Even if you love your workplace, it’s rare that there won’t be a person who is… not so great.

That’s normal, you can’t get on with everyone and the chances are at least one person is going to get on your nerves.

But when someone approached the desk of the copywriter in this story, it just had to be the one person who was going to ruin his day.

And she tried to do more than just that.

Read on to find out what happened.

“There’s nothing that says the marketing team doesn’t work directly with clients.”

About ten years ago, I worked for a small web hosting company. Initially I was hired as entry level support, taking calls from customers that accidentally broke their websites or needed passwords reset.

Then, I worked my way up to team lead where I was working with SSL certificates and cloud hosting accounts for high value customers.

Finally, they moved me to the marketing team after they found out that I had an English writing degree. This was my first copywriting job, and a huge step in my career (as I am still a copywriter to this day).

I remember being overjoyed when I accepted the position, and thought “I’m never taking another angry phone call for the rest of my life.”

Read on to find out how this wonderful new job became complicated.

Cut to about a year later. I’m writing blogs, emails, video scripts, and most importantly, not taking phone calls.

I’m at my desk in the marketing department, and in walks the team lead that took my position after I was promoted. We’ll call her Ruth.

Side note: I objected to Ruth being promoted into my old role because she’s extraordinarily bullheaded and rude. She would repeatedly overstep her bounds as an entry level tech, telling other employees when they could and couldn’t go to lunch and trying to manage the call queue when her only job was to take said calls.

Ultimately my concerns went unheeded and she got the job.

Uh-oh. Let’s see what Ruth was up to.

Ruth walks up to my desk and sets a bulleted list in front of me. It’s a vague business strategy she’s written up.

Essentially, the cloud hosting division of the company is rapidly expanding, and the CSO tasked Ruth with figuring out how to field all of the additional high value customers.

Ruth’s solution? I resume some of my responsibilities as a tech team lead to take escalations from angry cloud customers.

I said absolutely not.

But Ruth wasn’t taking no for an answer.

She completely ignored me and just kept going over her strategy. Like, literally I’m saying “No Ruth, I’m not doing this” and she’s like “Uh huh, anyway as you can see here, when a tech needs to escalate a call it will come to you.”

I was fuming, but patiently explained that I was on the marketing team now, and my tech support days are over.

She said “Well, I checked the Roles and Responsibilities section in the company handbook, and there’s nothing that says the marketing team doesn’t work directly with clients.”

She then gave me a grin and says “We’ll have to get a phone installed at your desk,” and leaves.

Yikes! Let’s see how this person felt about that.

I was livid. I’d be going from no phone calls to specifically only taking calls from the angriest customers we have.

Then, as I was recounting this awful situation to one of the graphic designers, something dawned on me when I remembered what she said about the roles in the company handbook.

As the only copywriter, I was the one in charge of managing and updating the handbook.

The graphic designer saw this dawn of realization on my face and was like “Oh man, please do what I think you’re gonna do.”

So this copywriter took matters into their own hands.

So I logged into Evernote (or whatever system we were using to manage and edit the handbook) and added a subsection to the marketing team’s roles and responsibilities that specifically said we do not take phone calls, emails, or have any direct interactions with customers.

This also safeguarded the graphic designers and videographers from any future encounters with Ruth.

I took the changes to the CSO who gave me a smirk and signed off on the edits.

I then took the signed changes to Ruth and set them on her desk.

Let’s see how he confronted Ruth.

“Yeah actually it DOES say in the company handbook that the marketing team can’t take calls, as you can see here. I guess you’ll have to figure something else out.”

She stared daggers at me but I just shrugged and left. That was the last of our interactions.

She ended up poaching some top performers from the entry-level tech team to make a dedicated cloud team that never really functioned well, and she ultimately quit without a two-week notice a few months later. So, I got some extra “I told you so” satisfaction about her not being qualified for the job as well.

I still haven’t taken a single customer phone call since I became a copywriter, and I intend to keep it that way.

The truth about work?

There’s almost always a Ruth.

Good thing this copywriter knew how to handle her.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person appreciated the way he made the system work for him.

While others enjoyed the camaraderie.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought he ought to have pushed his handbook edits further.

Sometimes all that a situation requires is a cool head and some valuable know-how.

The fact that Ruth failed in her endeavours just sweetens this story further.

She played with fire; she got burned.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.