Recently, a Redditor took to the Malicious Compliance subreddit to reveal how she taught her co-worker about email etiquette the hard way. OP stated that the incident occurred at her new job, where she managed an office in the medical field. According to the poster, one of her duties every morning was to send an email of the list of patients by the type and details of the appointments they had from the previous day to the records department.
So, having prior knowledge as she had worked in records before, OP knew the easiest way was sorting out the patients by date and having subcategories for the types of appointments. Besides, it was also how her new workplace trained her to do it. OP continued sending the emails the way she was told and believed was easiest, but two weeks later, she received an abrupt passive-aggressive email in response.
According to OP, the response read:
"Send encounters each in individual emails. Thanks, AngryRecordsPerson."
After getting the email, OP said she tried reaching out to get clarification on how they wanted it done but got no response. Then, OP decided to carry on with the way she was taught. One week later, OP got another passive-aggressive email from the same person that read, "Per my last email, send encounters each in individual emails."
OP noted that the email annoyed her as there was no courtesy or answers to her previous questions. However, she maliciously complied. OP made it known that she sent each encounter in a separate email which took her about two extra hours. After the work was done, there were 60 emails sent back to back, rather than one easy email, sorted out by type. OP continued this way for the next two days and got another email:
"Please stop. You are clustering my email. You may send me one email with the encounter types attached. Thanks, AngryRecordsPerson," the email read.
Finally, OP went back to the old way of sending the emails and would later reveal that she found out the Records lady was new and had to learn that part of the job the hard way. Although OP said she felt bad about treating the lady that way, the latter at least learned that email etiquette could go a long way.
