‘This time I decided to maliciously comply': Karen employee pushes co-worker to his limits with irrelevant complaints, so he gets her locked out of her important documents

Author image for Elna McHilderson
Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor
Dec 9, 2024 1:00 PM EST

Nothing is worse than working at a place that has a resident Karen co-worker. You can't get anything done without them breathing down your neck with a complaint about something irrelevant waiting in their back pocket. It doesn't matter how good you are at your job, they will find something to complain about. The only way around this is if she gets fired or quits, or, at the very least, you have a manager that understand they are a Karen and is constantly having your back. If you don't have those, you either are just going to have to put up with it or find your own way to get her to pipe down. Take, for instance, this IT whiz. His Karen coworker was crying wolf on all kinds of different employees. He was used to ignoring her, but finally he just couldn't stand it anymore. And who could blame him?! So he did his job and then some and got her booted and locked out of every document she needed. Now she needs to get the passwords—all different—for every file she needs. Good luck, Karen! 

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  • 01
    DELL "Passive aggressive [co-worker] questioned how everyone does their job, so I did mine and blocked her access...' " MacBo
    via Unsplash+ (and freestocks)

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

  • 02
    Judge me doing my job, eh? TL;DR passive aggressive bu y - at work questioned how everyone does their job, so I did mine and blocked her access.
    via Armored_Souls
  • 03
    I work an office job in charge of finance for a European company. There's this mean single woman reaching her 50s at work that always feels the need and privilege to judge everyone else. Her judging ranges from anything to how people do their jobs, their personal life choices, and even their personality and what they wear.
    via Armored_Souls
  • 04
    The economy has been tough recently and pressure is high within the team, and this has manifested into lots of friction and complaints in all directions, mostly coming from her. One of the many complaints directed at me was that I wasn't protecting our sensitive data enough, saving our monthly reports in a sharedrive for others to access.
    via Armored_Souls
  • 05
    It has been this way for decades before I joined and no one was any issues with it, with the said sensitive data often printed out and stuck on walls anyway. Normally I just ignore the complaints and carry on my work, as both me and my boss are good at ignoring noisy complaints with no reasoning behind.
    via Armored_Souls
  • 06
    But this time I decided to maliciously comply, and now have set unique passwords for each and every file with remotely sensitive data. Now not only does she need to keep track of all the passwords I've set, she also now has no access to some data that me and my boss decided was no longer appropriate for her to see, including what budget we have for some of her operating expenses, and now require proof of said costs otherwise that budget is gone.
    via Armored_Souls
  • 07
    MacDaddyDC Make the passwords change randomly throughout the month for "increased security" babamum This is evil. I like it! KombuchaBot Two factor authentication ftw
    via MacDaddyDC
  • 08
    CoderJoe1 Disable the password saving options in her browser One-HotMess You are too evil! That's awesome. Do it OP!
    via CoderJoe1
  • 09
    notislant IMO massive missed opportunity to make everyone blatantly hate her (if this impacts other people at all). 'A concern has been raised by Karen about our security for _. The current system that has been in operation since on this week we are going to be updating and improving this system to now require all employees...' Also people have mentioned changing passwords regularly. please make them extremely long alphanumeric random passwords that are case sensitive. Bonus points if the zero a
    via notislant
  • 10
    Mulewrangler "Just doing what you kept saying we should do. Don't understand why you have a problem. When can we expect that overdue report?"
    via Mulewrangler

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karens employee malicious compliance work it reddit karen karen coworker what goes around comes around entitled people karma pay back karens in the wild justice served workplace entitled karen karma Tech workplace drama co worker r-entitled Reddit karen story karma karen entitled people
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