A Petty Manager Wouldn’t Let Them Have Their Own Office, But They Eventually Got The Biggest One In The Building

Matthew Gilligan

4 months ago

Shutterstock/Reddit

Good things come to those who wait, my friends…

And the person who wrote this story on Reddit knows all about it!

Get all the details below, we think you’ll be impressed!

They Refused Me an Office, I Complied, They Regretted It.

“I got my first “grown up” job while I was finishing my bachelor’s degree.

I was just getting started in a highly technical and emerging field. Very few people back then were doing this kind of work, and I seemed to have an aptitude for it, which is probably why I got a job before I had any credentials.

The department I was hired for was brand new and had the potential to take customers from other departments, while also generating net new business.

Interestingly, the other departments had been offered the opportunity to start the service themselves but refused, even actively trying to prevent it from happening.

That’s the reason I ended up in a malicious compliance situation.

What was this all about?

The leaders of all the other departments conspired to prevent me from getting an office. I didn’t understand at first because at that age I didn’t imagine professionals did petty, immature things.

When I realized what was happening I knew they’d get exposed if I went along with it.

So I happily did my job wherever I could find a place, which often ended up being in the mail room…. where lots of people would notice.

I hoped maybe the leaders would start to feel guilty or annoyed and change their minds. Or… they’d be caught by their bosses.

Either way, problem solved for me without a fight.

Things went well…for them…

Little did I know how well it would go. I started to be well liked by a lot of the leaders because I helped them with their computers.

There was one leader who still inexplicably disliked me. I never spoke with him, not even one word.

But he continued to insist I did not need an office. I wasn’t even “the level of a secretary,” according to him, which I took to be a dig at my lack of a degree.

I heard about him saying that from a friend who was in the meeting when they talked about changing their minds.

It’s too bad for them they didn’t change their minds, because the President came through the mail room multiple times and finally stopped, clearly annoyed, “Why don’t you work in your office?!”

Well…

That was my golden moment. I had complied politely with not having an office. I sweetly told the President, “I don’t have an office.”

“What?! Why not?”

“There isn’t room. No space available.”

“According to whom?”

“Mr. [So&So].”

“But you’ve been working here for, what, 3 months? They could have found space for you by now.”

The President was beet red at that point. I just smiled and said my understanding is there is no space. The President literally stomped upstairs to the offices of Mr So&So.

I distinctly heard the yelling from downstairs. People outside probably heard it!

The President came and brought me upstairs to the conference room where the leaders were all seated looking down. There was a pile of keys on the table. I was afraid at that point.

Was she having me pick someone’s office to take? While that might have been sweet revenge it wouldn’t have been good for my working relationships with any of them.

But no.

Boom!

She handed me a key to the conference room and said, “This is your office.”

She scooped up the rest of the keys, which I learned later were all their copies of the key to the conference room, and said, “Your office is the largest office on campus. Even bigger than mine. Enjoy!”

And she walked out.

That was probably the best Drop-the-Mic moment I’ve ever seen in my life. And the story ends with my compliance not only winning me that office, but all the other leaders, except Mr So&So becoming great colleagues.”

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