Manager nags employee to delete all dormant users — ends up getting himself banned from the system
'It’s been weeks, and he still hasn’t filled out the form, and I still haven’t added him back...'
An employee (u/lilbea) working in the IT department was frustrated with the manager's ridiculous requests to make changes to the portal. However, the employee followed his orders to the T and ensured that the supervisor lost access to the system. This incident of malicious compliance was posted to Reddit on September 27, 2025.
The employee was responsible for managing a portal used by a small group of people. When the manager insisted that they remove anyone who didn't need access to the portal, the employee reduced the list from 100 to 30. However, the manager still wasn't happy; in fact, he complained about the number and asked the IT person to review the list. "Annoying request, but sure, I got it done. He goes through the list and gets mad when he sees names he doesn’t recognize, even though our company has a couple thousand employees… So he tells me to delete all users whose names he doesn’t recognize… Stupid request, but ok, done," they wrote. The new change caused the entire company to fall into chaos, as employees lost access to work. Ironically, the next day, the manager scolded the employee for doing exactly what he'd instructed and asked them to undo the changes. "A couple of weeks later, he AGAIN brings up that he’s not happy, and the system is not secure, too many users have access, blah blah blah… Like, BRO, how bored are you? He wanted me to review the list of users with him AGAIN," the employee recalled.
Notably, only 3 users from the higher-ups, including the manager himself, were the ones who didn't use the system at all. So when he asked the employee to delete anyone who didn't use the portal daily, it meant he, too, would lose access. "He starts yelling at me, telling me to delete anyone who doesn’t use the portal daily as part of their core job, and anyone new who wants access must fill out a form and explain why they need it," the IT person said. The employee followed his orders once again, and this is where the story gets hilarious. A couple of weeks passed, and the manager asked the employee why he couldn't log in to the system. "I removed all users who don’t use it daily as part of their core job," they said. The manager asked the worker to add him back, but they gave him the form he had created instead. "It’s been weeks, and he still hasn’t filled out the form, and I still haven’t added him back. We are somehow on good terms now," they wrote.
The chaos could have been avoided if the manager had realized how badly his decision would affect the company. This somehow hints that he wasn't efficient enough to analyze the situation and act accordingly. Employees working under unskilled managers feel their productivity is substantially affected because of them. A survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found that 84% of American workers say poorly trained people managers create a lot of unnecessary work and stress. Moreover, 50% of participants feel their own performance would improve if their direct senior received some training in people management. Meanwhile, reacting to the Reddit story, u/still-dazed-confused commented, "It sounds like he has serious seagull tendencies (swoop in, scream a lot, shit on everything, and fly away) combined with not having enough to do. u/titlrequired sarcastically asked, "Why do people like this end up supervising others?"
u/caleblbaker said, "The idea of just unilaterally revoking people's access just because you don't recognize them is baffling to me. I feel like the correct move would have been to come up with the request access form first and then send all the users who don't access the system daily an email with the form attached, saying, 'Your access will be revoked in 30 days if you don't fill out this form.' Not sure whether your manager could be convinced that that would be a better way to handle it, though."
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