We spend so much of our lives at work – so much of our valuable time doing things for someone else, just so that we have money to live.

So it really makes the whole transaction a lot more pleasant when we have decent co-workers, and especially a pleasant, trusting boss.

When things started to get tricky for the graphic designer in this story though, he had neither: he was a team of one, with a micromanaging boss who was making his working life a nightmare.

But when he finally convinced his boss to hire him a colleague, they got to work on teaching the boss a lesson.

Read on to find out what happened to finally break him.

You want these ads done three months in advance? No problem, boss.

I’ve worked as a senior graphic designer for a company for five years now.

Originally it was only a team of three: a marketing manager, a marketing executive, and myself. The former two have since quit, and you’ll find out later why.

A huge part of my job is to handle a huge advertising schedule in a project management system (PMS) for which I design print/digital ads for.

Enter, my difficult micromanaging manager. He’s the VP of Sales and Marketing who’s been with the company for 30+ years.

Let’s see how this manager’s management style is causing his employees serious problems.

His way of quality control is to force all our marketing materials to go through an “approval process” in our PMS in which everyone else has to give their feedback and only then will my manager will give the final sign off once it reaches him.

On top of that, he insists on being copied on every notification for every single step of the way. So every single ad I produce has to be sent through our PMS, while tagging the product managers and proofreaders.

Those individuals then comment feedback for changes needed – or if the ad is approved, they mark it complete and then send it along to the next person.

It all ends with this micromanaging manager, who has the final say on whether it’s good to be sent out or not. Sometimes the process would be flawless as everyone would approve it the first time with no changes needed. But when it got to my manager, he’d reject it and I’d have to do it over pending his remarks.

But his reviews are as slow as they are irritating.

The thing with our PMS is that you can see timestamps of when people viewed updates.

He’s on our project board so he gets all the updates, and he could easily intercede earlier and let me know if changes are needed to pass his check so I don’t waste my time.

But because of the way he is, he only wants to see the final drafts after everyone else sees them.

Everyone else always seems to move things along in a timely fashion, but when it finally gets to my manager he just lets it sit and then you have to constantly check to see if he marked it off.

So this graphic designer thought it was time to address the issue.

When I pushed back and stated how arduous this all is, his tone-deaf reply was to “have it done three months in advance.” He also insisted that the ads I produced have to look different each time for each publication’s insertion order.

So after four years of handling all this by myself, I was barely meeting deadlines, and the quality of my work started slipping as I was making really stupid mistakes.

Every few months I would ask my manager if we’re going to hire an additional designer for our department since we’re doing more marketing, and every year I’d hear, “It’s not in our budget right now.”

Things came to a head during one of my biannual reviews, where I told my manager bluntly, in front of HR, that we desperately needed to hire an additional designer, as there was no way for me to hit the “three months ahead” goal that he keeps parroting.

And the manager’s reply was truly staggering.

He actually asked me, and I quote, “Is it typical for companies to have more than one graphic designer?” I’m dead serious. I showed how I handled everything by myself as best as I could at that point, and I was getting burnt out.

For those that may ask why I stay, they compensate me VERY well without having to commute into a major metropolitan city. A golden handcuffs situation, if you will.

By the end of the meeting, my manager finally caved and gave me permission to hire an additional designer who started with us this past January.

While showing him the ropes on our design systems, he told me the manager said something snarky to him along the lines of, “I never imagined having to hire TWO designers. You guys should have no problem being 3 months ahead on ads now.”

This exhausted employee really wasn’t impressed by this remark.

Are you kidding me?

Over the years, I watched my manager as he hired a plethora of account executives and replacements for our department, most of whom quit within months under his watch, but he’s going to give me **** for needing ONE designer after I made things work for four years by myself?

I was so infuriated by his comments that I decided: he wants ads done three months in advance? Okay, bet!

I trained the new designer on our approach to the advertising schedule in the PMS and the ins and outs of the approval process, and we went to work.

So the pair teamed up to get their revenge.

We both proceeded to BURY my manager in notifications as we churned out ad after ad after ad, pushing items through the pipeline with my manager receiving notifications on EVERY. SINGLE. UPDATE.

When the tasks ended at him and we got no response, we set up automations to ping him every hour calling for his approval. We also would send detailed weekly reports stating our progress and also made it inherently clear to mention our goal was “to be three months ahead of deadlines.”

By this past May, in time for one of my biannual reviews, my manager made an announcement. He announced my coworker, the marketing assistant, would be promoted to the vacant marketing manager position.

Furthermore, they would now be handling the advertising schedule and be the final point person going forward. My manager also asked to have all notifications for him be removed, as “he didn’t have the bandwidth anymore” to monitor it and is taking a step back from overseeing us.

Let’s see how the new situation panned out for these two graphic designers.

We collectively broke my manager after only five months of doing EXACTLY what he asked, and I’ve got to say things have improved greatly so far. Our new marketing manager is very laid back, as we’re still getting things done ahead of schedule and he is really good at what he does.

We’ve also since hired two additional employees for our department, and we’ve been steadily growing.

My newly promoted co-worker recently joked with me and the junior designer about how he wanted to go over the advertising schedule for next year with our manager, but he elected to not see anything and fully trusted my co-worker to handle it completely on his own.

Funny how that works.

Of all managers, micromanagers are some of the worst.

The truth is, if they can’t trust their employees to do their job properly – the job they’ve likely trained them to do – they’ve got bigger problems than the minutia they’re focusing on.

Meanwhile, they’re making everyone else’s roles much more difficult, all because they’re incapable of taking a step back.

Let’s see how the Reddit community reacted to this employee’s epic plan.

This person was a huge fan of the repeated notifications.

While others pointed out that any delays were absolutely the manager’s fault.

This person, meanwhile, pointed out just how outdated the manager’s approach was.

Sure the additional notifications took a little extra work for the two graphic designers, but it must have been absolutely worth it when their manager finally admitted defeat.

If you don’t want to have to deal with lots of notifications, don’t asked to be notified every step of the way.

Perhaps trust your employees to do their jobs, and focus on doing your own?

This guy sure learned his lesson.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.