Workplace transitions don’t always bring out the best in the employees who work there.

The following story chronicles a corrupt boss who tries to micromanage and manipulate the system.

One brave employee’s clever malicious compliance ends up teaching him a needed lesson that not everyone plays by his rules.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

But you’re not my Manager

Okay, so years ago I was working for a government facility which was undergoing a massive transition as majority of the employees were reaching retirement age.

This place only did a mass hiring to replace people once every 15 years or so.

This mass hiring brought in some bad eggs.

One of the new hires was coming in to replace the current training department head and was given the title of Deputy Department Manager while he trained for the new role and prepared to take over.

We’ll call him E.

They didn’t have many nice things to say about the guy.

Dude was the biggest prick I have ever encountered.

He was constantly finding reasons to write people up and spoke down to everyone with a lesser title than himself.

He quickly became a threat to peace around the office.

His first actions as a Deputy Manager was to change the way we did training and change the hiring process to micromanage who could get hired to this already in-depth vetting process. (Job required a Top Secret clearance.)

I was part of the class previous to these changes (training could take upwards of 3 years to complete) and he immediately had it out for anyone from our group that didn’t meet his criteria.

He wasted no time executing his agenda and got HR involved.

One day, we all started getting called one-by-one into the training manager’s manager’s office for a meeting with the Department head, HR, and E.

Now I know what’s going on, as the people getting called are the “problems” E has been trying to get rid of, so I pull E aside.

So this employee plants the seed of a clever plan.

“Hey E, I have an idea of what’s happening, but just so I’m not blindsided, are you guys writing us up for something?

If so, what incident so I can make sure I know what went wrong?”

E takes the bait.

E: “I’m not allowed to talk about that as per the Employee Handbook only your direct manager can discuss that and as Deputy Manager, I am not your direct manager.”

Cue MC.

The employee’s suspicions are confirmed.

So I get called into said meeting and yup, they’re writing us up en masse for thing we had already been written up for.

Apparently E had convinced HR that writing everyone up again for all the offenses in a single writeup would make it easier to track.

This place could only hold a write-up against you for termination purposes for 1 year, this scheme effectively reset the clock on a lot of those previous write-ups.

E was quite pleased with himself.

In my meeting was Department Head, HR, and E with a huge grin on his face.

I looked at HR then looked at E and asked HR why E was here?

They replied to observe.

It’s time to set the plan in motion.

I asked, “But doesn’t the handbook say that only my direct management chain and HR are privy to these meetings? If so, I’m not comfortable with E being here and would like him to leave.”

His demeanor instantly changed, especially since HR agreed with me and had him leave the meeting.

Now, the employee could speak more freely.

Now without him there, I was able to make a case as to why the new write up was invalid and violated the handbook.

Department head had no clue (or at least feigned it) that we had already been written up for these offenses.

The plan worked! Kind of.

Ultimately got the whole lot of the write ups for everyone tossed out.

Made myself target numero uno for this guy who eventually got me fired a couple years later, but not before I got him demoted.

A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Reddit is sure to get a kick out of this one.

Office politics are just exhausting.

This user has more questions.

A jerk and unqualified? Pick a struggle.

Though the battle was far from over, the employee’s quick thinking managed to derail the deputy manager’s power play.

This story proves that sometimes the best strategy is simply knowing the rulebook better than the boss.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.