Employee derails terrible boss's personality test by mirroring his answers to get the same result: 'I watched him die inside'

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Apr 30, 2024 10:00 AM EDT

It's hopefully no secret to anyone at this point that if you're given an anonymous questionnaire at work asking for your honest and critical feedback, there's a pretty good chance that that questionnaire is not, in fact, anonymous. That, or there are plenty of ways that it's going to be traced back to you regardless of how "anonymous" it actually is. After all, if they receive one response that's pointedly critical and you're usually the one who has no problem voicing your feedback, chances are they're going pin the response on you even if it wasn't you.

It's just a fact of life that a lot of people really don't like receiving feedback—even when they ask for it—and these people have a tendency to take even the most constructive and well-intended criticisms personally.

These personality tests and other similar forms of qualitative self-reported assessment can be useful tools for introspection and learning how to better work with one another, but they should always be taken with a grain of salt. And if you have a maniacal boss who is secretly plotting to use such a test to weed out the "personalities" that they don't like… well—you'd better be ready with a plan of your own—just like this worker was.