Boss's assistant demands employee stop over-documenting, employee proves they followed her exact instructions, boss takes employee's side: ‘She is getting what she asked for’

Author image for Bar Mor Hazut
Bar Mor Hazut • Senior Editor
Sep 1, 2026 7:15 AM EDT

Don't you love it when people at work ask things of you, without really knowing what they are asking for?

Every workplace has at least one person who does everything to work as little as possible, even if it means piling the work onto someone else. The less they have to do, the better, which often leads them to make some weird requests of their colleagues. The question is, should the colleagues comply, or should they refuse to "help" others ease up their workload?

Generally, I don't mind helping my coworkers when they ask for my help with their workload. If there is something I can do to make life easier for them, and as long as it doesn't cost me my whole workday, I usually don't mind giving them a helping hand. The situation usually gets complicated when they start making demands that make no sense to either of us. When that happens, it becomes clear that a helping hand is not really what they truly need. 

That is the case with the employee and their boss's assistant in the story posted in r/MaliciousCompliance. The boss's assistant seems to want to do as little work as possible, which means that she makes some odd demands to the boss's employee. After she made a mistake, she refused to take accountability and blamed the issue on the employee, which led the employee to ensure it would never happen again. The employee made a point to be as clear as possible with each document they sent the assistant, which in turn added more work for her. Something that we already established she does not like.

When the assistant inevitably complained about the over-documentation to her boss, the employee was already ready with proof showing that the over-documentation was exactly what the assistant asked for. Scroll down to read how the boss reacted.

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    Assistant showing boss documents.
    via Vitaly Gariev

    Assistant showing boss documents.

    Stock photography for depiction only.

  • 02

    Can't find the documentation? I'll make it easy

    I love my supervisor but her assistant can be a little much. The work I do is date and time stamped on issues so all comments
    via Wakemeup3000
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    has my name the date and the time. Great system for tracking things.
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    I had made a phone call for information and updated the comments with what I was told. The assistant was going to
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    send out a letter concerning the issue and didn't see the documentation on a call I made. When I pointed out
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    exactly where it was documented she decided to double down and make an issue out of it not being in the correct format since it was so easy for her to overlook.
    via Wakemeup3000
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    Ok. I'll make sure that doesn't happen again. So now I type out the entire notes needed on a word doc and just cut and paste it line by line and
    via Wakemeup3000
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    word for word of what was said. And since I want to be clear each sentence is an entry. Then I type continued cut/paste the next line.
    via Wakemeup3000
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    Now instead of something easily seen on 1 screen she needs to scroll up and down to get all the information she
    via Wakemeup3000
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    needs. Its been time consuming for her and she's not happy about any of this.
    via Wakemeup3000
  • 11
    Employee and assistant discussing work.
    via Vitaly Gariev

    Employee and assistant discussing work.

    Models for explanatory purposes only.  

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    Editing to add the compliance fall out: | had my quarterly touch base with my supervisor yesterday where we went over a couple issues. One
    via Wakemeup3000
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    of the issues was that her assistant felt I needed to be a little less wordy in my documentation.
    via Wakemeup3000
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    I expressed my confusion over this and pulled up the back and forth email where assistant wasn't able to locate something
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    that was clearly documented. It included the screen shots of where my notes were located and the time and date
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    added so there was no doubt that the notes were there and overlooked.
    via Wakemeup3000
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    I said that since assistant didn't offer any suggestions I took it upon myself to problem solve and provide
    via Wakemeup3000
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    documentation as clearly as possible. My supervisor checked off the issue as closed while saying that the assistant was getting
    via Wakemeup3000
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    exactly what she asked for. One sentence per entry couldn't be any easier to follow.
    via Wakemeup3000
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    One of my fellow team members is pretty good friends with the assistant so I'm sure I'll get the
    via Wakemeup3000
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    scoop on how she faired in her quarterly touch base.
    via Wakemeup3000

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Tags

assistant documents boss workplace-stories employee manager job tales-from-the-workplace workplace company
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