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“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.
RELATED:
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
What do you think ?
Sean Sean 3 years ago
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)!
Jen 3 years ago
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!
Load More Replies...
Bill Evs 3 years ago
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.
Apatheist Account2 3 years ago
In the eighties, I did once ask a client for a copy of a 3.5in floppy disk. They put it on the photocopier and faxed me the image, I kid you not.
Sean Sean 3 years ago
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)!
Jen 3 years ago
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!
Load More Replies... Bill Evs 3 years ago
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.
Apatheist Account2 3 years ago
In the eighties, I did once ask a client for a copy of a 3.5in floppy disk. They put it on the photocopier and faxed me the image, I kid you not.
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