Sometimes people forget that making things harder for everyone else usually comes back around to them one way or another.

So what would you do if an employee with decades of seniority ignored deadlines, gave you almost no workable availability, and then blasted you when one tiny scheduling oversight finally slipped through?

Would you cater to their demands? Or would you treat them like everyone else?

In the following story, one manager finds herself in this situation but still gets the last laugh.

Here’s what happened.

Want to give me minimal availability? Enjoy the longer days then.

At work, I am responsible for coordinating supervision coverage. We do this quarterly, and I usually get this done 1-2 weeks before the following quarter starts.

When it’s 3-4 weeks out, I request everyone’s availability. This includes their preferred days, the days they definitely can’t work, and any vacation days they plan to use.

Because life happens and there’s unplanned PTO or sometimes call-in sick, I also schedule backups at the same time to fill in if this happens. One thing to note is that these supervision days can easily add 3-4 hours to their workday because of paperwork and such.

If someone needs off, she’s usually happy to oblige.

It is an unfortunate part of their position, and I hate being the one to add to their workload, but they all agree that it’s necessary. Hence, sharing the responsibility.

Just about all the staff get me their availabilities by the due date without an issue. They’re all generally pretty flexible, and I try to be as accommodating as possible because, let’s be honest, work is not the center of their lives, and they already have full plates.

So if they say they 100% cannot work a certain day, then I won’t be asking them to come in on those days. Period.

This employee liked to make things difficult.

There’s always that one, though, right? There’s always that one person who is just eaten up like a soup sandwich and makes every step more painful than it needs to be.

This person, we’ll call her Untouchable Employee (UE), has been here for 20-30 years, can’t be fired because of tenure, and is nearing retirement. Basically untouchable disciplinary-wise.

UE sends me her availability several days after the deadline despite my repeatedly asking. And when she did, she put her only available days as Mondays and Wednesdays.

She rushed through the schedule without double-checking.

Every other day, she supposedly can only work remotely (I say “work” because she is logged in and just wiggles her mouse so her computer won’t go into sleep mode. Doesn’t do any real work.) and several of her Wednesdays are 100% no because she is taking PTO.

So she arrogantly made life difficult. Again, I try to respect the days they say they cannot work, but in UE’s situation, she can get lost. What I forgot to mention is that everyone needs to cover a certain number of days as lead and backup.

I started working on it as fast as I could, placed a few days, and got pulled into a meeting. So, no surprise that I may have overlooked something. I sent out the email and went back to my work.

After the complaint, she got to work fixing the schedule.

A few weeks go by, and I get a strongly worded email from UE berating me for putting her on a day as a supervisor that she was unavailable (the day prior to that coverage). Suffice to say, it was quite unprofessional and basically called me inept for a minor oversight.

So I started moving other people around while still trying to consider their scheduled PTO days like one big sudoku puzzle with names. Remember how they all have a number of days they need to cover? Guess who was missing quite a few.

In my hurry, when initially adding her in, I miscounted. So I was able to switch supervisors on that one day without issue. Then came the arduous task of putting her name on more days.

Here’s the best part.

Since the schedule was changed, I highlighted the edits to prevent confusion for the team. Then comes the satisfying feeling of writing an email. I reply apologizing for the error, letting her know I made the changes she requested.

I also wrote, “UE, I noticed that you had fewer days of coverage than required. I moved some people around and added a few more days onto the calendar for you. This should bring you even with the rest of the supervisors now. Unfortunately, due to your restrictive availability, I was forced to schedule you on a couple of your PTO days, so I will need you here. Furthermore, because the quarter has started, changing availabilities isn’t allowed. So your coverage days will need to be permanent as is.”

This felt so nice, given I had to drop everything for her to make her happy, throwing a metaphorical wrench in my workflow.

Yikes! She would’ve been better off with the other schedule.

Let’s check out how the readers over at Reddit feel about this situation.

This person offers advice.

According to this comment, she’ll win.

Seems like a simple concept.

Here’s someone who’s impressed.

That was a huge win! Hopefully, the lady didn’t try that again.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.