If you were in an ugly, depressing, concrete office, would you want to do something to make it a little bit more cheerful? What if your supervisor told you that you couldn’t?

In this story, one employee wanted to put a poster in their office. When the supervisor refused, the employee asked human resources for approval to bring something else in instead.

Let’s read the whole story.

I cant put up a poster? Enjoy your allergies instead.

I work in an office building, think maze of cubicles in a floor rented by the company but owned by the building.

My supervisor is a warden wannabe, and for that we’ll call him Warden.

He patrols the cubicles looking for any excuse to verbally degrade anyone.

Here are some examples.

Phone buzzing? He’ll pay you a visit.

Getting up for the bathroom? He’ll be waiting for you to get back.

You get the picture.

This sounds awful!

Recently the building moved us to the first floor to make some repairs to what I believe was the sprinkler system and A/C.

We were the smallest company on the floor so we got put into what I assume used to be some room to house custodial or mechanical supplies.

Its small, nearly all concrete, and smells like chemicals and rust.

I wouldn’t want to have to look at a hole in the wall either.

In the new floor there’s a hole in the wall I’m up against.

It’s an ugly concrete indented hole.

It’s like someone cut a 1 foot by 1 foot by 1 foot cube out of the wall.

I hate wasting space so I asked the warden if I could put up a small poster to cover it up.

He immediately told me it was against company policy and that I should “check company policy before asking such stupid questions”.

Time to try another idea.

Cue Malicious Compliance.

I contacted HR and asked them the rules on plants (really I just walked over and asked nicely).

They replied that as long as the plant wasn’t agregious in size or in poor health plants were allowed.

A few days after Warden and I’s conversation I had put a small potted plant of ragweed in the hole.

He chose his plant carefully.

If you aren’t familiar with ragweed its a pretty bad allergen, and wouldn’t ya know it but Warden has an allergy to pollen and this plant triggered it.

He was reaming when he saw it and yelled at me to get rid of it.

But I told him I checked with HR and it was approved.

It worked perfectly!

He ended up leaving in the early afternoon due to feeling “unwell”.

Warden avoided my area for a while after that.

The ragweed ended up growing to be about a foot tall before I planted it in a bigger pot on my back deck where it flourished for the rest of the season.

I’m just so glad to finally get my chance to get one on warden after all he’s done to me

Nobody’s allergic to a poster. That would’ve worked better for everyone if the Warden hadn’t been so annoying about the rules.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

A person who is allergic weighs in.

I hope none of his other coworkers were allergic.

This would’ve been a good response to the supervisor.

Another person with allergies weighs in.

Messing with someone’s allergies is pretty extreme.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a rude customer who got exactly what they wanted in their pizza.