'You're not a team player': Employee accused of insurbordination after refusing to do the work of his fully remote Karen coworker

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Sep 27, 2024 8:00 AM EDT

Being a team player means supporting your coworkers when it's appropriate. It does not mean doing their job for them.

Here, we have a fully remote Karen coworker who had the audacity to ask an employee, who had to work in-person every day, to print multiple PDFs and scan them as one document for her. Now, the purpose of this was to combine these PDF documents into one, a task the employee pointed out could be via Adobe. He even wrote out clear instructions for how to do this from home, but the Karen refused to listen. Instead, their boss got involved and accused the employee of insubordination. Again, the employee was fulfilling his core responsibilities and was complying, albeit with reservations, with the new in-person work policy. Meanwhile, this Karen has the privilege of working remotely full-time and refused to fulfill her own responsibilities because of her out-of-touch understanding of how to merge PDFs. 

Who do you think was the insubordinate one here? Keep scrolling below for the full story. For more, check out this post about an entitled manager who tried to force their employee to work longer.

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  • 01
    "I'm not dropping my own responsibilities to do the job of someone that can do it themselves from home"
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 02
    By "Insubordination" you mean, refusing to do someone else's job?
    via Samicles33
  • 03
    My job's lease for the office was terminated. They were not prepared even tho they were given notice months in advance.
    via Samicles33
  • 04
    We are split up, either we're fully remote or relocated to a different office. They determined who goes where purely based off job title. My dept was literally split in half.
    via Samicles33
  • 05
    Half of us are fully remote, the other half now have a doubled commute and we're 1. ETA: It
    via Samicles33
  • 06
    should be noted, management stated the workers that are fully remote were told if they have a task that requires them to be in-office to complete, then they need to come into the office.
    via Samicles33
  • 07
    And workstations were set up for this express purpose.
    via Samicles33
  • 08
    Today one of the fully remote workers emailed me a bunch of PDFs and asked me to print them all,
    via Samicles33
  • 09
    then scan them all to her in one batch cause she wants the PDFs to be combined. I said she can just use Adobe to do this and even provided instructions on how to do it.
    via Samicles33
  • 10
    My boss then responded and told me to do what the coworker asked. I ignored the email. Then I get phone calls and texts. "So you're not willing to do what I ask?" I'm busy with my own work. I'm not dropping
    via Samicles33
  • 11
    my own responsibilities to do the job of someone that can do it themselves from home.
    via Samicles33
  • 12
    "You're not a team player" I gave her an easier, faster and more efficient way to complete her task, with instructions.
    via Samicles33
  • 13
    "If you have a problem with how our relocation process is being handled, bring it up to management" I have. Multiple times.
    via Samicles33
  • 14
    Got an email recapping our convo and that I am being insubordinate by not doing. what I'm told. Cry me a river.
    via Samicles33
  • 15
    ReedRi... 14h ago • Printing and scanning just to combine a PDF? And they complained?
    via Samicles33
  • 16
    A trifecta of Karen, environmentally wasteful boy, and someone who needs to realize their imposter syndrome is not a syndrome.
    via Samicles33
  • 17
    xdaemo... 14h ago • • They were already PDFs, but she wanted them all on one PDF so she was going to have you print them out and remake it into one giant PDF... When
    via Samicles33
  • 18
    she could have just combined them digitally and not wasted any paper at all????
    via Samicles33
  • 19
    Scizmz 13h ago. • To clarify, I offered a more efficient solution that saves company resources and a substantial amount of time. Your
    via Samicles33
  • 20
    response was that I was insubordinate because you didn't want to learn a basic function of the software that the company already pays
    via Samicles33
  • 21
    for? Or was your motivation based on the desire to waste substantial company resources? Either way,
    via Samicles33
  • 22
    this is a wildly inappropriate and unprofessional response and I have CCd HR in order to document this behaviour.
    via Samicles33

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terrible coworkers workplace-stories work stories toxic-workplace job work Horrible Bosses reddit thread Reddit company karen toxic-work-environment
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