It’s great to have friends at work – coworkers you know will really have your back.

So what would you do if a troublesome department was giving someone you are close with a hard time?

That is what happened to the quality control officer in this story, so she made sure that the other department was put in its place.

Check it out.

Never mess with “work mom’s” co-workers

Context: I (34f) have a nickname at work with the new hires that we hired on earlier this year, which is “Work Mom.”

One new hire (I’ll call her G, 34f) started it because I had literally everything on hand at my desk to help her when she randomly got stung by a bee.

I love it because that sums me up in a nutshell personality wise.

I tell our team and teams we work closely with that if they ever need something from my desk or coffee nook, that they’re welcome to it and to just tell me when they had to take something after the fact.

Sounds like a nice person.

G is also very kind and caring and loves making connections with our teams and trying to help out in anyway she can so that she can be as well rounded of an employee as possible.

It’s great and her and I work off of each other very well due to this.

From what little I can tell about my work, I’m in QA (Quality Assurance) and majority of our time every year is spent doing quarterly audits.

Normally, they go over very well and quickly and we have no issues.

But, when we do have issues, we write them down as Datasheets to be resolved at some point by the team that screwed up.

Pretty simple stuff.

Often times it’s as simple as “Hey you guys have a new procedure, but you didn’t update any of your SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), can you please do that?”

Or “Hey, there was a massive re-org of your team, update that.”

And the worst offender being “Everyone’s training is late, please get everyone up to date”.

However, 1 such team that another team member of mine deals with, is definitely seen as the main Problem Child when it comes to these Datasheets.

It’s worse than pulling teeth with them to get them to reply and even update us on what is going on with their progress.

And 1 person in particular, is an absolute Cee U Next Tuesday and causes more issues than he’s worth; I’ll call him Neckbeard, because if you recall the South Park WoW episode, he is THAT Neckbeard guy.

Don’t know his age, but it’s close to our age for sure.

This is where the petty revenge starts.

G would often go over there to see how she could help that team with work and audits coming up, and also because one of the guys on the team was a friend of her’s, outside of being friendly to each other at work, they text each other quite a bit.

I had met him too when he came over for birthday cake I made for G and thought he was pretty cool as well.

This one day, G went over to see if she could help with their progress on the 7 Datasheets this team has against them and brought Halloween candy with her that we keep in a cauldron I brought in (I’m one of the office Goths/Witches, lol).

Upon entering their small lab area across the hall from us, the whole Problem Team grabs some of the candy, and when G turns to the Neckbeard and asks “Any chance I could help you with those Datasheets?”, Neckbeard literally WAVES HER OFF and says “Be gone.”

The entire team, plus G’s friend, LAUGH at her, so she thinks Neckbeard is kidding at first and kinda nervously laughs with them; but then they laugh harder.

G stops and looks at Neckbeard and says “Wait, you’re serious?”

Wow, what a jerk.

To which he replies “Yeah, I don’t need your help, I know everyone has been breathing down my neck about these things. So be gone, you’re dismissed.”

Still waving his hand dismissively at her.

She comes back to our cube, tells me the whole exchange with a fed up look on her face, and begins to gather her things so she can head home for the day and continue work from there.

To say that I became overcome with Mama Bear rage is an understatement.

But, this is where Neckbeard messed up.

Because, you see, I was put in charge of tracking the Datasheets progress and sending out weekly emails informing not only the teams responsible for them, but their supervisors and managers as well.

And Neckbeard’s Datasheets are going to be 2 years late come the 1st quarter of the new year (2025).

And because of my tracking sheet, our new manager has been incredibly happy with the new communication between all the teams that have Datasheets against them.

That will come back to bite him.

And apparently Neckbeard lied to our manager in saying that he was almost done with the Datasheets, and he said he was in active communication with the QA team about them.

So, I calmed down, I sought out our QA Lead and updated him of the situation, and then I went to our supervisor.

Our supervisor, JUST came out of a meeting about the Problem Team and their outstanding Datasheets, so when he saw the look of hate and discontent on my face, he knew something was wrong.

So, he then started a new email to our manager and the Problem Team’s supervisor to let them know what just happened.

Oh, and G’s friend that also laughed at her? He must have figured out that he messed up, because he swung by shortly after the incident and asked if she was still in office.

I bet he feels bad.

I just smiled at him and said “No, she left”; and he cursed under his breath and took off back towards the lab.

That was about end of last week, that this occurred.

And my update on what is going to happen to Neckbeard is satisfying, to me at least.

Now, if you work where I do, it’s known that you’re allowed to work from home, so long as you can be contacted and you get your work done when it’s due.

I go in 3 days a week just to give myself a break from being at home.

A just punishment.

My Lead informed me, that the Problem Team’s work from home privileges are being entirely revoked, they MUST be in during certain hours of the day (which is another slap in the face, cuz we can log in whenever we please).

Any PTO they had planned is now being rejected and they’re all being written up.

This will also probably mess with any future raises they may get.

Sounds like it was a well-deserved punishment.

Look at the comments below to see what other people had to say.

I would love to know too.

This person can’t believe it took them two years to fix.

Two years is a long time.

This person loves this story.

They put an end to that guy’s attitude.

Together.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.