Employee cleverly stops 'evil' middle manager from profiling employees through an 'anonymous' test

As professionals, having an amiable relationship with colleagues and bosses is considered a requirement for good office morale. But sometimes, a person is forced to stand up for themselves and do something radical to get a situation under control, even if they have to ruffle some feathers. An employee, u/woolen_goose, found themselves in a similar situation when their boss devised a personality test to go against employees he disliked. The employee came up with a brilliant idea for a comeback and took to Reddit to share the story.

"Had an evil middle manager boss who eventually lost 1/3 of the team in under three months. I had been there longer than him. Even before his position was built out," the employee shared. "He was a really gross one, like psychological abuse and also openly commented on a 16-year-old celebrity being 'hot' when he was 36." The employee continued, "Anyway, when he was onboarded, he pretty quickly assessed which employees he couldn't bully and started trying to make our lives harder." The manager resorted to giving "anonymous" tests and reviews. "Not surprisingly, some anonymous feedback was super negative for the people on his sh*t list even if we were high-performing or project leads," they added.

"I finally had enough of attempting to talk it out head-on. He always denied everything and even once actually asked me if I was on drugs during a 1:1," the employee wrote. "He decided it was time for another round of anonymous testing. This time, a personality test. I answered every question, imagining I was him. Every single one." The employee revealed, "To nobody's surprise, he was like, 'Surprise, we are going to all reveal and see which result we have on the screen now, yay!'" The employee matched him perfectly on the test because of the answers. "He got the absolute psychopath result, but it also says 'entrepreneur and celebrity,' so he would have been thrilled, but- he knew we were very different, yet somehow we had the exact same result. Out of like 20+ possibilities. When he pulled up the results on screen, his face dropped," they wrote.

"He stared directly at me, immediately breaking the character who was excited for sharing the 'secret' results," the person expressed. "I watched him choke down his anger as he pretended to go down the list, now unprepared. Every other sentence out of his mouth suddenly was how unreliable these tests can be and that 'you never know.'" The employee went on, "As he dug his hole deeper, explaining backward regarding this time-wasting team-wide meeting for his stupid exercise originally intended to single out some folks based upon a personality test, I finally found my opportunity. I smiled at him. I smiled with eye contact. No words, everything was said there. I watched him die inside and he still had to fill 25 minutes of his stupid meeting or call it off."

The employee disclosed how reasoning never worked with the said manager. People took to the comments to appreciate the employee's idea. u/chowyungfatso wrote, "Even better if you told all your co-workers to answer the questions in the same way. Results would have varied slightly, but most of you would have matched it perfectly, lol." u/Honeymoomoo shared, "My favorite answers for all of these tests are neutral/ not applicable/ rarely. I've gotten others to join in on this too."

u/Ha-Funny-Boy commented, "In the 1960s, I worked at an aerospace company, Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, California, in the IT department. One year, management decided to have the workers evaluate themselves for their annual review. We all made what we thought was an honest appraisal of ourselves. Management then used a red pencil/pen to mark down what we had marked. The next year, we all used red pencil/pen and marked the highest rating for each item. That was the last time self-appraisal was used."