I know this is a piece from 2012, but I can share my experience from the one being on the receiving end of this. I had a very very similar colleague and I reall

I know this is a piece from 2012, but I can share my experience from the one being on the receiving end of this. I had a very very similar colleague and I really repent my working experience with her. What people like Rachel post as acceptable behaviour is actually not conducive to the workplace at all. In my case, I was just transferred to another position and I was required to maintain some production machines for clients. These machines are all hosted on the cloud running their own CRON. My job was just to ensure everything was smooth and no downtime happened. This person, SSH-ed into the instance, removed the CRON tasks on one of the machines and let the system on. I was still fairly new and I was only a few days into this new position. Eventually I found out based on login logs that this person did something and when confronted directly, she said she wanted to see if I would do the work diligently in the right situation. Almost like what Rachel did, except she didn't go out of her way to do something nasty. I think you don't have permission to do these things to your colleagues because you're exactly just their colleague and not their boss. We had some heated arguments and my ex-boss sided with her because she played the minority woman in tech card (no kidding) and it affected my appraisal as well. Just a note to any of you reading this really bad article. Just don't do this. There is no win win for anybody here. If you feel you have a problem with someone, directly confront with them. Don't do all these indirect things which may have serious consequences in your career in the long run (eg. Management's Perception of you). What Rachel did is exactly what you're not supposed to do at a professional work place. Don't do stuff like this and play the victim card. It's really uncalled for and annoying. In the end, a lot of people left the company because of this one nasty colleague and management wouldn't take any action because of her gender as they kept her to maintain the gender ratio. About a week ago I learned that about 7 engineers quit this position over a span of a year for the very same reason. These kinds of actions are the foundations of passive-aggressive behaviour and culture rot and are breeding ground for politics. Please don't do this.