‘I’m not your assistant': Office Karen tries scoring points with upper management, calling a coworker her ‘assistant’ and attempting to revoke their work phone

Author image for Eleonora Bader
Eleonora Bader
Nov 20, 2023 1:00 PM EST

Imagine your coworker had the audacity to call you their assistant, even though they were far from being your direct supervisor and handing you out instructions. Seeing such a person on a day-to-day basis might be unbearable, but if you are working remotely, maybe you would not care as much. After all, if all you have is a voice on the other end of the line, things feel a lot less personal. One office Karen really liked making it all about herself. Constantly interfering with other people's jobs and sticking her nose in places it did not belong, she was on a mission to make everyone unhappy. 

OP, who shared this story on r/pettyrevenge, was not having it. One day, OP was offered a work phone by the IT team. It was an easy 'Yes', but when Karen heard about it, she felt it should have been an easy 'No'. Karen could not fathom why OP, such an 'unimportant' worker, should need an office phone, despite, well, literally needing it for the work they did. As petty revenge stories often go, Karen got what she deserved, and to find out what that is, you will have to scroll down and read the screenshots. Try to enjoy Karen's misery while you are at it. Next, here is a neighborhood resident who flipped the script on the HOA president who sent the entire neighborhood notices for violations.

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  • 01
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    via Canva
  • 02
    Annoying coworker who thinks I'm HER assistant can take ALL my calls My coworker who I'll call Karen (she really IS a Karen) is super nosey and always feels the need to insert herself into situations that have literally nothing to do with her or her job.
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 03
    Karen is not my direct supervisor... That position is currently vacant, but Karen has made it a point to try and score points off my work by insinuating that she is and that everything I do is under her leadership. She has also, more than once slipped in conversation and called me her assistant.
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 04
    Honestly idc. This is the kind of job where none of us concern ourselves with who gets credit. The gigantic upside is we are fully remote so I don't have to deal with her in person (this is important) Recently the IT folks sent a message that because we were fully remote they want to know if
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 05
    they can ditch our landline numbers. Option a. We didn't have to (some people still do go in the office to work or take in person meetings). Option b. We could ditch it or c. They could send us a work phone.
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 06
    I don't get a ton of calls, but opted for C so as not to have to use my personal number for anything. My actual bosses and the IT people signed off on it. Well when Karen found out she was flabbergasted. She demanded to know why I was getting a phone and who approved
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 07
    it. I told her and then she tried to argue it was too expensive (the IT person already told me it's the same price to maintain the landline). Crazy part is... This woman and her job have literally nothing to do with procurement or budgets or finance. On top of that...SHE has a work phone. So I
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 08
    could not figure out why this was any of her business. She literally brought it up every day for several days until I told her the phone was already being sent to me. The phone arrives, but I notice the landline is still active (I was still receiving voicemails via email) note--for about a month leading
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 09
    into the whole phone thing, I had been getting a TON of robo calls on my work landline. This is when I decide to get my petty revenge... I forwarded my landline number to her work phone number. The way those phones work all inbound calls just show up on caller ID with the main office number (so that you know it's an outside call).
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 10
    Since you're so concerned Karen you can answer my calls for awhile. It's been a few weeks and she's been complaining about spam calls to her phone-- listening to her be completely annoyed by it has been satisfying. Maybe she should hire an "assistant" to help with that.
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 11
    Of note, she has her number listed as the contact on some of our outgoing material so she'll never figure out why all these spammers keep calling. 20 people here
    via u/Significant-Toe3680
  • 12
    churnbabychurn80 1 day ago Nice work "calling" her out without her knowing! Too bad it won't stop her from putting her nose where it doesn't belong. 4294 294 Reply Share
    via u/churnbabychurn80
  • 13
    igankcheetos 1 day ago I had this guy try to pull some with me in a similar manner. We have a ticketing system at my work where we can open bugs and assign them to people or ourselves for our tasks. He was just a
    via u/igankcheetos
  • 14
    coworker at the same level as me, but he would always try to assert himself as the team lead in meetings and even try to get in on interviews of new employees when he had only been at my company for a week.
    via u/igankcheetos
  • 15
    It took me awhile to figure out what he was doing, but his scam was to accept a bug from our queue, then he would write a new bug and assign it to me. Then when I would complete the work, he would just close my bug then respond to the original bug taking credit for fixing the
    via u/igankcheetos
  • 16
    issue. Once I got wise to what he was doing, I started searching his bug queue whenever he would assign me a bug. I would then close the bug he wrote for me labeling it as a duplicate of the original, then I would wait awhile and then
    via u/igankcheetos
  • 17
    fix the issue and then respond to the original bug as fixed. So it not only looked like he was lagging on the issues, but it made me look good because it would seem like I fixed the issue as soon as I took ownership of the problem.
    via u/igankcheetos
  • 18
    Eventually he was let go because he was totally unproductive. 45 Reply Share
    via u/igankcheetos
  • 19
    maxzmillion 15 hr. ago HR=Horrible Resource 2 Reply Share
    via maxzmillion
  • 20
    NumerousIndependent2 7 hr. ago "Oh, I didn't realise I was your assistant now - let's organise a meeting with HR to make sure my contract and job description is up to date. I'd also like to discuss compensation if my duties are increasing... Will you be arranging that or should I?"
    via u/NumerousIndependent2

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assistant remote worker boss work from home job petty revenge reddit work phone workplace stories reddit work life upper management IT team office karen phone calls business
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