Sometimes you only realize you have been played after it is already too late to back out.

What would you do if a coworker asked for help with a simple task, then slowly steered the situation until it became your responsibility instead?

Would you stop the moment you noticed? Or would you accept defeat once you realized they had expertly handed the work off to you?

In the following story, one IT worker finds himself in this situation and actually admires his coworker for it.

Here’s the full scoop.

That time I got finessed by my coworker…

I’ve been out of IT for a while now, but one of my friends is dealing with a cloudstrike issue that has brought down his whole company for going on two weeks now. It has me reminiscing about good(?) old days.

Back at my last job, I had a coworker who was… to be honest, lazy.

He was a good dude, always left a room with everyone smiling and laughing, but didn’t do anything he didn’t have to do.

Dan explained his plan.

Anyway, Dan, as he will now be called, stopped by my office looking for a 50-foot Ethernet cable. We generally didn’t need cables that long and didn’t keep a lot of them on hand, so I asked why he needed it. He decided to show me, since the office he was hooking up was right down the hall.

We walk into a rectangular office with a printer in the bottom left corner and one PC in each of the upper corners.

The problem was that there were ports in the upper corners and the bottom right corner. Dan was going to run a 50-footer all the way around the room, clockwise, to the port in the bottom-right corner (to avoid the door to the office).

But he had a better plan.

Now I explained to Dan we don’t need to hunt down a 50ft cable, we can get away with using short cables if we go from the printer in the bottom left to the port in the upper left, from the PC in the upper left to the upper right, and from the PC in the upper right to the bottom right.

Dan didn’t get it, so I explained it again. Dan still didn’t get it.

At this point, I just said, “You know what, Dan, I’ll take care of it.”

He didn’t see this coming.

As soon as I said that, he had a huge grin, shook my hand, and was gone before I could say another word.

Leaving me standing in that office with its soon-to-be occupants staring at me expectantly. I instantly knew Dan had played me, and I walked right into it. I wasn’t even mad; I admired his commitment to the bit.

Wherever you are, Dan, I hope you’re still playing junior techs for the fool.

Too funny! That was a pretty effective way to give the task away.

Let’s see if the fine folks over at Reddit have something to say about this.

Good question.

Here’s someone who had something similar happen.

For this person, it’s pretty impressive.

He fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

That was actually really well-played!

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.