'Are you refusing to help your coworkers?': Manager pressures employee to help with holiday decorating competition, employee resists then maliciously complies

Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor

Dec 18, 2023 8:00 AM EST

The ways in which the Holidays creep into the workplace can result in completely unwanted behavior from coworkers and managers. This can manifest itself at Holiday parties, and in this case, Christmas decoration competitions.

This Redditor shared their story via this thread on Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit, chronicling how every year, the various departments at their office participate in a decorating competition. This sounds fun in theory, but in practice, it's just extra work. OP was supposed to come into the office to get a list of projects in order before the New Year, but now their supervisor requested that they also take a few hours to work on decorating. Where are this manager's priorities?

Now, we all know what would happen here if OP prioritized the decorations at their manager's request. When the actual work projects would not get done, she would throw a tantrum. You can't have it both ways, lady! Thankfully, OP found a way to maliciously comply by making the office a full-on mess and not jeopardizing the status of the projects in any way, though I'm sure folks in the comments section would have suggested that as well. Keep scrolling below for the full story. When you're done, here is another post about some of the weirdest Holiday traditions.