Working in a toxic work environment is not sustainable.

That’s why the IT Director in today’s story decides to find a new job where there isn’t a crazy CEO.

The CEO is so crazy that she won’t even listen to reason when he tries to be helpful and make recommendations about filling his position.

Now, he doesn’t want to be helpful anymore.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

IT Director “not being helpful?” Time for malicious compliance.

Settle in for a form of malicious compliance for “not being helpful.”

This is long, but I promise to make it worth your while.

I’m an IT Director (m51), though I’m the only IT person in a nonprofit with 45+ employees.

The place I work is a toxic nightmare only because of the CEO.

Everyone else is awesome.

I didn’t want to leave my job, and my coworkers, but I was left with no choice.

The job search began…

I was “quiet quitting” for several weeks while I interviewed for new positions.

I took home all personal items from my office.

The job market for an IT person of my caliber is like candy land right now.

It wasn’t hard to find a new job.

I quickly found a new position, and the day they officially welcomed me to the new company, I submitted my two weeks notice.

Granted, I had been considering giving no notice and leaving with a “fire and brimstone” approach, but I read a lot of articles about resignation letters and avoiding any negativity.

So I backed off and just gave a boilerplate, two-weeks notice resignation letter – nothing positive, nothing negative.

The temporary replacement wasn’t as skilled as him.

A coworker who wears several hats was tapped to be the interim director.

I met with that person and the COO to develop a transition plan to avoid as much chaos as possible.

They mostly work in social media and marketing, but during the pandemic I had trained them to be an emergency IT replacement in case anything happened to me.

Though they will be okay for a few weeks, they simply do not have the experience to do all of the things I do: network administration, systems administration, help desk, web development, app development, etc.

I happen to be a unicorn of sorts: an IT generalist that has done it all.

The CEO didn’t like his plan.

We met with the CEO in a cramped office to review the transition plan.

We immediately stated that the interim IT director would not be able to do their old job while they are running IT.

The CEO is a complete narcissist, and deeply arrogant, while also being completely incompetent and lacking in the most basic IT skills.

She immediately pushed back on the plan as basically this was not her idea (she rejects everyone else’s ideas 100% of the time).

The CEO wouldn’t listen.

I tried to speak up and advocate for the COO and the interim IT Director as I’ve been doing the job for 5+ years, so I know the reality – there’s no way they could possibly do IT and their old job.

She literally wouldn’t let me finish a sentence.

She wanted to see a “checklist” of my job duties.

There are literally hundreds of pages of documentation for my role, which is not really possible to summarize into a “checklist”.

The CEO sounds very unreasonable.

Everyone in the meeting had been emailed a disaster recovery/ business continuity document that I wrote for my role.

We referred her to the doc that everyone else was looking at.

She complained that it hadn’t been printed out for her.

M’lady, everyone else in the meeting had their laptops open with the doc.

I simply turned my laptop around and gently pushed it toward her.

She flew off the handle; she wanted a printed copy. Also she said “You are NOT being helpful.”

I was literally in the meeting to be helpful.

The CEO was also very rude.

There are hyperlinks galore in this doc, so a printed copy would be useless, but I tried to oblige by taking my laptop back and started to print it.

Before I could finish, she was standing next to my chair and was saying “ARE YOU GOING TO MOVE???”

I guess she was trying to get past me to go to the printer? (I said “I think what you meant to say was “Excuse me” as I scooted my chair forward.)

Not being helpful?

You have no idea what that looks like from your IT guy.

Let’s cut that two-weeks notice in half!

I said “Ok I’m done” and went back to my office, wrote a new resignation letter, went right back to the meeting and handed it in.

“Instead of leaving in two weeks I will be leaving in one week.”

The CEO’s jaw dropped to the floor; she was speechless; she just sputtered as I closed the door behind me.

They already begged me to go back to 2 weeks notice out of “courtesy and professionalism”.

I just told them that courtesy and professionalism is a two-way street, and they hadn’t earned it.

This company will need a lot of luck to survive without him.

I’m going to barely work for this last week – instead of tying up loose ends, I’ll just not quite get around to finishing stuff while I watch them scramble.

Good luck installing new software or updates on all of the computers that require an administrative password.

Good luck handling the media coordinator who regularly creates network storms with his antiquated studio equipment.

Good luck onboarding new staff with their accounts, passwords, and equipment needs.

Good luck helping the CEO use her smartphone every day, and helping her search for emails in her inbox with over 25k unread messages.

Good luck with the security systems that I installed and maintained for 3 years.

Good luck maintaining ten websites (seven of which I personally developed and maintained).

I will just sit back and watch the show.

Malicious compliance is now the main course in a delicious meal, seasoned with the tears of a bitter, incompetent CEO.

I’d hate to be the person taking over for him!

It sounds like it’s going to be a nightmare, and the nightmare CEO will make it even worse.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader doesn’t really like these kinds of stories because the bosses never change.

Another person loved his response to the CEO.

They have no idea how much it’s going to take to replace him!

This person wouldn’t have changed the resignation to a 1 week notice.

Another person would’ve left right then and there.

I feel sorry for anyone working at that company!

Talk about scorched earth.

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.