trying to get trip photos from videos... Easier to whittle down the ones you want printed from a huge batch than to take all those screenshots!
I was thinking about that as well. If it was Linux you could have easily created a job to do so and had it running in the background while it printed every page allowing you to do other things. I'm sure there'd still be hell to pay based on the amount of resources(printer ink and paper) involved. It would probably keep the printer busy for a day or 2.
Imagine the printer paper orders lol
I was about to comment this, I would have done the same too
I remember my boss once angrily pulling me aside to talk about one of my staff who had sent a customer "incorrect out of date information". Basically one of the processes had changed six months previously so the info in the email no longer applied. I let him have his rant and then casually pointed out the email he was looking at was the same date and sent by the same person but was actually sent a year ago. He'd effectively pulled up the wrong email.
Just keep in mind that not all seniors who return to the work force are like this Karen.
I have a friend at work who is older and completely technologically disinclined. He would always come to me for help. The difference was, he would take notes, and try to do it himself next time. He would never try to p**n off his work, he just didn't understand the technology. I always helped him and he was very grateful. He now has an assistant that can help him with that stuff, so now he only asks me questions even the assistant doesn't know.
I love that sort of technology ignorance. Not having needed to know it before so didn't learn is so different from having had the opportunity to learn but doesn't want to!
Yeah, 90% of his work is hands on, and only 10% on the computer. He is way more than qualified for the non-computer part. I wish I had time to learn some of his job.
Speaking of technology, I just need to know why the word "p**n" was censored.
I wondered the same. P a w n is not a “naughty word.
W***y Wonka agrees 🤠👍
I watched that TV show about the "P**n Kings" and I found it pretty obscene.
Since when has "p@wn" been a dirty word?
Butt not porn 🤷♀️
Your confused. 'P**n' was the word you were looking for, not 'porn'. Ok. Now I'm confused.....why is the word p.a.w.n. banned but not 'porn'?
Might be dialect? 😅
I wonder what other non-bad words are edited
Knőb, Maine Cöön cats and f***y...butt not porn, pussy, c**p or dipshit 🤷♀️🤦♀️
Ahh, they've added crăp to the list.
The thing is, this person was at least trying to learn new technology. And taking notes on what he was learning was a big help.
I spent some time working at a well known technical school and some of the emeritus professors and late career tenured professors would swing by and chill for a bit and usually teach me something about the technology in the lab that I didn't know. I was a technical instructor, so my knowledge base in that area was (and is) generally pretty good to begin with. These were not Comp Sci professors BTW, but they still sometimes had a better handle on tech and troubleshooting than some of the newer professors who I supported in more lecture based classes (to be clear, I'm not throwing shade on anyone, I was pretty much never the smartest person in the room unless I was alone).
Thanks for pointing this out. I'm 60 and I have a degree in Computer Information Systems. I keep the knowledge base current.
Just like my favourit client. I started working with her when she was 6 years before retiring. She was/is a no nonsense woman that was just happy we reduced her work and offerd her no unnecessary add ons that would have been to much. Damn I miss her and her strong dialect and frank words.
Agreed. This is the beauty of hiring those people who are semi-retired. You get the benefit of their years of experience in their field. Plus, they have a good work ethic. If I was an employer, that would likely be my first choice in hiring. Also, there are so many people in the 50+ age group who lost their jobs due to downsizing, etc. No one wants to hire them because of their age. Trend is to hire the young, so they don't have to pay as much in salaries. That's a shame.
Well of course not. That's why the ones that do are called Karen's. Hell one of my favorite coworkers was retired for about 7 years, but had to go back to working with how insane medical bills and inflation are. I call him when I start having computer issues before I even consider IT because this guy is easier to understand and less cranky lol
There are some older people I know they're on the ball and can still deal with all this stuff, and there are others that know nothing about it. Though the ones I deal with are usually the ones that are willing to admit that they don't know and just ask.... And if you give them a logical explanation, they listen
For sure. In my experience, most aren't.
If she wanted to get really malicious, she could have opened the video in Premier Pro and exported each frame as an individual page. At an average frame rate of 24fps, a 5 minute video would have been 7,200 pages. You'd have to wheel that thing into her office on a dolly (or two)!
How fast does this run? I wish I had that when I was trying to get trip photos from videos... Easier to whittle down the ones you want printed from a huge batch than to take all those screenshots!
I was thinking about that as well. If it was Linux you could have easily created a job to do so and had it running in the background while it printed every page allowing you to do other things. I'm sure there'd still be hell to pay based on the amount of resources(printer ink and paper) involved. It would probably keep the printer busy for a day or 2.
Imagine the printer paper orders lol
I was about to comment this, I would have done the same too
I remember my boss once angrily pulling me aside to talk about one of my staff who had sent a customer "incorrect out of date information". Basically one of the processes had changed six months previously so the info in the email no longer applied. I let him have his rant and then casually pointed out the email he was looking at was the same date and sent by the same person but was actually sent a year ago. He'd effectively pulled up the wrong email.