An office security admin’s serene lobby routine crumbled under a senior colleague’s relentless shortcut chaos, as the man barreled through a meeting room, flung the entrance door wide, blasted the alarm, and vanished to his desk, dumping the fix every time. Gentle pleas fell flat.
Ditching confrontation, they engineered a cunning year-long “glitch”: zapping his card access mere steps from his workspace, forcing backtracks amid wailing sirens, feigning tech bafflement, and nudging him to the seamless proper path. Bit by bit, intermittent denials and rare smooth runs reshaped his route.
A Redditor cleverly conditioned a shortcut-loving colleague to use proper entrances by simulating access glitches for over a year.
The Redditor faced a classic office pet peeve: someone repeatedly ignoring basic courtesy, forcing others to clean up the mess. Rather than confrontation, they opted for a sneaky form of operant conditioning, using intermittent “punishment” and occasional “reward” to shape behavior over time.
From one angle, it’s brilliantly effective. The colleague experienced just enough inconvenience tied directly to his shortcut that he naturally gravitated toward the easier, alarm-free route. He never connected the dots because the OP played the confused tech-support role perfectly, complete with “mysterious system quirks.”
It’s a real-world nod to B.F. Skinner’s principles, where behaviors strengthened or weakened by consequences repeat or fade. As Skinner put it: “The consequences of an act affect the probability of its occurring again.”
Yet, others might see it as sneaky or even a touch manipulative. After all, deliberately restricting access, even temporarily, skirts close to passive-aggressive territory.
Workplace surveys show this kind of indirect friction is common: a 2024 Preply study found that 83% of workers have dealt with passive-aggressive emails or messages, while a Kickresume survey revealed 85% of people have encountered an annoying coworker, with many citing habits that disrupt workflow.
In offices, small inconsiderate acts like leaving doors open or ignoring shared-space rules pile up and erode morale, especially when direct communication fails.
Broadening out, this taps into larger family-like dynamics in workplaces, where unspoken rules and petty frustrations simmer. Experts on behavioral change emphasize that subtle, consistent cues often work better than outright demands.
Karen Pryor’s book Don’t Shoot the Dog! (a modern classic on operant conditioning) highlights positive reinforcement as the gold standard, but the Redditor cleverly mixed negative punishment (removing access) with occasional reinforcement to great effect.
One commenter even referenced the book, recalling how students conditioned their teacher to one side of the room using attention as a reward, much like our OP used door functionality here.
The beauty and the risk lie in the subtlety: it worked because it felt like random tech issues, not personal vendetta. For anyone dealing with stubborn habits, the neutral takeaway is to tie consequences naturally to the behavior whenever possible, think clear feedback loops rather than hidden agendas.
Direct conversation remains ideal, but when that flops, creative nudges can save sanity without escalating drama.
Here’s what people had to say to OP:
Some people praise the OP’s clever use of conditioning and call it a well-executed long con or beautiful tactic.
Some people reference Pavlov’s conditioning experiment or similar psychological stories to highlight the humor and effectiveness of the method.
Some people share similar petty revenge or passive-aggressive workplace stories involving access control or retaliation.
Some people offer practical advice or suggest escalating the consequences while still approving of the OP’s approach.
In the end, this tale proves that sometimes the most effective “conversations” happen without words at all, just a well-timed glitch and a lot of patience.
Do you think the Redditor’s year-long training program was a fair response to endless ignored requests, or did the covert approach cross into sneaky territory? Have you ever pulled off or fallen for a subtle behavior nudge at work? Drop your hot takes below!
