Managing many people is a challenge, especially when egos and inexperience clash.

When one employee took it upon himself to critique everyone else’s performance, he soon discovered that accountability works both ways.

Read on for the rest of the story.

Malicious compliance

I am an administrator for an institution that works in the public sector. The hierarchy of this structure is slightly complicated because of the nature of the job (criminal justice).

I oversee around 20 employees. Those employees are supervised by four individuals with rank for four different shifts.

Each supervisor has another ranked (lesser) person to assist them, so basically each shift has a primary and secondary supervisor.

This structure creates some bottlenecks.

They all report to one individual who ranks beneath me and I oversee all of them.

I report to the individual in charge of the whole institution and that person reports to an elected official who manages the entire department.

The tricky part is the department has two divisions and while this elected official oversees all of it, they really only run the other division.

One employee stands out as particularly difficult.

We have an employee who is very intelligent, however his book smart is vast and his actual experience in this line of work is minimal.

He is a ranked assistant on one shift, so he works with the supervisor of one shift.

He sends weekly emails complaining about all the other shifts and their mess-ups.

He reports even the most petty complaints.

He will write down everything from someone forgetting to remove trash, to someone making an error on a form or even someone interpreting a directive differently than him.

He makes it clear that his way is the correct way and anyone not doing things his way should be written up.

He even tries to micromanage his superiors.

He shouts “accountability” constantly or sends condescending emails after a directive is put in place (usually because someone messed up) and advises me to “speak directly with the individual that caused this change otherwise they won’t have a clue it’s because of them,”

Basically telling me and the head administrator how we should be doing our jobs.

He targets employees and complains about them demanding demotion and accountability and badmouths us for “doing nothing” about poor performance.

Bureaucracy gets in the way of reprimanding his behavior.

Meanwhile, I have submitted multiple demotion requests and write ups to HR for accountability, but the union steps in and dismisses many of them.

This individual does not know or see any of this because personnel issues are not open discussions and it really isn’t his business what discipline is put in place but it’s being done.

He just does not see it or hear about it to protect the privacy of that employee.

He steps out of line once again with his complaints.

Recently, he has started attacking a shift supervisor on the opposite shift.

Anytime something is off he sends an email with her opus accusations to that supervisor all of which turn out to not even be true or from that shift to begin with.

He ranted about how he never sees the administrators and in order to run a good facility administrators need to be visible and involved on every shift-even citing “it’s not that hard to come in late and stay late to speak to your employees”, basically telling us how we should be doing our jobs.

He never sees the full picture, even though he insists he knows everything.

He wants monthly supervisor meetings instead of quarterly because this will eliminate misunderstandings of directives that the other shifts are doing wrong.

Little does he know, we had monthly meetings for a long time and no one was able to make them and nothing came of the meetings so they requested quarterly meetings.

This supervisor doesn’t totally ignore all his complaints, but still thinks he’s out of line.

I agree that visibility is important and I stop in twice a month with night shift to “check in” and see day shift every day but he never gets up to come speak to me during my rounds (he sits and reads or plays on his phone, which is allowed due to the nature of the job).

He commented “I can’t recall the last time I saw any of you”, demanding that admins come in more to micromanage better.

I was in a week prior so that kinda upset me as he won’t acknowledge me.

So, to get back at him, the supervisor starts taking him up on his “suggestions.”

So I started coming in more and told him “why are you sitting? You should be managing? There are things to be cleaned and sorted, you can count inventory of supplies. We don’t pay you to sit around!”

This upset him because we do pay them to sit around until needed (if they have an intake).

The supervisor turns the heat back on this employee.

I then asked him why he was sitting in a restricted area.

He stated it was quiet in there and common sense shows he’s not violating the rule because he didn’t go past a specific point so he can sit there (it’s a corridor leading to another part of the building not owned by us).

I read him the directive which states: at no point should anyone for any reason go beyond this door unless in an emergency evacuation situation.

The supervisor wouldn’t let up.

I asked him again what was so difficult to understand about this request.

He still found nothing wrong with going past the door to sit on the other side.

I told him he has demanded accountability so he would be getting a write up for not following the directive.

The bossy employee didn’t take this well.

He flipped out saying it was such a minor thing and reminded him of all the little minor things he complains about with the other shifts.

I continued to come in and micromanage everyone.

Everyone else took notice too.

A few employees asked why I was there all the time because we hired supervisors to manage the shift so did we not think they were capable of doing the job?

I advised that some people felt that they couldn’t manage the shift and wanted administrators to come in more.

The complaining individual got several more write ups one major one for an almost fireable offense, showing that maybe, in fact, he didn’t have all the answers.

Finally, his actions come back to bite him when he tries to complain about the supervisor micromanaging him.

He sent an email to my supervisor complaining that I was micromanaging and being extremely anal with the minor write up infractions that he now says “aren’t that big to even be reprimanded for”.

My supervisor asked “but this is what you wanted, is it not? You complained that you wanted us to be seen and manage more and hold people accountable when they mess up”.

The complaining individual wanted other people written up but not himself because he was never wrong, or that’s what he implied.

It seems the supervisor’s action shut him up for the time being.

I went back to my regular twice a month check in which is just stopping in to see how things are going on the shift. The complainer has been quiet for now, sitting inside the allowable room reading.

His superiority complex will be his downfall.

There’s a valuable lesson to learn from all of this.

I remind him that the newest employees are the ones we can learn the most from and he needs to value knowledge he can get from anyone, regardless of their experience or rank status.

I’m an administrator and I tell staff I am always learning and will continue to learn from everyone.

It looks like the employee constantly critiquing other employees couldn’t take it when the spotlight was turned on him.

What did Reddit have to say?

Some people wouldn’t know accountability if it hit them over the head.

It’s a shame when your ego prevents you from holding down a steady job.

There’s usually something deeper going on with people who act like this.

This commenter thinks the organization’s structure doomed it to fail from the start.

This employee had a tough lesson to learn that no matter his ego, he wasn’t immune to the rules he was so set on enforcing.

Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.