'You don't want me to do my job? Ok, I won't': Employee gets taken off of work project, incompetent coworker takes over, employee refuses to clean up her mess

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jan 10, 2025 2:00 PM EST

The process of letting go is one that every overworked employee has to master one day. Sometimes, you have done everything you can on a project and the rest is up to other people, clients, or even chance itself. Experience teaches everyone that there is always a limit to how much one can prepare for something that inevitably involves the work of other hands. After all, you are only one person.

The flip side of letting go is the inevitable transferral of responsibilities to other people, which seldom goes the way you want. Coworkers have their own approaches to getting things done, and there is only so much you can do to anticipate their mistakes. At the end of the day, their mistakes are not your responsibility.

Nine times out of ten, it's the lowly employee at the bottom of the food chain who has better ideas about how to complete a project more productively and efficiently than a more senior individual. When this occurs, one can only raise concerns, and when those concerns are inevitably ignored, it's time to practice the art of letting go.

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

  • In this case, we have an employee whose manager seemed to be threatened by their competency and work output. She wanted to do the employee a “favor” by taking him off a project and offloading his responsibilities to another coworker. Internally, the employee was only more stressed by this idea, but externally, there was no need to go above and beyond if he was going to be shown disrespect along the way.

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    Background: I worked for a company many years ago before I got into my current career. I worked at this company for 8 years, starting at 16 in high school. I off daily and quickly worked my climbed into a position of management
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    and was very well liked and well respected by anyone above me or below me. During my last year of employment, I had a new boss. We'll call her Mary. She wasn't my main boss, she was the position beneath
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    him. Her and I got along really well but there were many instances of her stepping on my toes. One of my main duties that was exclusively my responsibility was maintaining the sales floor. I communicated with vendors and with buyers, I kept track of all product
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    being distributed to our store and planned accordingly, I planned all (creative, might I add) displays in the store and maintained them, ordered all needed products for displays, and handled all holiday distributions/displays/orders, etc.
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    October rolls around and I start developing my holiday plan. Mary keeps a close eye on my plans and asks lots of questions but she doesn't get in my way.
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    Thanksgiving is over and we're halfway done. My plan was a success so far and I am on track with the amount of product I've been bringing in/the amount of product left on the sales floor based on previous years numbers and how much were projected to sell of everything.
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    It's a couple weeks until Christmas and I'm in the middle of pulling last year's numbers to start my BIG Christmas order. Mary comes in and sees what I'm doing and says "OP, don't worry about that, I'm going to have Amy write the order." I'm immediately confused
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    and annoyed and ask her why she thinks it's a good idea to have Amy (the store receiver) write the order when I am the person who has been doing it the entire time and has been working all the product
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    and I know what's been moving and what hasn't. She gives me a answer, something like "You've been doing so much and I just want to take some of the stress off of you." Instead of explaining to her that this move will, in fact, increase my stress exponentially, I just close out out my tabs on the computer and smile and say "okay then, thanks!"
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    Amy writes the order and after we get it in, I can tell by looking at the pallets that it's going to be a show. For example, wayyyy too much of random product we don't need and aren't going to sell through until next holiday season, at least. Also not nearly enough of our fast movers and not enough to maintain current displays.
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    Here comes my malicious compliance... instead of breaking down these pallets into the designated area of the back room in an organized and intentional manner, like I have done with all of my previous orders every single year, I just leave it on the pallets,
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    wrapped in shrink wrap. The product stays like that for days and I continue to ignore it. Eventually someone (maybe Amy? Doubt it though) breaks it all down and there's stuff all over the place and you can't find anything you need without moving stuff around.
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    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • Folks weighed in with their feedback about this employee's debacle and the art of letting go at work. Here's what they had to say!

  • There is nothing like a physically disorganized mess to represent the incompetence of a coworker like Amy. Does anyone else kind of feel bad for her?

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    Next, I allowed all of my holiday displays to go to Normally, I would've ordered to maintain them, but nooo Mary wants to give me a break, so I let them burn.
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    Mary and our big boss take note of this and scramble to figure things out themselves. Next, we're completely out of essentials that Amy didn't order enough of and now it's too late and too close to the holiday for the warehouse to send us any more. Mary and big boss are dealing with angry customers who are taking their business elsewhere.
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    Finally, the holidays are over and our back room is FULL of stuff that is going to stay back here for quite a long time. All stuff left over from order. Am I going to Amy's palletize and inventory and periodically work all that product? Nope :) cause Mary thinks I need a break.
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    TLDR: Boss wanted to give me a "break" from doing my job and handed my duties off to someone else who didn't know what they were doing. When inevitably hit the fan, I took no part in cleaning it up since I "need a break."
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    EDIT: Since I didn't make it clear enough, based on the first comment I got, this was malicious compliance because I continued to do the rest of my normal job duties with 100% effort like always. I simply passed on the holiday duties to whoever else because that is what Mary wanted. Mary had a history of stepping on my toes and going over my head and making decisions on my behalf
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    and her telling me she wanted to take some of my stress away was her telling me "I don't want you to do this very important task so I'm going to have someone else do it who I think is more qualified"
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    EDIT: (forgot to include fallout) Amy just got thrown into a situation she couldn't handle. She wasn't equipped to handle the job and I do feel bad that Mary put that responsibility on her and Amy probably had to deal with the guilt of failing so badly. Mary, on the other hand, was chewed out (once, as far as I know) by supervision
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    when they paid a visit to the store and noted the horrible displays and empty shelves on holiday cooking essentials. That and lots of complaints from customers too. I tried not to rub it in her face but I'll admit I let a few "I would have done it this way" comments slip.
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    Aefyns ⚫ You did right. Sometimes you have to teach your boss how to manage.
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    TenspeedGV You don't have to justify yourself in the thread here The idiots just try to find things to nitpick because they want to see themselves comment. Great story
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    katmuffincerealnotes. The best type of malicious compliance is letting someone ruin something they thought they could do.
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terrible coworkers workplace-stories work stories toxic-workplace malicious compliance coworkers Horrible Bosses workplace malicious compliance toxic-work-environment
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