Team lead tried to force marketing employee to attend 'angry' customer calls — and it blew up in her face
The employee came up with a brilliant plan to defeat the woman's arrogance and it deserves applause.
There are some fancy personalities who think they need to cause chaos for every person, instead of just keeping their mind on their own business. An employee who goes by u/archaelleon on Reddit revealed on December 14 that when their lead tried to force them into working with Customer Support instead of Marketing, they had to put their foot down. The lead thought she could push her rules, but the worker gave her a reality check in a way her arrogance never saw coming. The employee mentioned that they started at their company at an entry level in the customer support department. Working their way up, they finally moved to the marketing team.
Since they knew the employee held an English degree, they offered them the role of a copywriter. The overjoyed worker remarked, "I'm never taking another angry phone call for the rest of my life." After spending years writing different types of content and gaining experience, they encountered an unfathomable situation. After being promoted, a woman took the employee’s role as the Team Lead. They initially objected to her taking the position since she was “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,” the post read. Unfortunately, the woman got the job, and as one would expect, she started bossing around there, too.
She approached the employee with a list. “CSO tasked her 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,” the post read. If there was anything the employee didn’t want after entering the marketing field, it was to take phone calls again. Despite their persistent refusal, she kept explaining the work, which pissed the employee off. Even after explaining that they no longer worked in that department, the woman rendered a nasty response.
"There's nothing that says the marketing team doesn't work directly with clients."
byu/archaelleon inMaliciousCompliance
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." The woman seemed to have gotten her way, so she grinned and left. It was a little later that the employee realized something that became a game-changer. “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,” they noted. Deciding to defeat her with the same intent that she brought the job to them with, the employee opened the draft of 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.”
They also kept in mind the other employees and tweaked the rules so she couldn’t impose the burden on any of them. “I took the changes to the CSO, who gave me a smirk and signed off on the edits,” the employee noted. Then, they did what anyone would think they’d do. "Yeah, actually, it DOES say in the company handbook that the marketing team can't take calls. I guess you'll have to figure something else out,” they said to the woman. She tried everything she could to call out the bluff, but she couldn’t. According to Work Smart, Live Smart, having entitled employees on board can cause serious damage to the company.
It can increase disengagement, stress, and add risks to credibility. It further reduces productivity and innovation, and employees lose the intent and enthusiasm to work as a team. Keynote speaker, author, consultant, and entrepreneur, Beverly Beuermann-King, noted, “Recognizing entitlement for what it is, a misalignment between contribution and expectation, is the first step in addressing it effectively.” And that’s what the employee did with their malicious compliance. Eventually, the job was passed on to someone from the rightful department, and since her bossy nature was no longer being tolerated, her work performance dropped, and she had to leave.
“I still haven't taken a single customer phone call since I became a copywriter, and I intend to keep it that way,” the post concluded. Applause. Salute. Perfect brilliance was shared by the internet for the employee's genius move. u/tsian said, “Not malicious compliance, but delicious f**k you.” u/howdyeveryone1 added, “This is one of the most elegant malicious compliance stories I’ve read. Well done.”
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