Most human beings seem to instinctually understand why it’s bad to bite the hand that feeds you (metaphorically or otherwise) but others, well…they think they’re so far above the rest of us that they can do whatever they want.
That seems to be the case here, anyway.
OP does scheduling for a bunch of supervisors.
At work I am responsible for coordinating supervision coverage. We do this quarterly and I usually get this done 1-2 weeks before the following quarter starts. When it’s 3-4 weeks out, I request everyone’s availability.
This includes their preferred days, the days they definitely can’t work and any vacation days they plan to use.
Because life happens and there’s unplanned PTO or sometimes call-in sick, I also schedule backups at the same time to fill in if this happens.
She knows it’s no one’s favorite thing, but responsibilities remain.
One thing to note is that these supervision days can easily add 3-4 hours to their workday because of paperwork and such.
It is an unfortunate part of their position, and I hate being the one to add to their workload, but they all agree that it’s necessary. Hence sharing the responsibility.
Just about all the staff get me their availabilities by the due date without an issue.
They’re all generally pretty flexible and I try to be as accommodating as possible because, let’s be honest, work is not the center of their lives and they already have full plates.
So if they say they 100% cannot work a certain day, then I won’t be asking them to come in on those days. Period.
One person, though, loves to make her life harder.
There’s always that one though, right? There’s always that one person that is just ate up like a soup sandwich and makes every step more painful than it needs to be.
This person, we’ll call her Elder Karen (EK), has been here for 20-30 years, can’t be fired because of tenure and is nearing retirement. Basically untouchable disciplinary-wise.
Here comes the malicious compliance…
EK sends me her availability several days after the deadline despite my repeatedly asking. And when she did, she put her only available days as Mondays and Wednesdays.
Every other day she supposedly can only work remote (I say “work” because she is logged in and just wiggles her mouse so her computer won’t go into sleep mode. Doesn’t do any real work.) and several of her Wednesdays are 100% no because she is taking PTO.
So she arrogantly made life difficult.
Again, I try to respect the days they say they cannot work, but in EK’s situation, she can get lost. What I forgot to mention is that everyone needs to cover a certain number of days as lead and backup.
I started working on it as fast as I could, placed a few days and got pulled into a meeting. So no surprise that I may have overlooked something.
I sent out the email and went back to my work.
So, OP gave her a little taste of her own medicine.
A few weeks go by and I get a strongly worded email from EK berating me for putting her on a day as supervisor that she was unavailable (the day prior to that coverage).
Suffice to say it was quite unprofessional and basically called me inept for a minor oversight. So I started moving other people around while still trying to consider their scheduled PTO days like one big sudoku puzzle with names.
Remember how they all have a number of days they need to cover?
Guess who was missing quite a few.
In my hurry, when initially adding her in, I miscounted. So I was able to switch supervisors that one day in question without issue.
Then came the arduous task of putting her name on more days.
Since the schedule was changed, I highlight the edits to prevent confusion for the team.
Then comes the satisfying feeling of writing an email. I reply apologizing for the error, letting her know I made the changes she requested.
I also wrote,
“EK, I noticed that you had less days of coverage than required. I moved some people around and added a few more days on to the calendar for you. This should bring you even with the rest of the supervisors now. Unfortunately, due to your restrictive availability, I was forced to schedule you on a couple of your PTO days so I will need you here. Furthermore, because the quarter has started, changing availabilities isn’t allowed. So your coverage days will need to be permanent as is”.
This felt so nice given I had to drop everything for her to make her happy, throwing a metaphorical wrench in my workflow.
Reddit’s gotta love this one, right?
The top comment is stuck on the ugly metaphor.
Everyone loves when bullies get their due.
This person thinks OP could take it farther if she wanted to.
The golden rule exists for a reason.
Tenure really does cause trouble.
This almost wrote itself.
Truly a case of karma taking the wheel.
Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were travelling for business.