It shouldn’t be difficult for your place of employment to provide you with what you need to get your job done, yet that seems to be a common situation.

What would you do if you had to fight for basic supplies with your boss? One person recently shared their response to some crazy workplace policies recently on Reddit.

Here’s what went down.

Can’t get simple office accessories? I’ll bring my own

12-13 years ago, on my very first job, I was hired as a network administrator at a newly established state-owned company.

Everything was new there, including processes to request office accessories.

So I was settled in a office room with bare minimum office accessories.

Not a very welcoming work environment.

So I wrote down several simple items to request them from support department (at then, it was just a guy, later it turned into a ~30 people department).

Items included simple things such as, Facial tissues, coat hanger (it was winter and I had nowhere to put my jacket), headset, 3 colors of pen, and a white board and markers and wiper.

Sounds simple enough.

The support department guy took a look at the list and continued with excuses about each item:

Facial tissue are not for non-managers.

Pens you can request only blue, once a week, if you bring the previous empty pen.

Say what?

White board and it’s accessories are also for managers, So is the coat hanger (like, non-managers are not allowed to have a jacket?).

And for the headset, he just laughed, like, welcome to a state-owned company young one.

None of these are ridiculous asks.

I just realized how different the desks of non-managers and managers are, it was these simple things.

And I really didn’t care spending myself, I just was wondering why others haven’t yet.

A valid question.

So the next day I came with a facial tissue box with a beautiful design, a really good short cloth hanger for near my seat, good pens of all colors, and a light white glass as white board + some markers to hang behind my chair, my own gaming headset, and a nice plate full of my hand chosen sweets.

My desk looked PERFECT! I really mean it.

Especially when all other desks in other rooms were just copy-pastes of the same sick idea.

Cue the jealousy.

It was even looking better than managers desks.

By the end of that day, every manager and non-manager that came to my room, their first impression was, looking jealously to everything for several seconds, and then ask me how the support department gave me the items?

Oop, awkward.

My answer?

Just normally, with some proudness in my tone: “The company’s rules are written by beggers, These are my own and it cost me nothing to make my room look like this”.

The next day, Support Department guy came to my room and told me, take all your own stuff home, I will give you the same as everyone.

Wild how those funds magically appeared!

I replied: “But I’m not a manager”.

He said: “We changed the rules, everyone deserves these things now”.

Well how do you like them apples? Let’s see what Reddit had to say about this one.

Some people knew these rules all too well.

And others shared their own experiences.

As they say, you can’t always get what you want.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.