Co-Worker Harassed And Reported Her To Their Director, So She Turned The Tables And Got Satisfying Revenge

Matthew Gilligan

12 months ago

Source: Reddit/AITA/Unsplash/@wocintechchat

It’s so satisfying when things blow up in a jerk’s face, isn’t it?

Especially when it’s someone at work who won’t let you do your job in peace.

It really soothes the soul!

And this story from Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page is a good one!

The woman who wrote it told readers that she works in a hospital…

My coworker wanted to micromanage me and didn’t like that I talked back, so he reported me to our director.

“For a bit of context I (25F) work as part of the sanitization department for a hospital.

We have multiple different positions, most of which work on upkeeping the cleanliness of the general areas of the hospital. This, as well as making sure patient rooms and other utilized areas are sanitized regularly to ensure patients and staff are protected as much as possible from any sort of environmental threats.

It was a busy job.

We take out trash from nurses stations, patient rooms, replace linen, clean the hallways and floors, as well as clean bathrooms daily.

I started working about a year before the start of the pandemic, and as such a lot of our processes have, as you can guess, changed and been more intense since. Our supervisors often come around to each floor to make sure everyone in our department is working properly, and being diligent about their cleanings.

My position was what we call a float worker (essentially, i’ve been trained in every area, and will be assigned to cover people who call in sick, are on their days off, or on vacation).

There was a lot to keep track of.

This comes with a lot of hurdles, such as trying to remember what order everything needs to be done in every area (we’ve got approximately nearly 30 different areas) So sometimes, I need to ask our supervisors for a quick refresh on things that need to be accomplished over the day, if I don’t feel comfortable with my memory of the area.

The downside to my position is I won’t know until I show up to work where I will be for the day. I don’t mind this, as it allows me to see a vast amount of the hospital and build a rapport with nursing staff and doctors all around. Usually, if I am covering for someone’s vacation or time off, I will know ahead of time, as my posted schedule will have me in their position for that time.

Now on to the story:

She had to cover a shift for someone.

About a year and a half ago, I was scheduled to cover one of our guys who works in the operating room (or OR for short) for about a month (for a little more context here, our OR team consists of 4 people, one person comes in at 6, my position which came in at 8, and two other positions that come in at 9 and 11).

Now I didn’t mind this, as I was well acquainted with the staff there, and the area in general since for a while I was set to cover the same person at least twice a week at the beginning of the pandemic.

On top of that, working for the OR usually came with a fair bit of free time since there wasn’t a whole lot to do other than ready the room for the next patient that would be coming through, and the stuff you were assigned to do other than those rooms were usually finished before your first break anyway.

One problem…

There was one downside: Steve (56M)

Steve was our afternoon guy, he came in at 11 and ended shift usually at 7:30 (but later if the OR dictated it) He’s an scumbag, the sort of person who thinks LGBT people are just mentally ill, and has told me at least twice that I am not built for working, and that I should be in the kitchen at home preparing dinner for my husband (I am a very open lesbian and he refuses to accept it).

This guy was a real pain in the you-know-what.

This paired with him being the epitome of a teachers pet: You did something just a little too slow? He called our supervisors. Overrun with work and you couldn’t get to your secondary tasks right away? He called our supervisors. Went to your break just a little bit late because a patient finished surgery 5 minutes before you were supposed to sit down and relax for a tiny bit? well you can guess what he would do.

Steve was the reason not a lot of people liked to learn how to work the positions in the OR. If the constant calling of supervisors wasn’t enough (which trust me, it is for most people).

And he loved to boss folks around.

He would insist on commenting on how you did things, try to “teach” you better ways of cleaning if you weren’t being absolutely efficient. He would harass people constantly (especially the women), asking them if they had done *this* or *that*, and most of all, he loved to try and boss everyone from our department around.

Our other OR guys have gotten used to this by now, and just ignore him for the most part, but I, on the other hand, love to take the **** out of him sometimes just because it’s fun.

The first week of my month long stint in OR went without most of a problem from Steve, as I am normally very diligent about my work anyway, so I don’t leave stuff too long to give him any reason to talk to me. The second week is where the malicious compliance truly takes place.

This was going to be an intense time at work.

It was one of the busiest weeks of the OR for the year. Where we would normally average just under 35 cases a day in our 10 room OR, this week we averaged 52 a day. Cases were concluding in record time, as the nurses and doctors wanted to get the hell out of dodge before any extra cases could be added on.

This meant that our little team of 4 (myself, Steve and two other guys) were cleaning a room, right in time to then clean another room. This was the most stressed i’d seen any of these guys be, but Steve worst of all.

At around noon, rooms were coming out, and our early shift guy had just come back from his lunch (which he had to take an hour and a half late because of all the cases) We cut through the two rooms we had left, and I made a quick round of my area to make sure things weren’t in shambles, before I started to plan on heading to lunch.

Steve had to be nosy…again…

My area was as tip-top as it could be, so I checked the board before letting the guys know I was heading to lunch since we had some free time before more cases came out. Everyone was okay with this, except for Steve surprisingly. He stopped me, and this was the back and forth that ensued:

Steve: wait, have you checked your sinks?

Me: Yes, scrubbed them before the morning rush.

Steve: How about your trash cans?

Me: My god, yes I checked them, one of them is half full but I don’t see half an hour making that full. Now can I go? I don’t want to leav-

Steve: What about your hallways? did you dust them?

Me: Y. E. S. I did. Now please leave me alone, I need to get to lunch befo-

Steve: How about your high dusting? did you ge-

Me: Steve, I am going to ask you once, and only once. Mind your business and worry about your own area.

Steve tattled on her.

And with that I walked away. Steve very much DID NOT like that at all. I was 10 minutes into my lunch in the ORs break room, half way through my food when our department director walked in.

She walked over to me, tapped me on the shoulder (I had ear buds in watching an episode of anime I had missed over the weekend) and told me to meet her in our office after our lunch. I asked her what it was about and she told me we’d talk about it when I got down there.

I was mad to say the least. I knew that little rat had probably told our director that I had hit him or something, and was going to use my little outburst as a “threat that caused him undue mental harm” and that he “didn’t feel comfortable working around me if I was gonna act like that”. Mind you, I am a 5’4″, 130lbs woman who as sweet as pie, and Steve is 6’3″ and prolly 230lbs.

As I was finishing my food, and watching my episode, I peaked at the monitor on the wall that kept track of patients coming into the room and leaving. Every single room was currently closing up their cases, which meant that my OR team was about to get rocked. I panicked for a moment, then… I remembered what had happened with Steve, and I couldn’t help myself from laughing a little bit.

Steve was about to get put in his place.

Queue the sweet sweet malicious compliance.

I put my lunch bag away with the other bags in the back of the break room, took the last sip of my soda as I tossed it and walked out with a grin on my face. On my way to the elevators, I saw they had only done one room so far, and judging on that, I assumed it would probably take them another hour and a half to get everything finished for the rooms. Steve saw me on my way out and stopped me:

Steve: “OP, get your hairnet on, we have 9 other rooms that need to get cleaned”

Me: “Oh, I’m so sorry Steve, I was asked to come down to the office by our Director, she had somethings she wanted to discuss with me, and told me I had to come immediately after my lunch and to not worry about th-”

Steve: “but we are getting overrun with work”

Me: “I don’t see how that is currently my issue. if I don’t talk with her I might get fired for insubordination, so good luck, I’ll try to be as fast as I can” and smiled as I turned away.

It was time to talk to the director.

I got down to our office, and the director is sitting with one of our HR representatives. She motions me to close the door and sit down so I do.

Surprise surprise, she pulled me in to talk about the fact that someone, of which she couldn’t technically name but everyone knew who was being talked about, came to her with a complaint about a hostile encounter in which I made the person feel uncomfortable.

I laughed a little bit, and told them what had happened from my point of view. The director just kinda put her head in her hands, and the HR rep had to stifle a chuckle.

It got quite for a few moments, so I asked if I was gonna lose my job over this.

The director knew what was really going on.

Our director said that originally it was gonna be a strike on my record, and some disciplinary actions such as taking some online courses about de-escalation of conflict and hostile work environments, as well as an in-service about what to do when a coworker and you don’t agree on something.

But after hearing my side of the story, along with the plethora of other reports made by Steve about people in the department, she said she realized that she probably shouldn’t have gotten HR involved until she heard my side of things, and dismissed both the rep and myself.

As I walked after the rep, I remembered those times he looked down on me for being a women. Instead of heading back upstairs to the **** show that awaited me, I closed the door, turned back around and sat down.

Now it was HER turn to complain.

She looked up from her laptop, sighed and asked what I needed. I just smiled and said “I’d like to lodge a complaint about Steve” She stared at me for a few moments, then asked me to detail my complaint.

Here is the list of things I had gotten her to put into this complaint:

Micromanagement of Peers

Creating a hostile workspace

Unnecessary Reporting of Coworkers

Bullying

Misogyny

Discrimination of LGBT Coworkers

Misconduct (Once told me I like other women because “you didn’t have a guy who could **** you good enough”)

After going through the list, providing examples and approximate dates for said examples, my director just kinda shook her head and put her fingers up to her temple.
I looked at her, and just said “bad day to be Steve?” and she nodded “yeah, bad day to be Steve. You can head back to work, ill talk to him before i leave for the day”.

It was time to encounter Steve again.

I left the office, headed back up to the OR a whopping hour later, and our OR team looked dreadful. Even our morning guy, who is in his mid thirties, and has been doing this upwards of a decade, was looking rough. They finished all the rooms, impressive. They all looked at me, and Steve was the first to say anything

Steve: “took you long enough *****, where were you?”

Me: “oh don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough. My meeting with the director went well”

Morning Guy: “What happened?”

Me: “Oh, well someone complained about me being aggressive, and it ended up turning into a conversation that would definitely eliminate the hostile work environment that was created here”

Steve, smiling: “good, last thing we need is someone to feel uncomfortable up here”

Me: “oh of course Steve, wouldn’t want anyone to feel attacked or anything right? also, Steve I had a question for you, have you checked your break room yet? last I saw, the trash was overflowing onto the floor”

Steve left in a panic, and the other 3 of us laughed.

The fallout…

Now, so far it might seem like this belongs on Nuclear Revenge, but sadly the fallout wasn’t what I was hoping, but it was still sweet to hear.

I was informed from our Director about what had happened with Steve. Since I was the person who levied the complaint, I was entitled to hear about any actions taken to correct what I had complained about in an attempt to let me see that action was taken on my behalf.

She said he would have been outright fired if I wasn’t the only one who levied these complaints. While they took it seriously regardless, without other women stepping forward to say anything they couldn’t fire him off of my complaints alone.

Steve got smacked down.

That being said, Steve was still reprimanded hard, and was slapped with two strikes (three strikes get you fired) and a year worth of online learnings and in-service trainings for things such as discrimination, misogynistic reform, LGBT learnings, etc.

I bet that jerk learned his lesson!

He was also told if it was reported he said anything close to what he said to me again, he would be fired and black listed from hospitals in the state.

In good news, I have become a lead for our day shift. While I maintained my float status, covering people who were sick and whatnot, I did gain a few more dollars an hour, some leadership responsibilities, and most important of all, a fancy title to tell Steve to **** off with.”

Check out what folks had to say.

One person talked about their own job as a housekeeper.