Women Share How They Use 'Micropettiness' At Work To Gain The Upper Hand Over Their Worst Coworkers
Beat them with infractions so small they're as plausibly deniable as they are diabolical!
Khosro | Shutterstock All of us have had an insufferable coworker (or five) in our day, and oftentimes the worst part is that there's no way to really fight back. Being deeply annoying is no crime, after all, and often even the worst colleagues are crafty enough to make sure their infractions aren't punishable.
So what are you supposed to do? You can't get them in trouble, you can't punch them in the head at the coffee machine without YOU getting in trouble… you're stymied! Or are you?
Women are sharing how 'micropettiness' helps them gain the upper hand over their worst coworkers.
There's nothing quite so satisfying as being petty. But sometimes when you're petty, YOU end up being the bad guy in everyone's eyes, especially if your target is the crafty, manipulative type. That's where so-called "micropettiness" comes in.
The term seems to have been coined by the women of the Australian podcast "Mamamia Out Loud," the top women's podcast in the country hosted by journalists Mia Freedman, Jessie Stephens, and Holly Wainwright.
The three said in a recent episode they were inspired by a post from Twitter (or X, whatever) personality Bex Luthor in which she described getting back at a horrible colleague in the most perfect way possible.
"There's someone in our team who behaves horribly to me," Luthor wrote in her post, "and whenever I have to type his name, I've taken to using a slightly smaller font size than for everyone else's."
This is diabolical in the best way because it's subliminal — it's a mind trick! This jagoff may not consciously notice the font size, but subconsciously, he'll hear, to quote a viral reference from the earliest days of the internet that MAYBE two people reading this will even get, "shut up, little man!" Either that, or he'll think he's slowly going crazy for reasons he can't quite put his finger on. It's a win-win.
The podcaster shared other perfect examples of 'micropettiness' — small, harmless, but deeply satisfying little pranks.
"Micropettiness is pettiness via stealth," Freedman explained in the podcast episode before reading another perfect example submitted by a listener.
"'I tell my best friend if her boyfriend is being mean to her, she should just take small things from his house,'" Freedman read. "'Nothing important, just inconvenient. Like the base of his phone charger. Leave the cord. Just take the plug."
It's a bit like that scene in "Amélie" where the titular character gets back at the cruel grocer by sneaking into his apartment and swapping his slippers for two sizes smaller and his toothpaste for foot cream so that he thinks he's going insane. Except taking the brick part of a phone charger doesn't require breaking-and-entering or, you know, sociopathy.
Other suggestions included taking "the little spinny thing under the plate in the microwave so it won't turn" or, going back to coworkers, suddenly omitting all exclamation marks from emails and Slack messages for your nemesis to make them sweat over a sudden change in dynamic while you laugh like a villain in your office.
Khosro | Shutterstock
People online had even more examples of 'micropettiness' revenge.
I once had a job where the office manager was just absolutely insufferable — a killjoy and a tattletale who loved to make rules so ridiculous even the boss would regularly be like, "Monica, chill."
Anyway, she once reprimanded me and a friend for going over our allotted lunch break time by literally two minutes, and we'd finally had enough. So we took all of the medium-roast Keurig pods she liked and hid them in the supply room behind the toilet paper. When she'd order more, we'd leave them alone for one work day and then hide them all again.
She finally got so frustrated she ordered three times as many boxes as usual — whereupon we stopped hiding them and she got in trouble for spending too much company money on the coffee pods only SHE liked to drink. Micropettiness!
"I took one piece of a 1000-piece puzzle he was working on," one woman wrote of the truly wicked micropettiness she inflicted on her boyfriend. "My sister reports emails from people at work she does not like as spam, even emails from IT," another submitted. "I set all of the clocks ahead one hour. [My husband] got ready and left, out of my sight 1-hour early," someone else wrote. The possibilities are endless!
So if you've got someone in your life who's tap-dancing on your last nerve like Ginger Rogers in stilettos, don't get mad, get even with a bit of micropettiness. Sure, it's passive-aggressive and childish, but it's not YOUR fault they drove you to this behavior. You're the victim here, and justice should be served!
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.