Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Agyaani_ on 2025-01-27 06:02:27+00:00.

A few years ago, my manager decided to crack down on "workplace discipline." His first rule? Everyone had to work their exact scheduled hours—no more, no less. If your shift was 9:00 to 5:00, you couldn’t start a minute early or leave a minute late.

Now, I’m the kind of person who likes to finish what I’m working on, even if it means staying a little past my shift. But fine, rules are rules.

At 5:00 sharp, I started dropping everything. Middle of a call with a client? “Sorry, it’s 5:00. Let’s pick this up tomorrow.” Writing an email? Draft saved, computer shut down. My coworkers followed suit. Soon, the office was a ghost town at exactly 5:01 every day.

It didn’t take long for chaos to erupt. Deadlines got missed, calls were dropped, and clients weren’t happy. Management started to notice. After about two weeks, the rule magically disappeared, and we were told, “Just do what you need to get the job done.”

Funny how quickly things change when you follow orders too perfectly. 😏

Edit/Update:

A lot of people asked if this was about working long hours—it wasn’t! The issue was flexibility. Many of us liked starting early or staying late when it suited us. But the policy forced us into rigid schedules, which didn’t work for how we liked to manage our workloads.

When they realized flexibility made things smoother, they backtracked fast! 😄

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/tvcity6455 on 2025-01-26 15:18:17+00:00.

Years ago, I worked in a satellite office of a large department (300+ people) in a giant corporation. Half of the staff had salary/benefits while my half was hourly contractors. The department was run by two vindictive women who were wholly responsible for the toxic environment. They loved talking about how much they were like sisters; I loved pointing out that when you have sisters like them, one of them ends up under Dorothy’s house.

Like most companies, they were constantly blowing smoke up everyone’s ass about how much we're valued. And they showed that by inviting us to an Appreciation Potluck! There were going to be surprises! And delicious treats from our coworkers!

Of course, the other shoe inevitably dropped: the company was providing only soft drinks as alcohol on company property is forbidden (except when it isn't). The only food at this “appreciation” potluck was what employees were expected to make (“nothing store-bought – share some love with us!”). They couldn’t put it in writing, but it got around that failing to cook something would be “noted.”

It’s tough when the company won’t give you a budget, but it’s tone deaf and insulting to demand people give their own time to prop up the illusion the company cares when half your staff doesn’t get health insurance. The participation non-mandate came straight from the top, and I wanted them thoroughly, inescapably embarrassed.

Two days before the potluck while on a call with my boss, I dropped the live grenade in her lap:

Boss: oh, before we go, I wanted to ask why you declined my Outlook invite for tomorrow afternoon. What’s up?

Me: oh I need to leave early tomorrow to cook for the potluck since I assume you can’t authorize overtime for it.

Boss: overtime?…

Me: My recipe takes an hour or so to cook and the actual potluck is another 2 after business hours, so I was going to leave 3 hours early to keep myself at 40 hours this week.

Boss: wait, you expect to get paid for cooking?

Me: Half this staff is hourly contractors. Does this for-profit company expect 150 contractors to donate 3 or more hours of their personal time for their own appreciation meal?

Boss: oh my God… nobody thought of how this looks? [she was asking herself more than me]

Me: or nobody expected to be called on it.

Boss: but who’s getting called on it? Oh… [sighs] you’re at your desk where everyone can hear…

Me: correct.

Boss: I have to go.

I did feel bad about dragging her into it – she had enough on her plate – but I knew she’d just toss the grenade up the chain to people who get paid to know better. Our satellite office wasn’t privy to many details, but I’m told my call sent people panicked and scurrying around at the mother ship, consuming a day and a half of a lot of people's time. Mission accomplished.

In the end, they moved the potluck to lunchtime (during paid time for contractors) and bought our office pizzas – only our office. We were, however, instructed not to be eating the pizza when we Skyped in because everyone else would get upset. And yes, all the satellite offices were Skyping in like this was the Dunder Mifflin Infinity launch.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/AnnualAntics on 2025-01-26 13:10:37+00:00.

A former employer has decided to shoot themselves in the foot with a bazooka. I thought I'd share it here so you can laugh at them too.

In a nutshell, the business built it's own in-house software which is designed to cover all aspects of the business. From invoicing, tracking stock, creating reports, semi-automating direct debit billing, and virtually everything else; a thousand "sub-areas".

As such, the business ended up with three "IT departments". One was more hardware issues & basic IT issues, there was the "medium" IT department who could fix small issues within specific sub-areas of the software, and the "Legacy" team who worked on the rawest base level of the software and had kept it functioning for over 20 years.

In an effort to cut costs, the senior management decided that the Legacy team were no longer required as they were creating a whole new software anyway & would be ditching the old one "within a year or so".

In doing so, they also insisted that the large office they occupied was completely emptied. This included several huge filing cabinets of paperwork, compromising dozens of core manuals, and countless hundreds of up-to-date "how to fix" documentation pieces as well as earlier superceded documents they could refer back to too.

The Legacy team sent an e-mail to the seniors basically saying "Are you sure?", to which they (eventually) received a terse e-mail back specifically stating to "Destroy all paperwork". They were also ordered to "Delete all digital files" to free up a rather substantial amount of space on the shared drive, and wipe their computers back to factory settings.

So, it was all shredded, the files erased totally, & the computers wiped. The team removed every trace of their existence as ordered, and left for greener pastures.

It's been three months, and there was recently a power outage which has broken something in the rebooted system. The company can no longer add items into stock, which means invoicing won't work (as the system reads as "can't sell what we don't have"). In turn, this means there's no invoices for the system to bill. So, it's back to pen, paper, and shared excel sheets to keep track of stock, manually typing invoices into a template, and having to manually check every payment received against paper invoices. All of which is resulting is massive amounts of overtime required to keep up with demand.

The company has reached out to the Legacy Team, but they've all said without the manuals they were ordered to destroy or erase, they're not sure how to fix it.

The new system is still "at least a year out".

On the positive side, two of the senior managers have a nice large office to share & sit in.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/KitTheKitsuneWarrior on 2025-01-26 07:27:27+00:00.

A little bit of background before I share the story. Names changed to protect myself from retaliation, because my boss is that petty.

The end of December, my old boss stepped down due to going to school, and our new boss took over. All of us were nervous as our old boss was not exactly the greatest, and the replacement was a stickler for the rules.

I noticed an issue with some of how the tasks were assigned the first week of January. The new boss had assigned...let's call them Eric, a task that was impossible for them to do due to how tall they are, as we are required to take photos of equipments Guages for the client, and said guages were out of Eric's reach. I called the new boss in regards to the issue, and informed them that I would gladly make sure the task would get done, so that the company would not get finned for incomplete tasks.

Said boss told me not to do the task, and that Eric should be able to handle it. I said ok, put the phone down, never thought of this issue again.

Three days ago, in the app we use to communicate as a team, boss was furious. Several tasks had not been completed, and they needed reasons as to why. If you remember back to the start of January, I had asked my boss if I could take the tasks of someone else's hands to make sure they were done, and ironicly one of said weekly tasks was the one I offered to do. The others were not done as everyone had been shuffled around due to the termination of a co-worker, and not everyone had been trained on the tasks they were asked to complete.

Normally I avoid even responding to posts or comments on said app, I only have it to grab my work schedule and then I log out of it for the rest of the week. I even have the apps notifications disabled. However, she was blaming the team for not getting the tasks done and looking to scapegoat people, so for the first time, I decided to just let go and call out her hypocritical self out.

I responded stating "at the beginning of January, i offered to do said task for you. You told me not to. I told you why I should do said task. You still told me not to, and now, because said task is not done, you are in a state of panic. Not my task, not my problem"

Boss is now maliciously ignoring my calls, and avoids eye contact with me completely. Everyone including the client knows I offered to complete said tasks, and she literally has nothing to say to defend herself. Perhaps next time, she will listen to what I have to say.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Different-Average-37 on 2025-01-25 02:12:13+00:00.

I'm a software developer at a medium size company where I would get a project and a timeframe to get said project done. This time frame is insane not because of the lack of time to get it done but because of the excessive amount of time it would give me. something I could get done in 2 weeks is given 3 months to complete. My first 6 months at the company were spent with me doing said projects in the amount of time they took me as opposed to the amount of time given for them to be completed and when my performance review came back I assumed my raise and bonus would reflect my performance.

As many of you can probably guess from where I'm posting this story, my raise did not in fact reflect my performance and instead was the base amount my contract guaranteed. My response to this was not to complain as I frankly didn't care and instead to just stop submitting my progress at the same pace I had been doing it. I still did it in the 2 weeks for 3 months but it was a work from home job and I would just add in bits and pieces to keep the progress at the expected pace while having the completed project on a personal machine.

I still work there and have been working there for 4 years now and and very happy spending maybe 2 months of the year doing my job and the working my second job at a different buisness as a software developer as its a work from home job and there are no mandatory check ins or anything of the sort.

I've been offered a decent raise to return to my original pace multiple times but I've declined each time and after around a year and a half they accepted the current pace as I still do quality work with no delays.

I guess don't shaft me originally and expect me to change my mind when you realize my value? no idea I just make way more money than I would have needed to and now effectively get triple my salary as my other job makes twice my lousy job.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Quirky-Marsupial-420 on 2025-01-24 13:59:20+00:00.

My first job out of college I was working as an assistant superintendent on a golf course. One of the most common jobs I was assigned was to spray pesticides on fairways, greens, tees, etc.

One particular day I was spraying fairways and one of the crew guys who was on the next hole over needed help with their machine because it had broke down, so I stopped spraying and went over and helped him figure out what was wrong with the machine.

My boss, the superintendent, came riding up on his golf cart and starting absolutely blasting me for stopping and told me that if my job is to spray fairways that is the only thing I need to be worried about. So I got back on the spray rig and kept on spraying.

Two weeks later, the same exact scenario happened. I was spraying fairways and a crew guy needed help out on the course. I just kept spraying and ignored the crew guy.

My boss was making his rounds on the golf cart and came over to me and started yelling at me saying that if I see someone needs help I need to be able to break off from what I'm doing and help that person, I'm a manager and that's my job yada yada. Then he goes "Do you understand me!?" and I said no I don't, two weeks ago I did exactly that and you told me to keep spraying fairways if that is my task.

He got all red in the face and drove off in his golf cart and came back like 30 minutes later and told me to just use my best judgement from now on if it looked like a crew guy needed help.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/HakanTengri on 2025-01-24 06:40:06+00:00.

This happened some fifteen years ago, but a recent post on here reminded me. I once worked in a municipal archive as an employee of a contractor company. As in, the city contracted the firm and they contracted me and a few other people to do the work. We had an abandoned cinema full of pallets, each with a mountain of file boxes we had to index and catalogue, since the archive had been unattended for something like 30 years. Of course, they gave us the shittiest contract they legally could and paid us literal peanuts for a high qualification job with legal responsibility, but I was young and needed the money.

So, our bosses got paid per job, but we got paid monthly. They wanted the job done as quickly as possible so they could take another one and started pressuring us to do a sloppy job in order to finish quickly. They were in a different city and their latest idea was to call us on the phone every day two minutes before our time to go to ask what had we done that day and pressure us. The calls would go for maybe half an hour, making us late. We were in a remote town with horrible transport connections and we didn't drive, so if we didn't go out on time we'll have to wait hours for the next bus, plus an hour and a half bus ride home. I guess the idea was to punish us and hope we'll go quicker so they won't 'need' to extend the call to pressure us. BUT they didn't want to admit to (I guess they legally couldn't), so they just said they needed to be updated daily.

Cue malicious compliance: after the second time they pulled that shit I started spending at least the last half an hour of every work day pulling together a very tediously detailed (so.tediously.detailed.so.tediously) written report of everything we did that day and e-mailing it to them at precisely my clock-out hour. Then, when they called, I said 'don't worry, you have the daily update in your inbox, it took me half an hour, now it's my time to go home, bye' and hung up.

Of course, work got delayed by at least half an our each day, but what could they do? I was strictly complying with their request for information, in writing, and with every little detail so they don't need to remember. And legally, in Spain, they couldn't fire us without justification unless they canceled the project with the city.

They did call me back for a different project, but when they realized I wouldn't stand for other shit they tried to pull they actually canceled the project and 'let me go'. They had the gall to still promise to call me for another one 'soon'.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/bubbabearzle on 2025-01-24 03:26:38+00:00.

My company was doing great with us all remote during the pandemic but because it is run by a bunch of lemmings days after Amazon announced their RTO policy outs instituted a RTO 3 days a week.

My boss made the unilateral decision that we would need to be in the office from (lets just make something up) 9:30am until 3:30pm (why those hours? Because those times work best for the boss man and his commute).

The problem that I brought up immediately is that we work with people from all over the world (western Europe and Asia), so if I need to meet with any of them we normally do it as early as 6am so it sucks equally for us all.

I mentioned to boss man that when I have an early call, I will be starting my day in the office at the ass crack of dawn and would leave once 8hrs is up (if you do the math, it is before 3:30pm, especially since I don't normally take a lunch. I do this because the other option we were given was to take the early meeting from home, then log off, get ready, commute, and work the remaining 7 hours in the office. That would extend my work day way past 8hrs (and there is absolutely no work need for such long hours).

So, this is what I was doing until boss dude confronted me about why I was "leaving early" so often (my early meetings happen at least 2 of the 3 in office days). I cut him off and said "because I am here as early as I need to be, I don't take a lunch, and I leave after working 8 full hours.

I was told that I am required to take an hour lunch during the work day (and that it did not count as time worked), basically trying to make me stay even longer each day.

He kinda let the subject drop, but I reached out to It and asked if I could be forced to work more than 8 hours per day just so I could sit and stare at my computer to make boss dude happy. HR informed me that boss dude can set required office hours, and that I am free to skip lunch but it does not mean I don't have to stay til 3:30. He also said that because I am salaried I can be required to work longer days "if needed for business" (again, not the case).

So here is where the malicious compliance comes in: my only required hours are those 6 hours (as long as my work is done) and any early morning calls/meetings. When I was starting in the office at 6am, I was working a solid 8hr day (but often had to come up with things to fill extra time).

From here onwards, I will take the earliest call/meeting from home, then do the log off and commute in for 9am thing. But I am only required to be in work during those 6hrs (as long as my work is done, which it is). I will work for 1hr at home. I will be in the office during the required 6hrs. Because not taking lunch does not let me leave sooner, I will be taking 1hr off in the middle of the required hours.

As a result, I will now be working for 6hrs on days when I take and early meeting from home, and 5hrs on the other days. They wanted to. Micromanage us into not being motivated, I will give them what they want.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/_CitizenVince on 2025-01-24 02:55:34+00:00.

I work at a casino as a dealer.

We have a first-in-first-out way of scheduling dealers. So if you start at 7pm, you get to leave before people that started at 8pm when they are able to close tables down and send you home. Pretty normal and straightforward.

If more than one person starts at the same time, then who gets the option to leave first is assigned on a rotating basis. So if you have the first option one week, you will be second the following, the third after that, then back to one.

So one afternoon, I was reporting to work with 2 other dealers, all set to start at the same time. I was looking forward to a short evening, as I was the first option and I had plans after work. I arrived 10 minutes before my shift, and noticed on of the dealers who was starting at my start time was already dealing. They (the dealer) must have been in the EDR and the pencil needed a dealer to start right away. I confirmed that they had started 15 min before their scheduled time, and they were the 3rd option.

Fast forward 6 hours, and we had tables we could start closing. I'm stoked to get out of there, when I look over and see the dealer that started early leaving before me. I pointed out that I was supposed to be leaving before her, and she gave me a shit eating grin and said "Well I started before you, so I have the first option." And then she just walked off all smug. I was super pissed and said something to the supervisor. He shrugged me off and said "It's policy."

First to start leaves first? Ok, game on.

I knew this coworker had kids, and had to wait for her mom to come over to babysit before she could leave for work, so she wasn't always early for her shift.

I have no kids or obligations, so I started showing up 2 hours before my shift and just chilling in the EDR. I would let the supervisor know I was there in case they needed me to start early (which they always did, because they would not refuse to open a table for lack of staff knowing I was on property and available to work). Three weeks of this, and I had held the first option on every shift I worked. The dealer who was all smug about starting early was getting frustrated and angry at me. Having to stay super late every night was wearing her down.

"It would be nice to get off before close just once!" she said to me once as I was leaving early yet again. I told her I was just following policy, and she was welcome to show up early to make sure she was always first out.

2 more weeks and many complaints to the boss later, the policy was changed. Now, in order to jump option numbers, you have to be called in over an hour before your scheduled time. 15 minutes wasn't gonna cut it anymore if you wanted to leave early.

I hope that it was worth it for her staying until near close for over a month over that 15 minutes. I am petty and I have a lot of free time.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/3KidsInTheTrenchCoat on 2025-01-23 19:14:47+00:00.

*FAIR WARNING – CONTAINS MATH CONCEPTS*

So, this is not my story, but I enjoyed it all the same. I work with/am related to various lawyers, so I hear and deal with a lot of legal stories. Most are boring, especially the number stuff, but this one I can appreciate. Many lawyers are shockingly not great with detailed math and breaking down complicated numbers, this story however, is from one lawyer who specializes in it. 

To try and lay the story out simply… This is a divorce case. Ours is Spouse A, the opposing counsel with the bad math skills has Spouse B. Spouse A had a house before the marriage, and during the marriage they together paid down the mortgage. Because of this, Spouse B is legally entitled to a portion of the propriety value. Rather than sell, Spouse A wants to keep living in the house. To do this, Spouse A needs to pay Spouse B to buy out their portion. Pretty common. 

To calculate the payment offer, you take the value of the house at the start vs the value of the house now, and the increased value of the growth during the marriage. Spouse A’s lawyer (Lawyer A) wanted things settled, not draw it all out, and save both spouses thousands of dollars by not having to cover a lot of attorney fees, expert costs, a new appraisal, etc. Lawyer A was being very generous to Spouse B in her calculations. The starting number is a set, specific, undebatable number in tax value. It’s not an option to use anything else, and the other lawyer (Lawyer B) isn’t taking issue with that part, he couldn’t even if he wanted to.

The second part of the valuation has options. Lawyer A used the same source, the tax value, not the fair market value (like you would see on Zillow). This was a higher current valuation of the property compared to using the fair market value, meaning the payout for Spouse B was much higher and would give them the most money. No other valuation would get Spouse B more money. Spouse B has an attorney who’s not good with numbers. He tells Lawyer A the valuation wasn’t fairly calculated. He doesn’t want tax value to be used, he wants the fair market value, like what would be on Zillow. He accuses Lawyer A of trying to cheat his client out of money! He wrote it in the most condescending way, as if lawyer A is both a cheat and too dumb to do the math. He sarcastically challenged her that she would never use his first-choice price, the Zillow price. However, Lawyer A is more than happy to comply to this request. So, she reruns the numbers using the Zillow price. This new number not only gives his client, Spouse B, less money, it is half of the original valuation.

For anyone thinking this isn’t fair to Spouse B, that they are being screwed over because their lawyer is stupid, don’t worry. After schooling the lawyer and giving the new breakdown in numbers, I’m sure he will want to go back to the original plan. Spouse B isn’t going to lose out because her lawyer can’t do math. But it is fun to imagine the lawyer’s face when he sees the halved valuation using his preferred source.

 *Different states have different rules/procedures, this is how it was done in that particular state.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Honigmann13 on 2025-01-22 23:54:38+00:00.

I just remembered the "Gesetz zur Modernisierung der Gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung" also known as the health reform of 2004.

Introduction:

It was about making the system more efficient. Part of this was the introduction of a patient co-payment: 10 euros per quarter for the practice, 10% co-payment for medicines and medical devices - at least five and a maximum of ten euros.

The politicians had the idea that we go to the doctor for fun and thus place unnecessary strain on the system. A popular claim was that seniors constantly make doctor's appointments so that they can read magazines in the waiting room. The co-payment for medicines and medical devices was mainly based on the idea that people would get medication prescribed by the doctor for fun and thus place unnecessary strain on the system. (Medical devices would be crutches, wheelchairs, etc.)

Let's start:

Practice fee

Everyone was against it when it was introduced. Doctors, patients, and health insurance companies were not happy either. (iirc the malicious compliance starts in the second or third year after the introduction.)

Slowly two things happened at the same time:

People said to themselves "If I have to pay, then it should be worth it!"

On the one hand, that meant that if you had already paid for the quarter, you tried to squeeze in as many doctor's appointments as possible. On the other hand, towards the end of the quarter, hardly anyone went to the doctor who hadn't already paid. So doctors' offices were totally overcrowded at the beginning of the quarter and very empty at the end.

I don't know how many politicians' speeches I heard, radio and TV discussions, newspaper and magazine articles saying that people should be resonable. People should go to the doctor on the last day of the quarter (and of course pay the full fee for the quarter) instead of going the next day and have a full quarter.

Amazingly, the practice fee was already withdrawn at the beginning of 2013. It is therefore amazing that our politicians normally hardly withdraw any law.

Unfortunately, the co-payment for medicines and medical devices remained.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/shieldtown95 on 2025-01-22 05:09:57+00:00.

This was in the late 90’s, my city decided to save a few bucks by not paying overtime to garbage collectors during the holidays. Instead of coming up with a reasonable solution, they told the garbage collectors to only pick up two bags per household, regardless of how much trash was actually out.

Here’s the kicker: there was no rule for residents. We could put out as many bags as we wanted. The city didn’t bother communicating anything to us, so when Christmas came (which fell on a Thursday, one of the usual garbage days), everyone put out their mountain of holiday trash like normal. Wrapping paper, boxes, leftovers—whatever didn’t fit in the bins was bagged and sent to the curb.

The following Monday (another trash pick up day) garbage collectors, following orders, only took two bags per house. The rest just sat there. By the end of the week, the streets looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie, with bags piled high on curbs and sidewalks. The result? Absolute chaos. Some houses had 10+ bags sitting out. The garbage collectors had no choice but to haul it all away because, let’s be real, there was no way this backlog was going to fix itself.

In the end, the city ended up paying overtime anyway because the backlog from one week of “savings” was impossible to clear in regular shifts. Instead of saving money, they gave the garbage collectors twice the work and had to scramble to deal with the mess.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Lelketlen_Hentes on 2025-01-21 11:00:05+00:00.

I was working in a hotel in the UK as a lobby boy. My afternoon job was to handle guests' requests for extra pillows, blankets, etc. The system worked like this: the guests informed the reception, the details were written in a notebook (e.g., "Room XY – pillow"), and every so often, I checked the book, solved the problems, and ticked them off when done.

One night, during dinner, the hotel boss wrote a note in the book: "Room XXX – hot water tap is not working." I went to the room, checked it—yup, not working. I went back and wrote in the book: "Can't fix it, call a plumber."

On my next round, there was a new message: "FIX IT NOW," underlined three times…

Well… I went back to the room, checked the hot water tap again (in the UK, there are two taps on the sink, one for cold and one for hot). Still couldn't fix it. I tried a few things until, somehow, the pipe (the one from the wall to the sink) popped out, and boiling hot water started pouring onto the floor at full force.

PANIC MODE ON.

I grabbed the room phone and called reception—busy. So, I sprinted through the hotel (the room was on the farthest side), jumped into reception, and shouted:

"Room XY, PLUMBER, NOW!"

Then I rushed back to the room.

The water was still gushing out at full force, so I just sat on the edge of the bathtub, holding the pipe so that the water poured into the tub instead of flooding the floor.

After about three minutes of this, the hotel boss peeked into the bathroom, went pale, and ran away...

Five more minutes passed. Then the fire alarms went off—because of the steam. Fortunately, the staff already knew what was happening, so they told the guests it was a false alarm and didn’t evacuate the hotel.

Another ten minutes later, they finally shut off the water supply for the entire wing of the hotel.

A plumber arrived and fixed the tap in three minutes.

Now came the fun part: cleaning.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t much water in the bathroom (considering the tap had been gushing for over fifteen minutes). So, I went one floor lower to see where all that water had gone.

I entered the room’s bathroom, switched on the light… but it was very dim.

That’s when I realized: the bowl-shaped lamp cover on the bathroom ceiling was filled to the brim with water, with the lightbulb happily sitting inside it.

Oh shit.

Light off.

Drained the water from the lamp cover, mopped up that bathroom too… but still, it didn’t seem like enough water for what had happened.

So, I went even lower.

Below that bathroom, on the ground floor, there was a corridor (luckily, not another room). But the ceiling had gotten so wet that it collapsed—a 2x3 meter section of it had come crashing down onto the carpet.

After 15 minutes in a sauna-like bathroom, 30 minutes of cleaning, and clearing the rubble, I finally stepped outside for some fresh air.

That’s when my roommate walked past, took one look at me, and asked:

"Did someone puke on you?"

Since then, whenever I say I can’t fix something, they actually believe me and call a professional.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Dedischado on 2025-01-20 02:20:41+00:00.

So this comes from a former coworker who worked in the Catapult shop on a USN supercarrier.

New man is assigned to the shop, given typical runaround/hazing. Eventually is told to go retrieve a "portable padeye."

For those who don't know, a padeye is what you chain down aircraft to so they don't blow off the deck when the carrier is steaming at 30+ knots into a 40 knot gale. They are NOT portable in any sense except that of a moving 100,000+ ton vessel.

So new guy disappears for four days. They are getting worried and seriously thinking about reporting him AWOL (hard to do underway, but it's a floating city) when he comes strolling in with four machinist mates having simultaneous aneurysms from carrying his "creation."

You see, he had, in fact, created a "portable padeye." He had gone down to the machine shop and had them look up the regulations and specs and fab one up out of stores. It was so heavy that just carrying it was bending the bar stock they welded on for handles.

Needless to say, that was the end of the fetch quests.

Edit. Supercarriers displace about 100,000 tons, not 1000,000.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/gossigirl on 2025-01-20 00:50:38+00:00.

Boss went on a major PR crusade last week about "company image." He pulled me aside one day and told me my profile picture (just a casual selfie I took at the park) was "completely unprofessional" and actively hurting the company's image. He ordered me to get a "proper professional photo" ASAP, making it sound like this was some kind of urgent crisis.

Being both broke and pretty annoyed at this point, I figured I'd take the path of least resistance. I did some searching and I found one of those online AI headshot photo generators. Just wanted something cheap that looked corporate enough to get him off my back. I chose the best result from the bunch, swapped out my profile photo, boom done.

Plot twist: He absolutely LOVED it. Not only did he approve it, but he sent out this enthusiastic email to the entire office showcasing my "incredible new professional photo" and praising my "commitment to excellence." Now he's using me as an example of "taking initiative" and "understanding corporate image." The irony is killing me.

Some of my coworkers definitely caught on though. One of them walked by my desk and said "nice profile photo OP" with the most sarcastic smile I've ever seen. Pretty sure 10% the office knows it's AI-generated at this point, maybe that's because they already have one themselves?

I'm honestly torn between laughing and cringing. How long until he realizes my hair color is different? Part of me feels like I should eventually swap it for a real photo, but another part thinks it's not worth the hassle since he's so happy with this one, and even I can't believe it's not a real photo sometimes. Not sure if I should even bother worrying about it at this point.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/[deleted] on 2025-01-16 23:39:41+00:00.

I travel a lot for work, and my company agreement is that I get a set amount for food everyday.

I don't have a knack for fancy foods, so I typically just get what I get and tip heavily to maximize the dollar amount. This was never a problem in the past until my company got acquired and the new company is aggressively cutting costs.

Someone from HR emailed me to tell me I was financially on the hook for tips. I couldn't expense them anymore.

So now, I just buy the food I eat from the grocery store, eat cheaply, and spend the rest on donuts and coffee for all of my co-workers everywhere I travel. There is a set budget for food everyday. If you're going to be a penny pinching POS, I will find ways to spend that money within our agreement to give to others. Next time I think I'll feed the homeless.

Need I remind my company that I'm doing them a favor by traveling because they don't want to pay full-timers in these areas? Don't be cheap.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/foil_k on 2025-01-16 16:53:54+00:00.

To comply with Rule 6, re-posting from my (now sixteen-year-old) son's perspective:

Back when I was three, I was waking up really early, which was keeping me from getting a good night's sleep. I already knew my numbers, so one day, my Mom and Dad decided to put a digital clock in my room so I would know when I should go back to sleep and when it was okay to get up.

That night, the clock showed 8:22 as they were putting me to bed, and they explained the rules: "When you see the seven on the clock, it's morning, and you can get up!"

I waited five minutes, walked out of my room, and announced, "I saw a seven! I get up now!"

They knew from the grin on my face that I knew exactly what I was doing. The only fallout was a laugh and a hug, before I went back to bed again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/foil_k on 2025-01-15 16:50:33+00:00.

Back when my son was three, he had been waking up really early, which was keeping him from getting a good night's sleep. He's extremely bright, and already knew his numbers, so one day, my wife and I decided to put a digital clock in his room so he would know when he should go back to sleep and when it was okay to get up.

That night, at approximately 8:22, as we were putting him to bed, we explained the rules: "When you see the seven on the clock, it's morning, and you can get up!"

Five minutes later, he comes walking out of his room. "I saw a seven! I get up now!"

The grin on his face made it clear he knew exactly what he was doing. The only fallout was a laugh and a hug, before he went back to bed again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Ancient_Educator_76 on 2025-01-15 04:05:52+00:00.

Back in the sun soaked streets of Phoenix, Arizona my 14-year-old self squints gleefully into the window of. Chevy impala, rolling down as slowly and choppily as OPs writing.

It's time to sell some candy.

I hop into my new favorite escape from my life of picking up cigarette butts for my father, rife with opportunity.

My job was to sell boxes of cheap candy that my boss , "Al", got from who knows where. We sold the candy door to door , an army of tweens driven around by someone triple their age. Five to six bucks a box was our price, a dollar a box was our profit.

Al got the rest.

One weekend he drove us way away from our usual spot, thrust us into ahwatukee , a prominent neighborhood with lush houses. Al expected big things of us.

The day was hot and grueling. That bright shiny day quickly turned into a sweaty hellscape, ending in anger and the disappointment of only selling three boxes. Al was furious.

He picked us up from our drop off locations and drove us to another neighborhood in ahwatukee. He reamed us, insulted us, and accused us of not trying. The truth was it was just brutal in every way. People were on vacation. The only people answering was the occasional hired help He didn't care. He demanded for us to

"Start making way more sales!"

Enter malicious compliance.

The next neighborhood he dropped us off in was about a quarter mile from a convenience store. We took the cash we had from our original sales and bought a bunch of cheap candies from the convenience store. We resold those dollar thin mints at a significant mark up. We kept the extra cash and occasionally sold one or two of his candies only because people saw them in our box of candies and chose those. Each o e if us had about thirty bucks cash for ourselves , and twenty or so for AL. We made more sales alright. Al just didn't know how much more.

TLDR

We were told to sell more candy and we sold our own.

Update.

One more detail

This started a plan where we brought a bunch of our own personal things to sell for one hundred percent profit , like little toys and baseball cards. It was our most lucrative summer. Mine anyways.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/VickingMwoan on 2025-01-14 19:22:18+00:00.

I work as a field researcher so my job requires me to drive around to a lot of different locations, because of this I also get paid my hourly wage for travel time.

This only includes everything to the jobsite, so ‘jobsite->home’ or ‘office->jobsite’ are paid but ‘office->home’ isn’t paid. We frequently have to end our day at the office to drop off items and resupply. However most of the time me and my colleagues just write all driving time since our homes and offices are close-by and in practice it actually saves time.

So I started this project 3 months ago.

This project was in a city a 45 min drive away from home and a 1 hour drive from the office I usually use and I am assigned to. (This is on a very traffic prone highway btw)

However in the same city I had an assignment we also had an office so I started using that office to drop-off and resupply instead of my normal office.

My manager noticed this so asked me why I still wrote 1,5 hours drive time a day instead of 45 minutes and pointed me to my contract where it is put as I explained before. I replied to him telling him I would drive to my usual office then so I could write the time anyway, he couldn’t do anything against it and hung up.

2 weeks later after I had 4 hours of unnecessary paid time written extra thanks to traffic jams and the extra drive time he told me that from that point on I could just write the time from the city office to home. I have an awesome manager.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/SithLordSky on 2025-01-13 21:38:15+00:00.

I've been at my job for about 7 months. All in all, it's a job. I'm a receptionist. A Front Desk receptionist. Sigh. The only saving grace was that I had an amazing manager. She and I figured out the job and the system together, as the lady I replaced left on a Friday, and I started that next Monday. She ended up leaving 2 months ago and I got shuffled to another team. Which is fine. It is what it is, right? Until I got sick.

Friday came one week and the mail was super late so my desk had some clutter because I'm not allowed any OT and I have to leave at exactly 5pm. So I shall comply. I will leave at 5pm/. Monday I was sick with a 24 hour stomach bug and had to call in. I come in Tuesday morning and get told that my space is a sloppy mess and I need to clean everything because it's unacceptable. So whatever, I take the criticism and move on.

A few weeks later, after I had taken two scheduled days of PTO off, I get pulled into a meeting because she can't find anything in my desk and cabinets and I need to organize them in a way that makes sense so people can just come to my desk and not have to search for things. Like what? How? That's honestly impossible. Even if I run around and label things, they're going to have to search through 50 labels to find the one that says, "Manilla Envelopes" like WTF. And one of the first things I did when I got here was reorganize the entire space because there was NO order when I started. Like the manila envelopes were in THREE DIFFERENT LOCATIONS. Oh and I need to make sure I spend 10 minutes at the end of my shift cleaning the desk. Fine whatever, but I can't reorganize for future unknown people, but I'll clean.

Enter today. I had to poop. It happens. Typically once in the middle of my work day. So I go. Well I get 2 messages asking if I'm still in the building because someone came looking for paperwork while I was gone. (I was gone for 12 minutes. And frankly, I don't get my 15 minute breaks so I consider this fair exchange.) And I didn't get them until after I got out of the hall, because I'm not big on phone usage and pooping. Now because my boss couldn't find paperwork that was in clear view on top of a file sorter, I have to let the entire team know when I'm leaving my desk for any reason.

Okay. Suit yourself. Now I'm going to take my 2, 15 minute breaks, and I'll make sure everyone on that team knows when I'm using the bathroom as well. Because that's obviously imperative information. Every piss. Every Shit. Everytime I have to deliver a package or mail to someone in the building. And I'm about to label everything and make this stupid space look like an episode of Looney Tunes with Wile E Coyote and Road Runner.

I'm 100% looking for a new job again. Which sucks. I hate job hopping. God, I miss working from home.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Easy-Economics-8461 on 2025-01-13 20:59:57+00:00.

I worked for a large life insurance company, talking to customers on the phone. I got a call from a foul mouthed, sharp talking, abusive caller. I could see through phone the Ahole- in- a- suit- behind- his- desk caller in my mind. He spoke beyond sharp. He was loud, forceful, and peppered his speech with the worst profanity. He demanded to know if he could split his life ins benefit between two people, and if they had to be family. I told him he could and they didn't. He then demanded to get the change of bene form sent to his office. I told him I could do this. He made me repeat back to him what we spoke about and that I promised to send the change of bene form to his office, not his home. (He said his wife was busy and didn't need to be bothered with menial business.) He actually said "Repeat after me. I will..." He made me do this twice. By the time he was done I was practically in tears. I was shaking. I kind of had an idea of why he wanted the form sent to his office, not his home. Anyone else guess? Well I sent the change of bene form to his office as requested. I did not, however, mention the automatic, I can't do anything about it, confirmation of beneficiary change letter that would be sent to his HOME ADDRESS, listing the AMOUNTS and NAMES of beneficiaries. I went back in weeks later and found the change made as requested - and changed back to wife only again!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Zharuai on 2025-01-13 20:21:40+00:00.

At the airport, they said my suitcase was 2kg over the limit and wanted to charge me extra. So, right there in front of everyone, I opened my bag, layered up with three jackets, a hat, and two pairs of sunglasses. Walked onto the plane looking like I was ready for a polar expedition. The other passengers? Couldn't stop laughing!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/dudsmm on 2025-01-13 19:17:03+00:00.

A few years after 9/11, I was working at a manufacturing facility a couple hours from Jackson Hole, WY. A part of my job was I interacting with the electric utility on outages, safety, and maintenance.

In the Spring, our department's admin was assigned to plan an executive gathering in Jackson Hole. 10 executive for 5 days. She shared the budget was over $100k. The executives would take a 1/2 day side trip to the manufacturing facility to visit us plebes. I also found out they were taking a helicopter in from Jackson Hole, which was need to know, and I was NOT supposed to know...also, no helicopter inbounds had take place since 9/11.

Cue the MC... My job required me to report any aircraft flying near to the High Voltage direct feed power lines. I spoted the helicopter and dialed up the Utility to report. The Utility sent the onsite security to verify, and ID the copter. It landed on a pad nearby and was swarmed by 3 security trucks. They ID"d each passenger, as it was the job. This delayed the executives, so they only spent an hour at the facility and flew back.

I was doing my job, security was doing their job, and the Utility followed procedure...

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Possible_Seaweed4815 on 2025-01-12 18:36:30+00:00.

I used to work at a mid-sized company where our department had its own supply closet. Everyone knew the rules: take what you need, don’t hoard, and keep the area tidy. Simple enough, right? Apparently not for our new micromanaging office manager, “Karen.”

Karen was obsessed with cutting costs. She’d swoop in like a hawk every morning, inspecting the supply closet. If a box of pens was a little lighter or the post-its weren’t perfectly aligned, we’d get a stern email about “unnecessary consumption.” She even implemented a sign-out sheet for supplies. Want a highlighter? Better justify it in writing.

One day, Karen decided to escalate. She put a lock on the supply closet and declared herself the sole key holder. If anyone needed something, they had to email her and wait for her to “approve” the request. This was, of course, on top of her other duties, so getting a new pen could take hours. Needless to say, productivity started to suffer.

Cue malicious compliance.

A coworker of mine, “Tom,” was a bit of a prankster but always stayed within the rules. He decided to test Karen’s new system to its limits. Every time he needed anything, no matter how small, he emailed Karen. Need a single paperclip? Email. Need to replace a dried-out marker? Email. Stapler jammed? You guessed it: email.

Tom’s meticulousness inspired the rest of us. Soon, the entire department was flooding Karen’s inbox with individual requests. Since Karen insisted on handling every single one personally, she quickly became overwhelmed. Approving requests started taking days instead of hours. Meetings were delayed because people didn’t have notebooks. Presentations stalled because someone was waiting for a dry erase marker.

Management started noticing the bottleneck. Our department’s performance metrics were plummeting, and everyone pointed the finger at the supply chain fiasco. Karen tried to defend her system, claiming we were being wasteful and needed “structure,” but the evidence was clear: her micromanagement was backfiring.

After a particularly disastrous week, upper management stepped in. They not only revoked Karen’s authority over the supply closet but also gave her a formal reprimand. The lock was removed, the sign-out sheet disappeared, and we went back to the honor system. Karen, humiliated, kept a low profile after that.

As for us? We may have “lost” a week of productivity, but the petty satisfaction of watching Karen drown in her own bureaucracy was worth every second.