'Small win against toxic management': Employee pushed out by toxic manager, exposes that they have been doing manager's work for over a year

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Apr 3, 2023 2:00 PM EDT

Here's a lesson to all managers out there: you don't want to make enemies with the person who has been essentially doing your job for you for over a year. That seems to be what happened in this scenario, which was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by u/landinthesky. 

 

There were many red flags in this toxic work environment. After all, it was a startup so the employee in question should have expected as much. That being said, you would think that a manager of data analysts would be able to, I don't know, read data. I'm certainly no expert in this field, but I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably an important skill. Now, the employee clearly made enemies with another coworker at work, and while we can't really weigh in on those complaints since we aren't aware of the details, we can say regardless of that situation that exposing the toxic manager's pure incompetence is a pretty rewarding climax. 

 

For more stories like this, here's one about some petty revenge on the plane!

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  • 01
    Product - 0 "Manager tried throwing me under the bus, so I showed everyone her incompetence." o
    via campaign_creators
  • 02
    Font - Manager tried throwing me under the bus, so I showed everyone her incompetence. M OC I recently resigned from a toxic workplace as a data analyst at a start up. It was promising at the start, but not long after I noticed many red flags, including the fact that my manager had absolutely no data analysis or management experience prior to being promoted. How can you manage analysts without knowing basic excel functions? I ignored those red flags and trusted her leadership because I liked the
    via u/landinthesky
  • 03
    Font - I basically did all the work for the team for the whole year I was there. When I ran the numbers for reporting and analysis of team performance, she always asked me to dumb it down so she can present it to high level management. I thought everything was going well because I only got good feedback from her and the rest of the team.
    via u/landinthesky
  • 04
    Font - About a month ago, a coworker who I don't get along with made a complaint about me which was absolutely untrue. Manager believed it without investigating and all of a sudden I was placed on a PIP. She spouted all types of lies to HR, and when I refuted those claims with written evidence, they doubled down and started gaslighting me ("you're just too negative").
    via u/landinthesky
  • 05
    Font - I refused to sign and was threatened with termination, so I complied and started building a case against them. I knew she was doing the PIP to terminate me as she looked for internal candidates to replace me in secret because she was dumb enough to set the meeting up beside me. Once I signed my contract for a new job, I did basically all and started working from home.
    via u/landinthesky
  • 06
    Font - Before my resignation, she asked me to do some reporting for her so I ran the numbers and sent her the raw data, told her where the files were located and that she can analyse the data and make the presentation herself. Since she's the data analyst manager she should know how to do it. She tried reporting me for that but ultimately backfired because they asked her if the work that I did was actually wrong, and was forced to admit she didn't know what she was looking at. Everything else in
    via u/landinthesky
  • 07
    Font - I'm now working for a manager who is competent and has clear goals for the team, but that was a of a ride. Small win against toxic management - but a win is a win. EDIT: PIP is a Performance Improvement Plan. It is used by managers to address underperformance and start a documentation process. Usually used as a first step to fire someone or phase them out.
    via u/landinthesky
  • 08
    Smile - cabird 78 18 hr. ago Good thing the data doesn't lie, unlike your former boss. I bet she's now googling 'Excel functions for beginners'
    via u/landinthesky
  • 09
    Font - Spacefreak 14 hr. ago I once had the plant manager (been there for 5 years) question how I had calculated the overall yield for a product line I had given in a presentation.
    via u/landinthesky
  • 10
    Font - Everyone knows you can't just do the basic weight out vs weight in with our MRP system because it's stupid, so I explained my basic methodology (I was actually really proud of myself for having figure the technique out).
    via u/landinthesky
  • 11
    Font - As I explained, he seemed to get more and more irritated and just stopped me and said "this is ridiculous! Why didn't you just take the weight out vs the weight in? It's so simple! No wonder your numbers differ from mine! You engineers overcomplicate everything!"
    via u/landinthesky
  • 12
    Font - Then he scoffed and looked over at our Plant Controller as if to say "Can you believe this guy?" But she had her head in her hands, and he realized maybe he said something stupid. It was the KPI equivalent to someone asking why people choose to drive their cars around instead of flying them. Because that's not how cars work.
    via u/landinthesky
  • 13
    Font - It would have been hilarious if I hadn't needed him to sign off on a project that would cost about $100k and potentially save the plant millions a year. He ended up not approving my project because it was "too expensive." And he, of course, later got promoted to VP of Operstions for our whole company (multiple plants).
    via u/landinthesky
  • 14
    Font - Xenoun 17 hr. ago Technically you don't need to be able to work a role to be able to manage people doing that role, it's common in many industries. However it also requires management and leadership skills which they clearly didn't have
    via u/landinthesky
  • 15
    Font - Uzzer_lozer19 - 11 hr. ago Yeah I had a similar issue years ago. My manager was technically a good manager as they delivered what they projected for the team within the timelines presented to stakeholders.
    via u/landinthesky
  • 16
    Font - They left me which an area which no one wanted to touch and I owned it and turned it around with alot of pain and effort. Timelines did slip but even the resources that I used made it clear they weren't avaliable so things shifted. This was highlighted to the manager who instead of supporting decided to rewrite the whole structure of my plans and roadmaps.
    via u/landinthesky
  • 17
    Font - This put the whole project back as it meant changing alot of things and not just the other of how things were done. At my EoY I got a bad rating and a PIP also. I raised a grievance and turned out the manager couldn't justify their reasoning but the evidence I provided showed that they had made the wrong call by changing direction mid project.
    via u/landinthesky
  • 18
    Font - I got taken off the PIP, a raise and I moved roles a couple of months later but not before I emailed the team to remind them that the time they had worked in liue was not paid or added to their holidays so they should claim it which led to a rich of holidays thr next month before the holiday calander ended and the dept ground to a halt.
    via u/landinthesky

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workplace-stories employee work stories toxic-workplace manager reddit thread Reddit toxic-work-environment
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