This story is about a M’sian supervisor’s experience dealing with a junior colleague who refused to take a ‘no’ for an answer:
You ever meet someone at work who treats their problem like it’s your emergency? Like the entire company will collapse if you don’t drop everything right now?
Yeah. I met one.
And I swear, dealing with her was worse than those passive-aggressive emails that start with “As per my last email” and end with “Please advise.” Because at least with those, you can roll your eyes and reply when you’re ready.
This one? She made Teams calls feel like a horror movie.
The Relentless Calls Begin
One fine day, I was on a Teams call with HQ—an actual, important discussion—when my screen lit up with an incoming call.
A Junior Exec from Accounting. Let’s call her A.
I rejected.
She called again.
I rejected.
She called again.
At this point, I half expected her to break into my office with a megaphone.
I finally sent a message:
“Get back to you later. In a meeting.”
Her response?
“Answer my call.”
Excuse me? What?
I had never been talked to that way as a junior. When I was starting out, you never just assumed anyone in the company had time for you—you waited your turn, you sent an email, you respected people’s workloads.
And with every call, my Teams meeting kept getting interrupted—notifications popping up, my focus breaking, my colleagues pausing mid-sentence.
At this point, my patience was wearing thin. Was the Finance department on fire? Had payroll been hacked?
The Report That Started It All
Once my meeting ended, I called her back.
She didn’t even say hello before launching into her issue:
“Why is my report not tally with Ops’ report?”
I sighed. This is what the urgency was about?
She shared her screen, and within seconds, I saw the issue—it was an auto-generated report.
I told her, “The report is auto-generated. If there’s an issue, refer to the vendor.”
Then I hung up. Not my problem.
At this point, I should have just told her to email it instead of calling me 50 times like a debt collector. But no—my mistake was feeling bad for her.
I called her back and said, “Share your report with me again. Let me check.”
I ran it in the system, compared it to the original report, and immediately spotted the issue—she had sorted the data wrongly in Excel.
That was it. That was the problem.
I called her again and patiently explained, “I checked, and the way you sorted the data is incorrect. That’s why it’s not aligned.”
The Entitled Outburst
You’d think she’d say, “Oh, thanks for checking!” or at least “My bad, I’ll fix it.”
Nope.
Instead, she raised her voice and snapped,
“Which report did you compare to? I want my report, don’t compare yours!”
Then she hung up.
Excuse me?! You asked for help, I helped, and now I get attitude?!
At this point, I was done. I moved on with my day, thinking that was the end of it.
Oh, how wrong I was.
The Next Day’s Meltdown
The very next day, I was on another Teams call. She called again.
I rejected.
She called again.
I rejected again.
If I ignored her completely, she’d just get someone else to track me down like a bounty hunter. Easier to just deal with it now.
When I finally called her back, she didn’t even wait for me to speak before raising her voice immediately:
“I want you to amend and edit my report!”
I took a deep breath and kept my cool.
“That report is not mine. I don’t have the authority to edit it.”
Her response? “I don’t care! I want this settled!”
At this point, something clicked.
Why was she so desperate to fix this offline?
Was it possible that she knew the report was wrong because of her mistake—and she was trying to cover it up before her boss noticed?
Instead of arguing, I just told her, “If you want it settled, check with the Shipping department. They’re the ones who created the report.”
Then I hung up.
The Epilogue: Manners Maketh (or Breaketh) the Workplace
I texted her on Teams:
“If you need help, at least have some manners. A polite approach is appreciated.”
No response. But I later found out that Shipping had already amended the report. The issue was never mine to begin with.
And guess what? She never followed up after that.
She wasn’t even a fresh grad. She’d been here for two years. So why was she acting like every problem was the end of the world?
Here’s the thing:
It’s not about being right. It’s not even about knowing Excel. It’s about basic professionalism. If you work with people, you need problem-solving skills, communication skills, and for God’s sake, basic manners.
Because trust me—no one wants to be that person.
The one who gets rejected on Teams multiple times a day.
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