Whether or not you enjoy a job can greatly depend on the people you work with, including your bosses.

Those personality tests they sometimes want you to take can be fun and insightful, but they can also give ill-meaning bosses ammo they don’t deserve.

This employee wanted to make sure their bully of a boss couldn’t do that, so he found a way to use the test for his own agenda.

Check out the details!

Complied so much on a test, it stopped evil boss from profiling employees

Story: Had an evil middle manager boss who eventually lost 1/3 of the team in under three months.

I had been there longer than him, before his position was built out.

He was a really gross one, like psychological abuse and also openly commented on a 16 year old celebrity being “hot” when was 36.

The boss found ways to be mean to employees he couldn’t bully.

Anyway, when he was onboarded, he pretty quickly assessed which employees he couldn’t bully and started trying to make our lives harder.

He started doing some “anonymous” reviews and tests.

Not surprisingly, some anonymous feedback was super negative for the people on his bully list even if we were high performing or project leads.

I finally had enough of attempting to talk it out head on.

He always denied everything and even once actually asked me if I was on drugs (wtf) during a 1:1.

He was sneaky on a personality test.

This was / is a HUGELY FAMOUS tech company.

Anyway, he decided it was time for another round of anonymous testing. This time a personality test.

I answered every question imagining I was him. Every single one.

To nobody’s surprise he was like “surprise we are going to all reveal and see which result we have on the screen now yay!”

The tactic worked!

I matched him perfectly.

The only one.

He got the absolute psychopath result but it also says like “entrepreneur and celebrity” so he would have been thrilled but-

He knew we were very different, yet somehow we had the exact same result.

Out of like 20+ possibilities.

The boss was no longer a fan of this test.

When he pulled up the results on screen his face dropped.

He stared directly at me, immediately breaking the character who was excited for sharing the “secret” results.

I watched him choke down his anger as he pretended to go down the list, now unprepared.

Every other sentence out of his mouth suddenly was how unreliable these tests can be and that “you never know.”

He didn’t back down.

As he dug his hole deeper, explaining backwards regarding this time wasting team wide meeting for his stupid exercise originally intended to single out some folks based upon a personality test, I finally found my opportunity.

I smiled at him.

I smiled with eye contact.

No words, everything was said there.

This isn’t the only time he used malicious compliance on this boss.

I watched him die inside, and he still had to fill 25 minutes of his stupid meeting or call it off.

I have another malicious compliance story about him (he was an absolute clown, I bet I have more if I think harder) but this is my fave quiet little moment where I ruined his total concept of self in one second by doing exactly what asked of me: waste my time to take his stupid personality test.

I remember having to take a personality test once when I worked at a tech company.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story…

Here’s a suggestion that would’ve annoyed the boss even more…

One reader experienced something similar at work.

Another reader thinks he should check the local laws.

This reader is hung up on a statement early in the story.

Maybe the boss will stop having the employees take unnecessary tests and attend unnecessary meetings.

Or maybe not.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.