Some bosses are just unbelievable, especially those who think you have nothing better to do and will bombard you with tons of emails all day.
In this story, his other boss is incredibly toxic that he can’t finish work because of his emails.
When his boss told him to answer ALL his emails immediately, that’s exactly what he did.
Find out how the story progressed.
Email above anything else
Let’s start with a bit of background.
I work for a very big company, but due to my speciality, my work is split across the main company and one of the smaller companies.
The MD of the main company allows my days to be split in half.
The big company is very laid back when it comes to my work.
As long as my work is done by the deadline date, they pretty much don’t care what I do during the work week.
Meet RA.
In the smaller company, I report to the C-suite but the CEO.
Let’s call the CEO RA ‘cos the sun doesn’t rise until he gets out of bed.
RA is most interested in what I do during the day.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say that RA thinks that I don’t work, but sit around playing computer games all day.
RA loves sending tons off emails.
RA send anything from 20 to 30 emails to me per day, and more than half will be the same question, just phrased differently.
Each email response is usually anything from 2 to 5 typed pages.
I have even had emails sent to me at 11 pm and at 8:30 the following morning, an email asking why I haven’t responded to the previous email.
If I am asked the same question multiple times, I ignore the majority of the emails and only answer the question once.
When I am working, I need to concentrate, and most days, I close my email client so that I’m not disturbed.
RA sent him a WhatsApp message.
Last Monday, I’m working quite happily, and I get a WhatsApp, asking me to please read an email and respond post haste (to quote RA).
I stop what I am doing as I get the sinking feeling that something bad is about to happen.
As per usual, there are 30 emails from RA.
He decided to just answer all the emails.
The first email starts off by stating “You must always answer emails as quickly as possible as it is unprofessional and shows disrespect to the writer of the email.”
Cue malicious compliance.
I stop what I am doing, and start to respond to each email individually, making sure that my answers to the same questions are different.
I further indicate that I only work for him half day, and will stop my work at exactly the middle of the work day.
RA started looping in other staff into the emails.
I spend the next day and a half responding to emails and not doing my work, even though there is a deadline looming for RA and his little company.
These days, when I walk into the office in the morning, RA seems to have spent the entire night responding to the emails.
And in the process, dragging other members of staff into the email trail, and the email is getting so complex that I don’t know what’s going on.
Obviously, he was not able to finish any work.
Yesterday, I was expected to have finished RA’s work, and when asked to present the outcome, I simply said that I had not finished.
When asked why, my response was that I was so busy responding to emails I wasn’t able to do the work.
RA lost his mind and started to threaten me with being fired.
Thankfully, he was taken out of RA’s company.
He said that there was a customer that was waiting for the result of my work.
He then asks why were emails put above doing my work, and all I did was produce a copy of the email.
My boss from the big company was also present, and all she did was laugh.
She then told RA that I will no longer do any work for his company and he must find somebody else.
Let’s see what other Reddit users have to say about this.
This comment came from a video editor who hates disturbances, too.
This makes sense.
Excellent job, says this user.
Users are loving the malicious compliance.
Big boss, small mind.
Not a good combination!
If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.