He Got Tired of a Coworker Burning Through Shared Lab Supplies—So He Engineered a Situation That Forced Her Into Overtime
Shutterstock
Imagine working at a job where you share materials with other coworkers, and the supplies won’t be restocked until the current box is empty.
What would you do if one inconsiderate coworker kept using up just enough of the supplies that you didn’t have enough for your task and had to refill everything? Would you talk to her about it, deal with it, or get revenge?
In this story, one lab worker is in this situation, and he decides two can play this game!
Keep reading for all the details.
Think you are saving time by screwing me over? Think again.
I work in a lab. We share materials and all take turns doing chores.
I often do the same kind of experiments as a really inconsiderate person in the lab.
She uses up all the materials and leaves them with just enough left that they’re not technically empty. So when I go to use the materials I never have enough for my experiment.
Meaning I have to take an extra 30min – hour to fill everything before I can proceed.
The supervisor wasn’t any help.
I tried telling my supervisor but besides sending around an email saying “remember to be kind”, he does nothing.
One of the chores is a mindless, tedious task: filling boxes with plastic tips.
I started saving up my boxes for the week this person was doing the chore.
Every box is about 5 minutes of work so I made sure I had enough boxes to equal the time she wasted me.
The revenge seems to be having the desired effect.
She always saves the chores for the last thing on Friday.
Suddenly, instead of leaving at 5 with the rest of us, she was in until 8 or so.
She has been complaining about all the boxes she has to do and keeps asking who is leaving all the empty boxes.
Oh but don’t worry… they’re not empty. I always leave at least one tip in there so technically they’re not. 😉
So, he got her back at her own game, but it’d be better if everyone was considerate instead of trying to be more inconsiderate than the most inconsiderate coworker.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
It would definitely be different if the supervisor were directly impacted by this coworker’s annoying habits.
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
This seems like a better approach.
Here’s another story about a coworker.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer service rep who hung up and called a customer back to get around a time limit, but ended up getting an award instead of a reprimand after the customer praised his service.
Another person compares this story to toilet paper.
The coworker does sound really annoying. Maybe it would be worth suggesting to someone in management that everyone should have their own supplies that they’re responsible for refilling. That would seem fair.
Currently, I don’t think OP’s revenge is going to solve the problem. It’s just going to keep the battle going.
Enjoyed this story?
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
