HR suspends an employee and asks him to leave for playing a joke on coworker, but forgets to notify boss and other departments: ‘My phone [was] called over and over’

What makes a job harder? A complicated coworker or a handful of different bosses who don't communicate with one another? 

Both of these things can drive an employee mad. But dealing with the higher ranks not communicating with each other can lead to much more disaster than having to bear an irritating coworker. After all, coworkers don't usually start blowing up your phone when something is not working the way it should. That is the boss' job. 

An employee shared on r/MaliciousCompliance a time when both issues ended up being connected. He played a joke on a bad coworker, who always managed to annoy everybody, by accessing his computer with the password and changing the screen saver to mock him. Because of this prank, the employee was called to the HR office, where he was suspended for 3 days and told he could never use or share their coworker's passwords again. He did exactly as told and left the office immediately. A few hours later, his boss started calling him, asking him to come back or to give him his password so he could access the reports he needed. The employee said no to both demands, since HR had forbidden him to come back or to share a password. Too bad. 

The thing about bosses not communicating is that they can potentially cause a disaster for which they might end up blaming an innocent employee and make them lose their job. Thankfully, that didn't happen to this employee, but the possibility still exists for others. Bosses are not only responsible for their own work, but for the work of entire teams. And the HR department is the one specifically designed to communicate with all the other departments. Yes, they need to solve any issue that might arise between employees, but they are also responsible for notifying all the other areas of any arrangement regarding those employees, whether it be new hires, suspensions, resignations, or whatever. 

What do you think? Was it alright for him to follow instructions to the letter, or should he have gone the extra mile and notified everyone himself?