Is being able to work from home the greatest advancement in the world in the last 10 years?

I sure think so!

And it seems like the person who wrote this story on Reddit didn’t is SOL (**** out of luck) AND a bit jealous of a co-worker who was able to convince their boss that he should work from home part-time.

So they decided to get some revenge…

Let’s see what happened!

A new phone system will help me get revenge on my lazy, WFH co-worker while I’m on annual leave.

“My co-worker [lets call him Karl] works on site 2 days a week and works from home 3 days a week.

Nobody else in our team is allowed to work from home and yet management won’t force him to work on site all 5 days like the rest of us.

Karl has his reasons…

He blames childcare and travel expenses as reasons he cannot be on site all 5 days, but many of our team face similar issues and all of them make it on site 5 days a week, every week.

On a semi frequent basis he’ll give one excuse or another as to why he cannot be on site on the days he is supposed to be and therefore *has* to work from home.

Plumbing emergency, child is sick or has an appointment, the dentist… there’s always something! But our manager has no backbone and just wants to be everyone’s mate, so won’t step up and do anything about Karl.

As a result, Karl is not well liked in our team. There are some members of the team who have stated they see him so infrequently, they wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a line up.

This is a problem.

I am the person who takes the brunt of all of this, as I share an office and duties with Karl. I am pretty strict on the division of work to make it as fair as possible, but the balance is never truly equal.

I have to handle almost everything that is on site, inducing some very time consuming postal duties, and end up taking most of the calls because I cannot stand to just let the phone ring.

Yes, the phone does transfer to Karl if I don’t pick up, but the phones rings for a long time before it cuts to his work mobile/cell.

In recent months I have put my foot down with management about making sure Karl is on site on the days he is suppose to be, and for a while, it worked.

However he has called out sick twice on those days. Once during half term (UK school holiday) and once during the Easter break. Of course, nobody can prove he wasn’t sick, but the timing was very suspicious.

Also, during the Easter break, on the days Karl was working from home, he was left unable to take any calls as his work mobile/cell had suddenly stopped working.

This was not going well…

It would take a while for a replacement to arrive/be set up and management did not force him to be on site despite him not having a functioning work mobile/cell.

A combination of these factors, plus some annual leave Karl took, meant I had over 2 weeks of taking every call and doing the large majority of all our duties. When I confronted Karl about the unfairness of all of this, he was dismissive and unapologetic.

To add insult to injury, when he was next on site (after I went above my managers head to force Karl to be on site until he had a new work mobile/cell) he had the audacity to complain about the job and how he needs to find something better as he’s being treated so poorly.

It took everything in my power to not roll my eyes right out of my head.

Now for the revenge.

It was time for a plan…

Yesterday Karl was working from home. Yesterday IT installed new phones in every office. They are not the easiest phones to use and the instruction manual gives basically no information about how the phones work.

So I asked my friend in IT to go over it with me, specifically how to change the ring tone and the volume of the ring. My friend in IT also helped me set up a pin for the phone and only those that know the pin can make changes to the phones set up.

On Monday I leave for a 3 week holiday. On Monday Karl is on site and will be every day that I am on my holiday (upper management will be checking to ensure he is in every day).

On Friday, before I leave, I am changing the ringtone to the most annoying ring possible. I’ll also be turning up the volume as high as possible. And then I’ll I’ll be locking it all in place with a pin only I will know.

I’ve already tested the phones and the sound of the ring at the highest volume all but vibrates off the walls. When I get home, I will be looking for a new job (I was waiting until after the long holiday to start looking).

**** you, Karl.

As a note about how/why Karl is able to get away with all of this – my manger is a pushover, as stated, and just wants to be everyone’s mate. Why higher ups don’t try and do more, I do not know.

But it may be because employees here are very well protected and very difficult to get rid of. The process to get rid of problem employees can sometimes take years.

There are currently several problem employees here that are able to get away with far too much, including one woman who bullies everyone and another is always off sick, to the point where they are off far more frequently than they are in.”

Here’s what people had to say on Reddit.

One person had a hot take.

This individual shared their thoughts.

Another person nailed it.

One Reddit user had a good idea.

And this individual thinks Karl sounds pretty smart.

That’s some satisfying revenge!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.