'I took [my] coworker's parking spot': Coworker complains about employee's lateness, employee gets back at him by taking his precious parking spot

Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor

Jul 13, 2023 8:00 AM EDT

That coworker is going to regret being so vocal about this employee's tardiness. First of all, before we get into all the details of this scenario, let's all acknowledge that your coworker shouldn't have an opinion about whether or not you are on time unless you are actively preventing them from doing their job in some way. It's not like this coworker was the Redditor's boss or anything, and even that still would have been annoying. People are going to arrive when they arrive, and as long as the work is getting done well and without any major errors or delays, what's the issue?

This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit after the coworker pressured their supervisor to write up OP for their lateness. Now, we also must acknowledge that there were four recent bridge closures in the area that were affecting traffic for virtually every other coworker in the office. Apparently, that wasn't enough to justify OP's behavior, so OP decided to implement a little malicious compliance in order to give their coworker a piece of their mind. Essentially, OP started commuting an hour and a half earlier each day to take their coworker's unofficial parking spot from them. Unless the coworker wanted to get up that much earlier as well, there was nothing they could do about it.

We hope OP gained some satisfaction from this, but personally, I could never have the follow-through to get up 90 minutes earlier just to enact some petty revenge. Still, credit where credit is due! For more stories like this, check out this post about a toxic manager who changed an employee's schedule on them.