When you work with a bunch of different people, you are bound to find some with whom you don’t really get along.

What would you do if you had a co-worker who didn’t like you and even resorted to filing false complaints against you to try to get you in trouble?

That is what happened to the researcher in this story, but when her supervisor had to join her to do work, the supervisor noticed that the nurse who reported her was doing something very unprofessional, which led to her having to quit.

Check it out.

You’re so obsessed with how I dress that you’re going to involve HR? All right, let’s get a supervisor involved and see how that goes for you.

I work at a hospital that doubles as a research institution.

Since I’m on the research side, I have to involve lots of other departments, and most people with whom I work with are very chill and understand that I have to beg them for things to do my job.

It sounds like she is good at her job.

I’m one of those “she can go a hundred hectares on a single tank of kerosene” type of people, and I’m very on top of things, for which my coworkers value me.

However, the one place where that camaraderie breaks down is with [some of] the nurses who work in my specific clinic (focusing on one particular disease).

Honestly, I’ve done a good job making most of the nurses like me.

I bring them homemade treats sometimes, and I’m always extra friendly and approbative with them. Some of them have their days regardless, and I put up with them.

You can’t get along well with everyone.

Right after I first started working in that specific clinic, unfortunately, one nurse in particular (let’s call her Michelle) had decided that I was on her blacklist. Michelle hates doing work.

She’s like a kid playing Xbox when their parent asks them for help with groceries. She’ll moan and groan, and if she helps at all, it’s with an angsty indignation.

I needed a series of blood tubes drawn in clinic for a patient one morning (instead of down in phlebotomy — protocol rules — more complicated and stupid than it’s worth getting into here), and Michelle was the only nurse available.

What is her problem? Isn’t that her job?

She was extremely put off at my asking her to draw this protocol kit (despite my giving advance notice to clinic that this needed to be done).

She clearly did not want to leave her computer (which was not open to anything work-related), but she begrudgingly went and drew the tubes. She was unnecessarily profusely thanked by me just for doing her job.

I came back down later to get a prescription signed for another patient, and a different nurse asked me what I’d done to upset Michelle because she’d apparently been going off about me to anyone who would listen. I explained what had happened.

Why would Michelle care what she is wearing.

The other nurse informed me that Michelle was angry at me, and also felt my outfit — a white medical coat, a modest blouse, work pants, and high heel boots was too provocative. What? I just decided to let it go and try to avoid Michelle as much as possible.

This did not work. I kept running into situations where the other nurses were busy seeing patients. I was forced to walk back into the nurse triage room which is off-limits to patients and ask Michelle to draw two more of these blood kits in the next month.

She was never happy to see me, and she was always wasting time on her work computer when I entered the room.

Wow, Michelle actually filed a complaint against her?

Maybe 2 or 3 days after that last kit draw, my supervisor called me in her office to discuss my “presentation.”

She very nicely, and with pity in her voice, told me she’d received a report about my dress habits in patient-facing spaces.

She said she personally hadn’t noticed anything, but was obligated to discuss this with me anyhow. I assured her I had no idea what she was talking about. I thought about confronting Michelle, but decided not to because, ya know.

Loose cannon and whatnot. After a brief reminder of the dress code, I figured that at least it was over.

She is just not letting this go.

It was not over. Two weeks later — and I hadn’t even asked anyone to draw any kits in the interim — a formal report was filed against me for my conduct in clinic.

This went to the hospital and then my supervisor who, even after reading the report, seemed totally clueless about what it could mean. I explained what had been happening with Michelle.

But then my supervisor told me a second person had reported this as well, on the same day as who was obviously Michelle. This time, it was a patient.

Did Michelle actually get a patient to complain?

The patient had reported that I was dressing improperly for a patient-facing environment.

Woah woah woah woah.

I asserted that I wasn’t, but I was nonetheless put on probation, which meant that my supervisor, against her will, now had to come with me when I saw patients in clinic for the foreseeable future, and a nurse manager would have to accompany both of us when she was free since I was “dressing provocatively” in patient-facing spaces and that was her domain.

But as you can likely guess from her browsing habits, Michelle was not the sort of person who needed MORE supervisors in her area.

She is going to get more than she bargained for.

Cue malicious compliance. Fine, you want to punish me and force me to work in the eyesight of the supervisors? All right, let’s get some supervisors down here as quickly as possible.

My next in-clinic patient came in two days, and it was one of those stupid timed-in-clinic protocol kit visits, which meant I was forced to ask one of the nurses to draw the patient’s blood.

I informed my supervisor and we set off down for clinic. The nurse manager was in that day, so she accompanied the two of us.

Someone isn’t doing any actual work.

We all went back into the triage room so that I could ask for help with the blood draw. Michelle and one other nurse were there.

What we saw upon entering was the other nurse entering vital signs for a patient into our health database, and Michelle sitting at her desk with an online clothing retailer open on one monitor, and Facebook on the other.

I asked for Michelle’s help drawing the kit, and she sighed heavily and spun around to see two higher-ups looking on with disdain at her work computer.

Well this is awkward.

In embarrassment, she swiveled back and closed those two tabs, which revealed, you can’t make this stuff up, a website for MARITAL AIDS that had been open in another tab, about which Michelle had clearly forgotten until now. I just smiled and handed her the bag like nothing had happened.

In the hall, my supervisor and the nurse manager were talking about Michelle’s display just now. Apparently, she had been previously been warned about goofing off at work.

The nurse manager told the supervisor that she was going to check all of Michelle’s work computer activity, which I actually didn’t know any supervisor could readily access.

I’m sure they were not happy with all the time she was wasting.

What followed was so incredibly beautiful that I hope it made the ending of this long, long post worth waiting for.

According to the nurse who’d initially asked me what I had done to upset Michelle, her activity was searched. She was revealed to have been spending hours upon hours every day browsing the web, shopping, and using social media. Since she had been previously warned about this behavior, she was given a formal write-up.

But wait, there’s more.

But this was just the beginning. The day after the three of us went down to clinic, my supervisor called me in her office again. She told me that Michelle had FABRICATED the patient complaint about me and posted it from her work computer.

(How did they learn this? Oh, that’d be because she saved a draft of the message that reported me to the hospital, and she’d accessed the patient complaint/comment webpage the same day.)

My supervisor sincerely apologized for the hassle and told me I was no longer on probation.

At least she had the good sense to quit.

As for Michelle: apparently fearing the worst, she put her two weeks’ notice in the same day after getting wind that she was in some far more serious trouble.

For reasons I will never understand as long as I live, the hospital chose to let her quit after 2 weeks instead of firing her on the spot.

Maybe they knew what a nightmare she was and were comfortable letting her quit on her own accord. It’s not as though she was due to glean any glowing references from this experience.

They likely didn’t want to pay out unemployment benefits.

Maybe they just wanted some extra work our clinic was VERY short-staffed for nurses at the time. In any case, they chose not to fire her and let her quit on her own.

On Michelle’s last day, I ventured down to the triage room to retrieve some outside records from their printer. When I entered, Michelle was alone and browsing Glassdoor.

Ouch, adding salt to the wound.

I unbuttoned my white coat and told her, “Hey, good luck with your next job. I hope the employees are less provocative.”

Wow, I hope she learned her lesson about causing drama at work where none is needed. But I doubt it.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

This commenter makes good points.

Yes, she was violating plenty of company policies.

This person has seen similar things.

This commenter is spot on.

I guess this type of thing happens a lot?

I bet she regrets causing problems with this coworker.

It came right back to bite her.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.