Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/theflamingheads on 2024-06-26 20:28:49+00:00.

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I used to work at a hotel on a large property that did a lot of business conferences. We had golf buggies to get around, 10 different conference rooms plus, lots of other hotel facilities, storage rooms etc. Upper management had a strict rule that important locks could only have one set of keys. Upper management also liked to "save" money by never fixing things when they broke. It must've looked good on paper.

One week we had a big spending client who had booked out the hotel for the week. Night one our sales team had got the times wrong for their dinner of several hundred people so all available staff were sent over 2 hours early to start setting up. The hotel's General Manager (GM) announced he would be over shortly to see how things were going, which was almost unheard of for him. What he found was about 20 staff standing around outside the venue. The conversation went something like this:

GM: Why is everyone standing around?

Supervisor(Sup): We don't have the keys. We sent a staff member looking for the other supervisor who has the keys now.

GM: Where are your other sets of keys?

Sup: We've only been given the one set of keys. GM: Why don't the staff have a radio on them?

Sup: Radios have been broken for over a year and never approved to be replaced.

GM: Why did you only only send one staff member to look for them?

Sup: We only have the one working golf buggy.

GM grumbles and sends another staff member off on his buggy to look for the keys. Eventually, after everyone standing around for nearly 20 minutes the keys turned up. The GM was stressed out of his mind that such a big client might be kept waiting. For the supervisor it was just another Monday.

Malicious compliance: The supervisor had access to a backup set of keys that they were strictly forbidden from using. Usually in a situation like this they would quietly use the forbidden keys and everything would go smoothly. But because the GM decided to be there they didn't mention the forbidden keys, causing delays and panicking management.

Fallout: The next week, each supervisor got their own set of keys. A few weeks later we got radios for the department. Upper management also started checking in on how things were going from time to time. Apparently making rules without knowing how things actually work isn't such a good policy.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/MotherTreacle3 on 2024-06-26 17:41:26+00:00.

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This story takes place at the height of the pandemic. I'd like to preface by saying I took it very seriously as I lived with high risk individuals.

At work (hooray for being an essential worker!) we had to be thermo-metered, fill out a paper questionnaire, and scan a qr code to fill out a digital questionnaire.

I had a dumb brick phone at the time, and while it was technically capable of connecting to the internet... for all intents and purposes it did not. At first I was borrowing my co-worker's phones but nobody was really happy with that.

That's when I realized one of the questions on the paper sheet was "I have filled out the digital questionnaire: Y/N".

So I started ticking "N". Lasted for weeks and weeks before anyone higher up said anything about it.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/MorsInvictaEst on 2024-06-26 14:02:14+00:00.

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Just a short one to celebrate a victory. The dilemma: Our company has flexible working hours and some of us who are late sleepers or have to take care of small children in the morning will not start work before 9 or 10 AM.

Unfortunately one department we work with has their entire management level filled with early risers who just love to set up early morning meetings. We need another weekly meeting to discuss current operations? How about 8 AM on monday? Let's vote on it! The early risers are the majority, our arguments are disgregarded and their boss says: "Well, we voted for it and the majority believes that 8 AM is the best time. You'll have to adjust. That's how democracy works!" OK, he's right. If your name ist Orban or Erdogan or Duterte, then that is how democracy does work. Majority good, minority bad, down with the minority!

Recently the number of topics started to exceed the capacity of that meeting, so it was decided to have another weekly to deal with the rest. We asked for nothing more than to schedule the new meeting after 10 AM. But: "That's for the majority to decide! I'll ask my assistant to schedule a new meeting that fits into everyone's schedule.", he said with a smirk, knowing that the assistant would ignore any morning-blockers that were not actual meetings.

Time for some malicious compliance! Since the assistant had already left (early risers...), the opposing forces gathered and started to invent new weekly and daily meetings for our department. Now we had early-morning meetings every day, a daily just after the early riser's lunch break (we prefer to eat later) and various other weekly meetings that blocked other important time slots. Today the assistant surprised the department head with her new meeting proposal for a mid-afternoon, just before he usually leaves (and likes to leave a bit earlier), since all earlier slots were already blocked. I know for sure that he suspects foul play but our team has joined the effort and even my boss has claimed that she's only seeing valid entries in our calendars. The people's democratic resistance works. Take that, tyrannical pretenders! ;)

We'll probably wait another two or three weeks before we delete the dummies from our calendars.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Zealousideal-Post332 on 2024-06-26 05:08:27+00:00.

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First post ever, loving Malicious Compliance and realized I had a good one...

I don't give permission to repost anywhere, read in a video, etc., please forgive any formatting errors. I'll post a feedback comment, welcome to it if you can keep it under there.

Setting:

Back around 2010 I was working for a chain auto parts store while going to school. O... O... O... I shouldn't tell you which one.

Background:

We had a Regional Manager, let's call him Bob, that would come by now and again and among other things work on enforcing internal policies. He'd also make sure to pick up a few customer calls while on premise and deal with them as I suppose a show of comradery. One of the policies we had was "Never Say No", the premise being that if a customer wanted something, you make it happen. Generally, I had a pretty good feel on both internal and external resources; we had our warehouses, "special order" outside supplier networks, local vendors, a local WalMart, even our competition that I was authorized to buy from, mark up, then sell to customers if that's what they wanted (saving a potential future edit, I was always very transparent when I thought it was a dumb call and gave options to customers). Basically, an auto shop could ask us to bring them Tacos and we would make it happen. I'm a car guy myself and can generally find whatever part is in question if I really need to.

Setup:

Bob is in store one day and hears me tell a customer that we're far from the best option for getting whatever part it was, or just flat out probably couldn't make it happen, I don't know. I sure wish now I could remember the details. Call ends, I get a lecture on "Never Say No" even though the request was truly beyond feasibility, even having a good grasp on what we can provide.

Malicious Compliance:

Some time later, Bob is back in the store. He picks up a call, listens to a customers request and is a little baffled because it's for something very odd. He turns to me as he knows that if we can get it, I'll figure out a way "Hey, Zealous, can we get X?" Without even thinking I respond right back "Sure Bob, absolutely!". He takes customers info, hangs up, then asks me where we can source said item. I tell him flat out "Heck if I know, Bob! Never say no!"

Fallout:

His jaw hits the floor, full surprised Pikachu, forced into stunned silence. Sadly again, this is almost 15 years ago and I don't remember the details. I do know I never got any verbal or written waring resulting from it, and he never pestered me about the "Never Say No" policy again. Customer wise, we could never get whatever was requested in the first place, so they may have gotten a glimmer of false hope before the call back, I see that now, didn't in my instinctual reaction at the time.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Oldmudmagic on 2024-06-26 03:20:12+00:00.

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It was going to be my first concert. I was 16. Bon Jovi and Skid Row. There were so many people wanting to go that you had to get a linepass to even get in the line for tickets. I was being allowed to go with my two best friends, which was a big deal, as I wasn't allowed to do anything, ever. This was going to be HUGE!!!! :)

At the last minute, literally on the way to the line, I'm told "Your sister, her husband and your little sister are going with (you can't be serious) , and you can 'take it or leave it'. Well alright then..

Me and my two besties were dropped off to join the line and I was given money for 4 tickets to cover all of my family's tickets. At some point during this long wait it occurs to us that we'll all have to sit in our assigned seats, and neither I nor my friends want to hang out with my old sister her old husband (funny, looking back, how 25 seemed ancient) and little sister who honestly should not have been going in the first place.

MC ftw

I get to the counter and ask for 3 tickets please. Complete the transaction. And then 3 more tickets please, as far away from the first 3 as you can get them :) :) The cashier totally knew what was up and gave me 3 more on the complete other side of the arena.

We never mentioned it and pretended to "realize" (ah what a bummer :( on the way to the show. They knew it was no coincidence but there was nothing to be done at that point.

We rocked out like crazy people and I even got a tshirt! Good times were had by some :)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Eryk_Zoldyck on 2024-06-26 01:16:26+00:00.

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Hello everyone, I am sharing my story of malicious compliance which happened last month. Excuse my English and typos as it is not my first language.. Anyways on to the story...

To give you guys a small background i work in a call centre in India, our company is based on US Healthcare so we usually work in the night shift... I am in the lowest position in my company and I'm fairly new to this field, so my experience in the field is just 6 months. We recently experienced a cyber attack on all our softwares, so we had create new work-around for the way we usually work and it was totally new experience for us as everyday we faced a new problem. The management is at their ends but somehow making it through day by day.

Our company recently hired some new staff to the company right before the cyber attack so they didn't know how our company worked certain scenarios or processed certain accounts. Among the newly hired was a quality manager, let's call her Donna, who is kind of a pain in the back. My boss, his Boss (let's call him big boss) and other management found it difficult to handle her and convince her this is a proven system and it has been working till now.

Donna is trying to make changes to the way we work but her efforts fail. Now fast forward to the cyber issue, we try to find other work around for the way we usually do things and Donna is trying to implement her ways but it won't work even as a short term solution let alone a long term fix. Big boss tries to tell her this but Donna is adamant and wants us to do it her way. So Big Boss asks her to send an email explaining to do the same, and Donna happily obliged thinking others finally see things her way.

Cue the Malicious Compliance, Big Boss asks everyone to follow Donna's instructions and not to do our job the way we always do. So we work the way Donna proposed and it kinda blows up as there are multiple teams working in our project and there is a team working in the US who we call the client side. Suddenly all the accounts that are supposed to be in our Work Queue goes to the client's work queue which must have only top priority accounts, so the client is naturally confused due to the sudden increase in lower priority accounts in their queue. They ask Big boss what's up and he tells them exactly as it is..

They are furious at Donna and set up a zoom meeting with Big boss, Donna and my boss. My boss and Big Boss explain the communication from Donna and shows them the e-mail. I don't know what happened after that but during the break my boss tells me what happened on the meeting. Apparently, the client told Donna that either she stops suggesting stupid ideas or they will fire her, combined with a lot of yelling and finding a solution right away that can undo what Donna did.. Donna gets confused and asks what's wrong but before she could complete her sentence, the client interrupts asking her not to talk the whole meeting and puts her on mute.

After this incident, her opinions are usually rejected (well most are not logical and kinda stupid anyways) and she just exists doing her job without any interaction with others. I kinda feel bad for her but at the same time she was stubborn as a rock and got what she deserved for treating others like they are less knowledge than her. Talk about bad judgement and mismanagement. She just wallows in self pity nowadays and have minimal interaction with other team members.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Illustrious-Leader on 2024-06-25 15:53:43+00:00.

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I worked for a large religious based not-for-profit for five years. Despite not praising God I was too good at the job to be fired (the GM tried) but it was clear I had no career there. And that freed me from the fear of making a career limiting choice.

In their infinite wisdom and grace, they decided we could have casual dress day once a month - for a gold coin donation. Which you had to make even if you didn't come in casual dress.

For the first one, they made a huge deal about what a big deal this was. They announced the phones and internet access would be cut at midday, and we were all going to clean the office so wear "your comfiest clothes". Perfect.

I turned up in fleecy pajamas, dressing gown, slippers and a hot water bottle (with wool cover) tucked under my arm. HR swarmed me and I pointed out these were my comfiest clothes. One of my greatest achievements is having HR formally change the casual dress policy on the first day of it's implementation to specifically exclude sleepwear.

They formed an official 'fun committee'. They tried to get me to join the fun committee and I flat out refused. After the first casual dress day, they invited a(nother) charity to speak at lunch and gave them the donation money. So when they had someone talking about mental health, they had a theme of 'Crazy' - very tasteful and sympathetic. They gave a prize to someone who wore a hat with eyes on it and someone who wore odd socks. I hired a cow costume and came as a mad cow. I didn't get a prize.

I kind of miss having a job where I just didn't care anymore.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Mrchameleon_dec on 2024-06-25 13:35:21+00:00.

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Back in the 2000's I worked in a bank and for 2 of those years, I was the head teller. As the head teller, I also had to keep up with the cash in the vault.

Now, it is never a good look for a bank to run low on money, but it happens. With that being said, I would try to order so that I didn't have too much, but enough on hand to keep us from panicking.

Now, on to the story.

There was a system that would tell me at the end of the week how much money I should order and/or ship out. I will be honest with you, I went with my gut on this because 1) I knew my "house" and 2) I paid attention to what kind of week it was going to be i.e. holiday weekend, heavy pay day, etc.

So my bosses came to me to tell me that I was ordering too much and ignoring what the system said. My response: You can also see that I'm using whatever I'm ordering. I'm not just hoarding. So I was told: just do what the system says.

Ok, bet.

I gave my team the heads up. The next few weeks are going to suck. They're telling me that I'm ordering too much. So I'm going to do EXACTLY what they told me to do. You can direct all of the bullshyt to me. If people get mad, don't worry about it. I'll take the heat.

So for 3 weeks, I did exactly as I was told. And what I thought was going to happen did. It got to the point where we're cashing large checks in $20s, and barely able to do that.

Apparently, the complaints started going uphill because the following conversation happened:

Bosses: We're getting complaints about the branch not having enough big bills.

Me: I figured that would happen.

Bosses: We want to know why

Me: I'm doing exactly what I was told. Whatever the system is telling me to do, I'm doing. But y'all already knew that.

Bosses: This can't keep happening.

Me: It wasn't happening when I was ordering the way I needed to. So now you have a choice to make.

Bosses: Do what you need to do, for now. Until we figure this out.

Me: Ok

I was pretty much left alone after that.

As a side note: I actually reached out to that specific department to ask about a work around so that I wouldn't have to keep having this conversation. The solution they gave was SO simple! And I never had that issue again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/blackcompy on 2024-06-24 17:23:02+00:00.

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Some years ago, I was working for a large corporation. One of the responsibilities of the team I was on was to offer on the job training for employees and managers on a number of topics that are not important here. The point is, we took our job seriously and tried to do the best work we could. Among other things, that meant changing the training topics and content on a regular basis to make sure it was up to date with industry standards and what our colleagues actually needed to know.

At some point, we were approached by corporate HR. Apparently, our trainings were bypassing most of the central controlling and approval processes, which was creating issues for them. I could understand that. However, these processes were awful. Slow, unnecessary, bureaucratic... and HR showed no interest in improving them. There was no way we could follow them without sacrificing our quality standards. I could have outright refused to follow them and created a massive conflict, but there was a better way.

We set up a workshop with HR to make sure we understood the processes we needed to follow, in detail. Over several exhausting hours, we mapped out every single step that needed to be done, by anyone, along every step of the way. Flipcharts with scribbles and diagrams quickly filled up every square foot of available wall. At the end of a long and exhausting afternoon for everyone involved, I pointed out that we now had a full picture of what needed to be done (good work everyone!), but we still needed to align on next steps - how would we get there? It was at this point that the HR manager in the room asked whether we could "postpone" that topic for the "follow-up workshop", as everyone seemed to be very tired. Of course, we agreed.

Funnily enough, that follow-up workshop never happened. Whenever the topic came up, everyone was quick to state how busy they were at the moment, and could we delay for a few more weeks? A year or two later, our training program had to end for an entirely unrelated reason, so it didn't matter anymore.

So if you ever need to refuse to do something in corporate world, don't say you won't do it - accept it and make sure it slows to an excruciating crawl.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/MMW_Oxford on 2024-06-24 16:08:38+00:00.

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Around 2001, I was being bombarded by telesales people trying to sell me all kinds of things, mainly financial sales, insurance, investments, sure things etc. They were taking my time and begging me to talk through all the options with them. Anyway I got so fed up with this that I paid for a premium phone number and got my listing changed with the directory services. The premium number paid me £1 per minute. After that I would answer them and listen to their pitches ask questions trying to make the call last longer (I was a sure thing and interested after all) and then decline their product or service. I was making £30 to £45 a call. One of them was from France about yacht finance I made £250.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/1piperpiping on 2024-06-24 14:52:27+00:00.

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Friend of mine, who we'll call Buddy said I could share this.

Background: Buddy worked for a company that got on the hybrid/WFH train early. He got his job around 2012, these events take place around 2016. We live in NJ, and his office was in NYC. His contract said that he had to be in 1 day a week (same day each week), and up to 5 days a month (so one additional day on top of his weekly day). If work brought him in more than that, he got paid his hourly billable rate for his commute and any extra hours. His commute was 1.5-2 hours each way, so that could quickly add up to hundreds or thousands of hours. Other than a couple of full time in office folks, his coworkers had similar contracts, and had to be in 1-8 times a month and some lived as far away as Boston or DC. They worked in a well paid niche consulting field, so I guess this was worth it to everyone.

On to the story. Buddy's company has a client who is very old school and their point of contact is a jerk. On a video call, the client notices that some staff do not appear to be in the office (before blur was as common) and demands that all of the work done for their contract be done in an office, rants about professionalism. Buddy's manager simply says "ok".

Manager calls a meeting afterwards with Buddy's team. He knows they're upset but asks them to prepare to come into the office daily for the next 4-6 weeks. Tells them to keep very careful track of receipts, costs, time etc. And asks them to trust him. For the people who live further away, tells them he'll help set up accommodations for them (and their families if necessary). Because the company treats people well, everyone goes along with it with minor grumbling.

About 5 weeks go by, everyone is coming in daily. Remember when I said that most people didn't come in? So yeah, not much space in the office, the company liked teleworking because it allowed them to have an NYC headquarters but not much space. Everyone keeps careful track of commuting costs, etc., time, and is getting reimbursed for their travel time and everything they are owed. This includes some folks who had contracts that covered lodging if they had to come in more than a day or two in a row. Then one day the manager tells them they can go back to their regular schedule. Everyone notices jerk client is gone but that the client company is still their client.

Later on, Buddy finds out what happened. As per the terms of the contract, the client had to pay for all of that overage. Frustrating for the employees, but Buddy said no one was too mad knowing that it was temporary. Buddy's manager also knew that the same jerk point of contact had been a jerk. He had apparently gotten tired of being asked to sign contract modifications.

Buddy said usually these were set at modifications over $1k or something but this guy had thought these signoffs were below him, and so set that threshold much higher something like $100k. Due to the wording of the contract, this was $100k per change, not total. So, in the five weeks that everyone was coming in full time, he had managed to cost his company a few hundred thousand dollars, but since each individual employee was a single change, no one noticed until the next billing cycle. Jerk got called out by his own company and they tried to contest the payment.

Turns out the contract was very clearly written and the client had to pay. On top of that, this is a pretty niche field, and so the client didn't really have many other options if they wanted to change consultants at that point. Jerk point of contact got fired, and, according to Buddy's manager, couldn't really find work in their smallish field. Buddy and his coworkers got a nice chunk of money.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/jacob_ewing on 2024-06-23 22:53:48+00:00.

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Years ago I worked in a call centre doing technical support. Usually for dial-up internet providers.

I'll never forget one lady who called in. I don't remember what her issue was, but I started walking through troubleshooting:

Me: "Ok, please double click on 'My Computer'"

Her: "With my left mouse button or my right button?"

Me: "With the left button"

Her: "Ok"

Me: "Ok, now if you could double click on 'control panel' please."

Her: "With the left button or right button?"

Me: "Oh, yes, with the left button. When someones says 'double click', they are always referring to the left button"

Her: "I don't care, I want you to tell me every time what button to use"

So I did.

For the rest of the conversation, every single time I asked her to double-click on something, I would pause and say "With the left mouse button", as if that was something unusual. She complied, but I could tell by her tone that she was getting frustrated with it. She never said that I could omit the added instruction though, so I just kept going.

Eventually the problem was solved and we disconnected. Nothing came of it, but I hope the next support desk she spoke to didn't need to explain it to her again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Important_Set6227 on 2024-06-23 14:27:32+00:00.

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I work in a region where most speakers at academic events are men. This one was to be the same, all speakers male-so I complained and asked if we could have at least some female speakers on a day long event.

They asked for suggestions, then rather than following them asked me to be a speaker

They then forgot they actually had a female speaker, and asked all speakers to wear a tie

So I complied, and also wore a tie to the event

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ReveresRide on 2024-06-23 15:33:25+00:00.

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I've been teaching for 6 years, at my last school for 2 years. I have a BA in History & MA in Education. My principal and administrative staff pulled me out of one of my classes during an intense lecture I was giving and ambushed me in the hallway to ask/tell me I was going to teach IB classes next year.

For those unaware, International Baccalaureate courses are intense classes for high school students that last from 1-2 years. These classes are intense, requiring what some teachers have said to be the time equivalent of a part time job for them to plan and prepare...without additional pay and not part of my contract!

For context, within the first two weeks of working at this school, I noticed the other side of the pendulum, the students with learning challenges, were being pushed aside in order to achieve the principal's goals of becoming an 'elite IB school.' I began advocating for these students and offered to teach co-taught class with a Special Education teacher in order to help these students achieve. It was a great success, seeing many of the former 'troubled' students actively being engaged in class, and through the grapevine, I was told I was one of their favorite teachers, since I 'got them.'

After the first semester, I heavily petitioned the staff to allow me to teach more of these specialized classes across my department. Here's the deal: there was no change in the curriculum, just in how I presented it to the shared class. Anyhow, the principal shot down my idea, but allowed me to continue with my lone class for the next year.

Back to the present: After the ambush, I went home and talked it over with my wife. She is my rock, and understood that I was troubled with the additional task of basically adding an additional 15 hours of work a week to my schedule. She said, "Go with your heart."

The next week I scheduled a meeting with the principal. I told him I was unprepared to teach the IB course THIS YEAR, but if he would give me this year to prepare the additional materials and create a curriculum, I would be good to go for the next. I also asked if there were any other additional classes he would like for me to put together to teach next year.

He said, "No, teach this course next year or look for another job." I asked about additional co-taught courses for the shared students who were overlooked, he said they were not important. I reminded him, yet again, I was currently working toward my PhD in History, in order to teach college-level courses in high school, so students could get dual credit and a jump on college and tech schools.

He laughed at me and said, I quote, "None of the additional education you have taken since you started working here benefits the school at all. No one cares."

This took the wind out of me. I love teaching. All of the additional work, time & effort spent away from my family has been in order to be a better teacher, a better example for my students.

I told him I would need to think about this, and quietly left the room.

I took the next day off, spending time with my family and speaking with my therapist. I am very lucky to have a wonderful support system.

I went back to work after that, and there were a number of staff that spoke to me privately. They agreed what he said was shameful. They shared that I was not the only teacher he spoke to this way; from changing failing grades to passing, to having teachers sponsor multiple extracurricular clubs, without pay. I went to my union rep and added my statement to his ever-growing pile of staff statements about the principal. I assured him I was willing to go to the school board, etc., just give me a call.

Yep, I decided I was done. I wrote the principal an outstanding resignation letter, full of positivity and thanking him for the wonderful opportunity to work at his school and to have learned from his 'outstanding' example of leadership.

Did I also mention I forwarded the email to the entire staff? There was no way he could publicly respond negatively to my resignation, and he was furious!

The majority of the staff knew what was going on. There were many smiles and fist bumps.

I was told by the office staff later there were 5 other teachers that resigned, making this the biggest turnover in staff in a decade. The principal now has to go before the School Board next month to explain what is happening at his school. I wonder if I am going to get a call?

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/apprehensive_lurker3 on 2024-06-23 12:10:16+00:00.

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I (33F) unexpectedly gave birth 2 months earlier than my due date. Thankfully Baby and I are doing great and we've now made it home. As you can imagine, coming that early meant Baby needed a rather long stay in the "infant spa" (NICU). Now that we're home and I've been able to process everything I wanted to share a moment of malicious compliance that helped bring some levity to a really scary experience. One of the most important things for a baby (especially preemies) is skin-to-skin time, which is where mothers or fathers will be either topless or open their shirts to cuddle their infant. Baby struggled with jaundice, so our skin to skin time was very limited at first because of light therapy. We had been moved to a new location in the NICU right next to another baby and across from two others. A standard of care in the NICU is monitoring the babies breathing, heart rate, and oxygen levels. These monitors look like an old school tube tv and are approximately 16 inches by 16 inches, and can display babies in other areas as well if the nurses need. So I'm new to this little care area, and I'm getting ready to set up the hospital provided screen so I can get my skin-to-skin time, but realize I may end up blocking the monitor, for the baby next to me, from the nurse. I ask the nurse if she can still see or if my set up was blocking anything for her (obviously I don't want to interfere with the care of another patient). She tells me everything was good, so I settle in for some much needed snuggles. Not even 10 minutes later I feel someone in my space, and look up to see a woman glaring down at me. Once I've made eye contact Karen starts in on me (while topless and holding baby, so very vulnerable) about how I'm blocking the nurse from caring for her baby. When I try to explain I asked before setting things up, she refuses to listen and continues to lecture and gets more aggressive and angry about how I'm causing her baby not to receive appropriate care and am "pushing her out of the care area". After all the emotional stress and frustration of being in the hospital, I finally snapped, looked at the nurse and told her to take away the screen. The nurse was horrified and started saying "but your privacy", to which I replied firmly "it would seem my privacy and modesty don't matter as much as Karen's comfort, get rid of the screen." This pissed off Karen even more as she realized she'd have to spend the next hour staring at my topless self. She got very annoyed and uncomfortable, especially when the doctors managing rounds and both got flustered and tried to insist I get a new screen. I may have been the AH, but I simply was done, and stared right back and said "according to my neighbor here, my privacy doesn't matter, so we all get to be uncomfortable". When I tell you "if looks could kill, I'd be dead" I'm not joking. The doctors didn't want to deal with it, and the nurses who had to deal with it were laughing quite a bit. They then brought the screen back out and tried to show Karen that they can totally see all her baby's stats on any monitor, so there was no reason for this outburst. I wish I could say this was the last time she freaked out about this, but she pulled this same kind of stunt almost every time I tried to snuggle my baby, until her baby was finally discharged a week later. But seeing the look of shock on her face when I just forced everyone to look at my boobs is probably going to make me giggle every time I think of it.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/kaytay3000 on 2024-06-23 06:00:42+00:00.

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I went to a local bar today to watch the College World Series final. Bartender says they can’t play the sound for the game because more patrons want to play the jukebox than watch the game. There are about 12 people in the bar total, including my party of 4. This seems silly, seeing as how it’s a sports bar and there aren’t any other major sporting events occurring at the same time as this game.

I decide that since the patrons want the jukebox, the jukebox is what they’ll get. I cue up the Cotton Eyed Joe by Rednex 6 times in a row and pay the extra to bump it to the front of the queue. After the first play through. The jukebox skips to a different song. We call the manager over, ask him to refund our jukebox money since he won’t play our song, and he says he’d rather listen to Cotton Eyed Joe 6 times than refund the money. He comes back a few minutes later, hands us $13 cash to cover the songs and turns on the sound for the baseball game. Turns out his patrons didn’t want to listen to the jukebox that badly after all.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Dry-Lawyer-1931 on 2024-06-22 22:58:41+00:00.

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I worked for a company for 20 years and was in lower management and the company had been taken over , so we went from a local company who cared for the staff to a big world wide one. If I say so myself, I was good at my job, as I had been doing it since I left school and knew lots of people in the industry and also had a good memory for the product, so would get calls from other stores. We did not get pay rises and they cut our bonuses so we went from the best paid to the worst paid. The company struggled to get staff but my department was fully staffed even though some they could have got paid more working for someone else, they said they liked having me as a boss, and I would look after them with the odd lunch paid out of my own pocket. The company made good profits and the upper management did well out of it, with bonuses more than my annual wage. However, the pressure was increasing with more expected all the time, working long hours (up to 60 hours and some of those unpaid) and working in an outdated facility which would become unbearably hot during summer. If you complained about wages or conditions they often would tell the staff, if you don't like it find another job. Many did just that but I stayed out of some misguided loyalty.

I got furloughed for part of the Covid and my health and well-being had improved while I was not there, but started to go down hill when I returned. I went for a few job interviews but within the same sort of job, but I realised I did not want to do that sort of work any more, even when I was offered the jobs. People at other stores at the same level started to retire as they had enough to. By chance a local job came up doing something with much less hours and the pay was slightly less but I would save on fuel, as I could walk to work, and totally different to what I had done, but I had the skills they needed. In the end I got the job and handed in my notice. At first they tried to persuade me to stay and then work extra notice, but I said no and reminded them of all the times they had told staff, if you do not like it, leave. I let it be known indirectly that if they made it difficult to leave, I would cause a fuss with HR, and none of the bosses wanted that. They then decided to recruit a replacement for me, and I helped with the first interviews and found someone who could do the job, but the another manager did not want him, as he decided he wanted his friend to join. My boss told one of the staff that they never thought I would leave even though I had said I had enough a few times, how wrong they were. So I left and my replacement joined and since then the staff I trained have left too (causing them a lot of issues), and customers complain about the service and that he knows nothing about the products. A few people had my mobile and were shocked when they rang up only for me to tell them I do not work there any more. I had a pay rise after 6 months at my new company, my mental health has been good and I am on more money than for all the hell I had to put up with before and I found out my replacement took the job on more money than me or he would not go there. I wish I had done it sooner.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Russkun on 2024-06-22 21:48:39+00:00.

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This is from a decade ago when I was at a soul crushing office job with a fortune 500 company. Corporate loves new ideas as long as it costs nothing and makes employees lives harder. They got on an efficiency kick and were forcing everyone to streamline their processes. I'm sales/projects at a wholesaler using a 40 year old order entry system. There aint much to streamline, and whatever there was I am computer savvy enough to have done it long ago. So I fought this and got under the office managers skin. Well one day they learn about The Knuj (junk backwards) and got on a kick about cleaning up. The office manager went around with specially printed stickers and stuck them to anything that looked unnecessary. We had a lot of hoarders who needed this, but my desk was hit hard. Anything not nailed down got a sticker. Now we couldn't just ignore them. If we wanted to keep the stuff we needed to write why for each item. I did not have time for this, so I did the only reasonable course of action. I threw out everything with a sticker. Catalogues, open quotes, and the project folder of everything I was working on. It lasted an hour before problems happened. My sales manager needed a file. I don't have it. It's in the dumpster. I wish this cost them customers or they failed an audit. But no. After a few minutes of digging through the dumpster my sales and office manager found my files. I wasn't able to help the search as I ducked out on lunch.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Axolotl_Screaming on 2024-06-22 00:55:10+00:00.

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So, this is me just reminiscing on when I was younger, but as a teen (13 or 14), my mom thought a great way to get me to be “healthier“ was to force me to work out or I wouldn’t be allowed to see friends or play games etc. Well, her new way to convince me to stop eating junk food (I ate junk food like once a day, maybe like chips or a candy but usually ended up eating healthy snacks and fruits throughout the day) was to start fat shaming me. It was little quotes here and there of “You can’t fit in that anymore“ or “You’ve grown a lot since you wore that” (clothes in question being oversized shirts and shorts, occasionally bathing suits, all from like 9 months prior. For context, I was no longer growing and had stayed the same height and weight for about a year and a half). Eventually, she got bored of making little comments and would say in public while eating out with friends that I shouldn’t eat that, too much fat. Nobody noticed or cared, but I got so pissed that she tried embarrassing me, that my dumb teen self decided to not eat for about 48 hours. She panicked when I stopped eating, because I had a bunch of medical condition (including very low blood sugar) and was starting to ask why I wasn’t eating. I simply responded with “You called my fat. You wanted me to lose weight. I don’t feel like working out, because the more you tell me this crap, the less I wanna do what you say.” In hindsight, I really should have just kept doing what I was doing instead of being petty, but I was young and easily pissed off. Now I’m just easily pissed off. And before anyone says I shouldn’t disrespect my mother, she also used to hit me for having a different opinion, and isolated me from society for about half a year and hitting me and harassing me verbally when I was 14 for dating somebody who wasn’t born a guy, so yeah. This is less malicious compliance and more “Hah, I have trauma“, but I still decided to kinda do what she said. Because during those 48 hours, I believe I lost about 5-8 pounds like rapidly.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/storyskeller on 2024-06-22 14:01:32+00:00.

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Disclaimers: on mobile, non-English speaker, not in the US.

This story started in 2017, was repeated every year until this year and I have promised my Father-in-law to repeat the compliance if it happens again.

My in-laws used to live just outside of town (they moved this past fall to my MIL's home island and we moved in their place). And when I say just outside, I mean about 2 meters outside of the city plan; to be exact (and important for later) the city plan reached up to the middle of the dirt road that separated their property with the neighboring one.

So, back in spring of 2017, my in-laws received a letter from the city council about cleaning their property from dead grass in preparation for summer due to fire hazards or they would be fined. The letter and the deadline (end of May) were normal; what wasn't normal was the area named. It was their property, the property next to them (inside city limits) and the road in between. My FIL took the letter to the council and explained that the property next to him didn't belong to him and couldn't clean it. They appeared to accept it. But something was nagging him.

Now, my FIL had worked in exactly in two companies in life, both of them handling big government contracts and his main job was to take care of red tape and government bureaucracy. So he found the exact law that said that the owner was responsible for their property and the city was responsible for any roads and any properties inside city limits that an owner couldn't be found. He had also found (through his connections) that the local council was under investigation for misappropriation of funds, including the funds for cleaning lots that were considered fire hazards. The tactic they used was to include lots that fell under their responsibility to nearby owners and either "intimate" (with the fear of a fine) to clean them or fine them and pocket the money.

My FIL decided to become creative. First, he gathered all the plans related to his property and the one next to him. Next, he cleared his property (he was planning to do that anyway), but only that; he cleared the part of the road that fell outside city limits. And then he waited.

The deadline passed and about 10 days later, a hefty fine arrived. My FIL challenged officially. The council tried to enforce the fine. My FIL challenged it again, presenting his evidence, on an open forum of the council. The council insisted they were on the right and if my FIL didn't pay, they would take legal action. My FIL agreed happily to the legal action.

This led to the court appointing an outside inspector to check the property, the city plans and the work my FIL had done. The council, not only lost the case and had to pay legal fees, but were forced to an outside audit that led to a couple of councilmen facing criminal charges.

Every year since then, my FIL used to clean his property and exactly up to the middle of road next to him. That duty has been passed down to me now, which I fulfilled this year.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Imguran on 2024-06-22 13:01:40+00:00.

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This happened some time ago when I was a rebellious teenager (still a rebel, but much older now).

Not sure what Dad and I were arguing about one summer weekend day, but it did get heated.

It rattled me enough that I said: "Leave me alone, man!"

Dad immediately said: "Don't call me man!"

My eyebrows went up and I calmly asked: "Mouse?"

He didn't speak to me the rest of that weekend.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/WindWalker_dt4 on 2024-06-22 03:40:19+00:00.

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Very minor and petty but funny.

Working at a super fancy high-end restaurant in fine dining, the level of communication between the front-end staff (bartenders, servers, assistants, food runners, etc) is incredible. We want everything that is needed to come to the table at the same time, and we don't want to ask a guest the same question twice.

For example with beverages, if a table is drinking all kinds of various beverages and you happen to walk by and notice one is low, the correct course of action is actually to not go up to the guest to ask if they'd like another because at that point you don't know what they're having. The guest has already told the establishment what they're having so going up and saying "what did you have again" detracts from the experience. I know this seems minor but the correct course is to find the assistant, or the server, or pull up the table in the POS and see, so that when you do go up and ask the correct questions, "would you like another Old Fashioned with extra " or whatever, specifically naming the drink and modifications.

The same can happen even for a side of ketchup or aioli. The basic process will be, "was it supposed to come with it and kitchen/expo forgot to put in on the plate?", or, "did the guest ask for it and the server forgot to add it in there", or, "did the guest just decide to order it later and we just need it asap".

Normally when the food is dropped off the person in charge is supposed to ask if everything looks okay and if they can bring anything else.

Enter our guest Bob.

Bob has already been asking for his water and tea to be refilled when it was still above the threshold for us noticing it (when it was like 70-80% full), and would flag down multiple people until it got refilled. No big deal, one assistant would grab a pitcher and refill, while another assistant would grab another pitcher and see that the glass was full and just walk away. Same thing for lemons. This became annoying.

Bob sees his steak and fries which came with an aioli (as shown on the menu) but he wants ketchup. No big deal. Small request. He asks the person dropping off the food. It is communicated and noted and will be out shortly. Next, the assistant comes to offer beverage refills. Bob asks for ketchup. It is noted. Next, the server does a visual quality check and Bob asks for ketchup. You can see where this is going. This all happens in less than 2 minutes if that long. Bob ended up asking 4 separate people for ketchup, and given the urgency of bringing out a side after food has arrived, all 4 people end up congregating in the service area to put tiny little porcelain ketchup pour cups onto silver serving dishes. Now each one of those cups is designed to be shared by 2 people. So, the conversation begins,

• Food runner: hey, what are you guys up to? I'm grabbing that ketchup for Table 12 Seat 2
• Server Assistant: oh, that's funny, I was also going to grab a ketchup for #12 seat 2
• Server: funny, they asked me for it too and I was running over here to grab it
• Another server: oh hey I got flagged down by Table 12 to grab a ketchup

so.... enough is enough.. the guy clearly wants ketchup....

We decided all of us would give the guest exactly he asked for. So, in all glory, all 4 of us come back out with our silver serving trays and everything, one at a time, each giant silver serving tray holding just a single side of ketchup, dropping off 4 separate ketchup dishes, 15 seconds apart. Bob realized what he did once he got enough ketchup for 8 people. We left all the ketchups just sitting there throughout the entree course. Of course this was not unnoticed by other guests who very humorously asked funny questions and if that's how Bob eats his steak. We made sure that the ketchups were the very last things off the table before it was time for dessert. He barely used a single one.

At the end of the day Bob did not leave hungry, the guests were not un-entertained, and neither were we.

TLDR; guy asked 4 separate people for ketchup, all 4 people brought out a side of ketchup, one after another. Bob got 8 people's worth of ketchup.

[edit] grammar, details

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/No-Treat6624 on 2024-06-22 00:28:23+00:00.

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I work at a daycare as a lead teacher for two year-olds. My hours are 8:30am-5:30pm. I usually clock in between 8:20 am & 8:25. I end up clocking out 5:40-5:50. My last student is picked up at 5:30 (latest time allowed) without fail.

My duties once the children leave are: disinfect and sanitize the restroom & classroom(can’t be completed when kids are present because of the chemicals),empty & take trash to the dumpster from classroom and restroom, empty disinfectant, sanitizer and water pitchers to return them to the kitchen daily, sweep the floors and vacuum the carpet.

Around 4 today my supervisor texted & wrote that I’ve worked OT again based on the times I listed above and to ONLY work from 8:30-5:30 pm

In order to comply with the timeframe he mandates, I had to leave the classroom without cleaning, sweeping or vacuuming. I only had time to take out the trash.

But most importantly I clocked out at 5:30!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/backgroundnerd on 2024-06-21 23:46:12+00:00.

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This starts as malicious compliance and ends with Petty Revenge. I posted in both. I hope cross-posting is not an issue here!

It’s a fairly long story but I think I can keep to the essentials. A place I worked at in 2004 had three DBA teams (Data Base Admin).   The team I had been on since I joined was tight and ON-call rotation was pretty easy. If anyone got paged for a database that you were the primary on, then you had to buy the team drinks.  You rarely got paged. :)

So End of an era. Do you remember “Al Bundy” doing commercials to save big money on long-distance phone calls?   That was us!  Cell phones and free long-distance put us under.

During the death throws they had massive layoffs and combined 30 DBAs on three teams into one team of 7.  I made the cut.  HOWEVER, they refused to offline any systems so the workload of 30 remained! My old boss did not make the cut and my new boss was a toxic butt-kisser. I don’t even care anymore-- his name was Steve. Worst boss ever! He would defend ANYONE but someone on his team. I believe he legit thought throwing his people under every bus made him a “team player” Other departments quickly figured out,  “Blame them and he will blame his people” so they did!

My first on-call rotation on this new combined team was utter hell! The pager went off every 10 to 15 minutes. Messages like:

Job 104 completed step 5.

Job 110 starting step 12

Job 110 completed step 12.

In case you did not know-

1. THESE ARE NOT THINGS YOU PAGE OUT FOR!!
2. I have no idea what any of those jobs are, where they are kept or what do about them if they should fail.  No idea!

On and on all night long -   You can’t ignore them as you might miss a REAL message about an actual database problem! So you get zero sleep and with the diminished staff they expect you there the next day.

When I started ranting the next day the folks left from that particular team said it’s always been that way. That was nuts and we are short staffed so I set out to fix the problem. I looked at every message that got sent to the DBA pager queue and added the prefixes “INFO and WARN” to every message (kept it short for the pager) Then I changed the pager daemon to route anything starting with INFO to e-mail and ONLY route “WARN” to pagers.

Worked like a champ! We went from 50 pages a night to maybe one per night and often none.

One day a team meeting was called and Boss Steve was upset that a print job had failed and our on-call person (me) did not respond.

“Why would I respond to a print job failure? We (database admins) have nothing to with that.”

“When you get a page you respond. Period”

“Why would I get a page that a print job failed?”  

“Because we always have, didn’t you get the page?”

“Ohhhh, that, no I fixed that awhile back. DBA’s only get paged for DBA stuff now.”

“WHAT? You need to put that back the way it was!”

Ok, I am cutting a bunch out here for brevity – I said no!  The people who were actually responsible should get paged not us-- we ended up in a shouting match! He was yelling he would take me to HR and I told him that worked both ways as he was flat-out abusing us not letting us sleep AND expecting us in at 8:00 AM sharp.

That slowed him down a little and then he calmly said, “Our department must know everything that happens overnight so we can answer for it in the morning, make sure we get the pages!

Oh the evil light bulb went off. I smiled and said, “Yes, sir!” Ding! Ding! Ding! “Our department” eh? “We” eh? Okie Dokey then!

I reworked the pager daemon so that all pages went to HIS pager but left the code that only routed WARN to the on-call pager in place. Now WE and OUR DEPARTMENT know everything that happens overnight! Yes, I am so very proud of that one! I slept soundly that night!  

The next morning I kept waiting for him to come over, and either tear into me again OR admit it was a horrible night, that he did not grasp how bad it was but now let’s get a better fix in place.  I was disappointed--  He said NOTHING to me at all. Did he get all those pages? I double-checked that everything was routed to his pager and it was. He just would not admit he was wrong! I was impressed! I thought he was tough (but stupid) getting all those pages every night and never saying a word!

END OF MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE

Start petty revenge. :)  

A few weeks later I was doing an upgrade outage overnight. We were getting to a critical point and needed a decision to roll back or continue and exceed the outage window.  I paged him several times. No answer!  We all sleep through pages from time to time so I rolled back and e-mailed all concerned. No big.  But he NEVER got back to me. That was odd. The next Monday I mentioned it to the team and several folks said yeah, he does not answer pages after hours anymore!

AAAAAA-HA!  He was not tough! He just started turning his pager off before bed! Still too chicken to admit he was wrong.  

 A few weeks later I was on call again and late Sunday night I got paged to come in immediately!  To keep it brief the system that went down was a federally mandated system with severe financial penalties for downtime beyond a limit. We were reaching that limit! It was a huge amount of money!  All hands on deck! Even the CEO and CIO were there. Developers, sys admin, network, security and DBA with their bosses (with one exception) were all on laptops in the conference room. This was BIG! Thank god it was not a DB problem – It turned out to be network. The CIO said he appreciated us and wanted all there JUST in case.  No problem… sometimes that is the life we choose! :) 

At about 5 am Monday after a long night, the CIO says to me, “Hey, I have paged your boss like a dozen times -- he is not answering”

OH GLORIOUS DAY! “With a shrug, I very casually say, “Oh yeah, yeah, Steve **never** answers pages at night.”

He said nothing out loud but I saw his face cloud up.

About 7:30 issues are resolved and we are watching transactions flow across to the feds. I am watching the DB to make sure the huge backlog is not gumming it up but I am just watching as all is well.

At about 7:45 Ole Steve comes strutting in the door, fresh-faced with a full night's sleep! As he walks past the full conference room he does a double take and stops. When he sees all the heavy hitters (and us plebes) in the room, his face falls, he knew right then he screwed up!

The CIO Says, loud and mean, "Where have you been?!" Then the CIO and CEO take him out of the room. I have no idea what was said but I bet it was not pretty! lol

The CIO and CEO come back in about 10 minutes. They heartily thanked us all for the dedication then sent us home and said don’t come back until tomorrow! Good leaders!

I came in the next day and no Steve. I never saw him again!   

I sure am glad I kept that short! :)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/TheDallbatross on 2024-06-21 23:07:14+00:00.

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So I noticed today DoorDash is running a Summer Deals bruhaha where supposedly different restaurants are offering different types of discounts on orders.

Knowing DD's predatory business practices it's probably some lose/lose for restaurants if they don't participate, but listen...it's 100 degrees outside, it's been a long week, and a brother's HONGRY. At least I can still sleep at night ordering from some chain that can shoulder the financial hit, right?

And would you look at this - Wingstop is stepping up with a sweet-ass deal on boneless wings. Free 10pc on my order? Say considerably less and sign me up.

I rock on up to my cart. I throw in a 10pc. The hungerin' rumbles. Eager to consume, I go to select my sauce... And the ONLY option is "Atomic". 😭

I checked their other boneless sizes, and the bone-in 10pc as well, and they all have every flavor listed. Wingstop straight-up intentionally said "You want us to dump off entire orders of free wings? All right. Sign on the line. But we're ONLY offering them in Satan's Anus flavor".

Was I disappointed? Yes. But I've got to give them props for complying with this corporate dictum in one of the most technically-correct yet overtly-violent ways imaginable. Kudos, Wingstop. You will not quell my hunger today, but you have earned my respect and future full-price business. 👊