Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/chev974 on 2024-05-20 10:15:34+00:00.

So a few years back I worked for a brick / block making firm. I was using the cuber (A machine that would push the bricks and blocks on to a wooden pallet) I was tasked with stacking newly made bricks on pallets and stacking said pallets in the shed to keep them out of the weather. I was using the new pallets like we normally do for the bricks as they would be stacked 4 pallets high. (About 8 meters tall or about 26 feet) My boss yelled at me saying "Just use the old pallets" I replied with "The old pallets are not strong enough for that weight" Well he was always right and demanded to do as he said. Skip to a few hours later and I hear my boss yelling and swearing up a storm, one of the old pallets at the bottom collapsed destroying about 4k worth of product. He starts yelling at me putting the blame on me. (Now this was a long time coming and I was done being blamed for his screw ups.) I stood over him and started yelling back "You told me to use the old pallets I did as you said so don't you dare blame me for your screw up" I then turned around and left. Now he didn't like to admit he was wrong, But when I got to my station the next Monday there was a new toolkit sitting there for me.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Illuminatus-Prime on 2024-05-20 01:55:41+00:00.

tl;dr: Ex-wife cheats on me. I get my revenge in a perfectly legal way.

• • •

Ex-wife cheats on me with an insurance agent who had 'connections' with my employer.  He gets me fired and pays for her divorce.  I sign a "Quit Claim" document on the house, which she receives as her settlement in lieu of alimony.  The divorce is finalized, and I enlist in the military.

Que the Malicious Compliance

The bank forecloses on the house due to her defaulting on the mortgage payments. I am not at fault because of the "Quit Claim".  She cannot get alimony because the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act of 1940 prohibits this while I am on active duty.  She pressures her boyfriend into marrying her.  I leave the military (Honorably, I might add), and she still can not get alimony from me because she has remarried.  He repeatedly cheats on her, but she won't divorce him because she is afraid of poverty.  She now lives in quiet desperation with a man who does not respect her.  Nobody listens to her sad sob stories, either.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/willowfeather8633 on 2024-05-19 16:49:55+00:00.

Traumatize Them Back thought you all would like my story:

In the late ‘70s I went to girl scout camp. It was great!!! But one night they served boiled spinach, and as fate would have it I’d been playing with pond moss that very afternoon. Add to this I’d tried spinach once at a friend’s house and I threw up. (Mom despised spinach, so it hadn’t crossed my plate any other time).

At dinner that night our vegetable was boiled spinach. I told the counselors “I can’t eat this, I’ll throw up.”

“If you don’t take at least 3 brownie bites you can’t have dessert.”

“What is dessert” I queried?

“Ice cream sandwiches” answered the counselors.

Damn. Game on.

“Okay, I want that. I’m going to take a bite and puke… should I aim for the railing?”. It was semi-outdoors.

The counselors had stopped caring. “Uh-huh. Sounds good.”

I took the bite, swallowed it and promptly puked over the railing. Suddenly, they are all action and rushed me to the one stall bathroom… that was occupied.

I puked in the sink until the vile green shit was out of my system.

As I wiped my mouth with the paper towel I said “So, do I need to take my other 2 bites?”

Several counselors asked me shortly thereafter “If you knew you were going to throw up, why did you eat it?”

“I love ice cream sandwiches,” I answered.

My sweet mother raised hell upon my return from camp that summer, and the forced “three bite” rule went away at Camp Winacka for many, many years.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/AdMain4804 on 2024-05-18 04:07:40+00:00.

Forgive me if this isn't formatted well. I've followed this thread for a long time, but only just created this account to post this story. Names have been changed.

For context, I am a pastor in a large denomination that takes years to become fully recognized or ordained as a clergy person. There are several interviews with different teams to see if a person is fit to serve. When this story occurred I was already past four steps and working on the last and final step to be ordained. Part of this step required recording and submitting a sermon on one of only a set number of biblical texts, sermons using outside texts would not be accepted.

At the time I was an associate pastor in a relatively large church (almost 1,000 on a Sunday between multiple services) and I was initially hired to be one of the primary preachers. However, the senior pastor would set the sermon series, sermon topics, and Scriptures for each Sunday. We were asked to stay on theme and on topic for any service in which we preached.

Soon after I arrived at this church the senior pastor, who had been there for many years, announced their retirement. An interim would take their place until the next long-term pastor was selected. We'll call this interim "Pastor Richard."

The first time I met with Pastor Richard after the former pastor's retirement and his start, he told me that he didn't think I had what it took to be a pastor. He then proceeded to strip me of nearly all my pastoral responsibilities. Prior to his arrival, I regularly preached three or four Sundays a month, was called for visits, and oversaw the sacraments. After the meeting with Pastor Richard I was relegated to organizing a team of 125 volunteers, ensuring we had liturgists, ushers, greeters, and parking lot attendants.

My preaching was also cut to just once a month, at best. And even though I was working on my paperwork for the final step toward ordination, Pastor Richard refused to schedule any of the biblical texts required for the sermon for my ordination paperwork. To his credit, he did say that I could use whatever verses from the Bible that I wanted, so long as I stayed on theme for the sermon and series. However, I refuse to bend Scripture to say something that it doesn't. If a text is about forgiveness, I won't try and proof-text it to make it fit a theme of justice.

Somehow, every time I was scheduled to preach, the theme of the sermon did not fit any of the handful of texts I was allowed to preach for my paperwork (for anyone curious, it was also a requirement that the sermon be delivered in the church you were serving at the time, meaning I couldn't fill in for someone else in order to complete the task).

Eventually, Pastor Richard's interim tenure was drawing to a close. There was one Sunday between his departure and the next senior pastor's arrival. That Sunday was not part of a sermon series and did not have a selected theme. It was "preacher's choice." This would have been perfect, because I could get at least one sermon recorded for my paperwork to submit (usually you'd want to record all of the texts so that you could choose the best one of the group). However, I was not scheduled as one of the preachers for any of the services.

The two scheduled preachers for Sunday were Greg and Sarah. Greg was not a pastor and was not on track to become a pastor. So, I went to Pastor Richard and asked if I could take Greg's place so that I could record at least one sermon for submission for ordination. Richard told me that I could not switch with Greg and he would not allow me to take his place.

I agreed that I would not take Greg's place and left his office. But shortly after I left Richard's office, I went over and met with Sarah. I knew she wanted that particular weekend off. So I offered to switch preaching assignments. I would take the weekend I wanted and she would switch for a weekend a month down the line.

Sarah immediately agreed and I went to the person who sent out our weekly email and had the information switched. I did not ask permission and I did not tell Richard what I had done.

The email went out on Wednesday night and on Thursday morning when Richard came in, the first thing he did was come into my office. He demanded to know why I disobeyed his order. I simply pointed out that he told me I couldn't preach in Greg's place, which I wasn't. Instead, I would preach in Sarah's place. There wasn't much he could do because the information had already been sent out to the church, so he left my office in a rage.

I preached on Sunday, using one of the required texts and used it to submit for the final step in my ordination. Unfortunately I was not ordained that year. It would take me another year beyond that. But, the look on his face when he realized I had followed his order to the letter and there was nothing he could do about it still makes me chuckle years later.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/TheMobydickler on 2024-05-17 13:27:43+00:00.

True story regarding the beautiful emerald Isle and petty revenge on an overbearing newly promoted boss. Apologies if it's a long read.

This beautiful country of ours has a fairly low population density generally for reasons dating back to the infamous famine. (Watch Black 47 for reference). It also however has layer upon layer of civil servants and bureaucracy. We have a beautiful system of government where we have 2 houses and a representative for every 30000 people as a fact of law. Underneath that we have a local government system with Local Authorities in each counry and city, each with their own elected councillors and administration. Planning, fire safety and roads are administrated by these local councils which leads to the public service being the largest employers in the country. All in an island with a Southern Republic that has with an area of 26,000 square miles with at the time about 31 or 32 local authorities and a population of 5.5 million plus or minus. It's totally over the top but that's a discussion for another day.

Anyhow, while working for one such local authority as a Senior Executive Engineer (SEE) a Fire officer, my good friend, (an extremely intelligent civil engineer) had the misfortune of being gifted with a new boss, a spanking clean, brand new in box, County Engineer in his first role in that position. Full of the proverbial P**s and Vinegar.

Now this particular county was landlocked by other counties and is a particularly odd shape with a brand new motorway going through it. There are many parts of the county that the only way to get to by road is through other counties.This is important.

Most staff used their own cars and once a month you filled out your mileage sheets, sent it to your direct line manager for sign-off who sent it up the chain and claimed it back at a rate of so much per mile. It was often a nice addition to the paycheck and more than covered the cost of maintaining and running the vehicle. If you crossed your LA'S boundary you had to fill out another sheet explaining why and get it signed off by your line manager.

Under their previous boss, they had devised a system where no-one had to bother with the mileage sheets necessarily on a monthly basis and could let it slide for a few months and then submit them all together and get a nice bonus in one lump, nice if you had a special occasion or a holiday coming up. An easy savings plan if you will. No-one bothered with the second sheet because you crossed the boundary so many times a week that they became irrelevant.

Cue new boss's arrival who insisted on doing everything by the book. Didnt like the way that things worked previously and was going to sort it all out, straighten out everything and kick everyone into line.

He called everyone into a meeting, explained what he was doing in his best authorative manner and insisted on monthly submittal of all expenses and mileage sheets and everything listed down to the finest detail including reasons for your trips etc. And they HAD to be explained fully and in detail otherwise the mileage sheets would be sent back unsigned.

My friend and the rest of the staff went away from the meeting wondering how they were going to deal with this new way of working. After a few days stewing my friend came up with a solution to the issue and then called his workmates, they had a little discussion amongst themselves about how to deal with things and came up with a plan for petty revenge.

Everyone under the direction of the new boss found that the extreme ends of the county is where they were needed to work that month, the staff then slightly redesigned all of their trips so that they crossed county boundaries multiple times a day, six days a week.

At the end of month 1, this plan culminated with the submission of thousands of permission confirmation sheets to cross the county boundary to be signed by the new CE after his first month. It took him over 4 weeks to get through that batch and on week 4 after receiving the second month's batch, all the senior staff were called into a meeting, the agenda of which was kept very hush hush.

The only thing that ever came out of that meeting was a quiet word from the senior staff that everything was going back to the way it used to work.

A perfect teaching moment and petty revenge combined.

TLDR: New broom Boss makes changes to the paperwork systems in place, staff get revenge for losing out on an unofficial simple savings plan by complying with absolutely every requirement and he ends up under a paper mountain his first month. Everything goes back to the way it was after 5 weeks.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/CompetitionExtreme36 on 2024-05-16 13:50:13+00:00.

I own a managed service provider (MSP) firm which provides cloud computing services to clients. Business is good enough to pay my employees a respectable wage, while offering them a good work-life balance.

I have never had to lay off a single employee yet.

I hired a senior IT technician as a middle manager, let's call him Harry. Harry seems to have gone off the rails about AI. He has started to micromonitor our coworkers to an unacceptable extent, and he has kept on pesturing me to investigate how I could use ChatGPT and other AI technologies to reduce employee costs.

Frankly, this rubbed me the wrong way. Harry does not have a stake in any of his coworkers losing their jobs, and his constant micromonitoring had become an issue.

Plus, I have had a look at ChatGPT and there is simply no way it could replace any of my technical employees. ChatGPT has no agency, nor can it can't deal with clients, nor it can't see the computer screen to troubleshoot jackshit.

However, ChatGPT could easily replace a middle manager, assuming someone else takes on some additional responsibility daily. You see ChatGPT has certain plugins and a Code Interpretor mode (which can do calculations and process spreadsheets as input/output). This can decimate the workload of a middle manager (at-least in our firm), allowing their responsibilities to be absorbed by another senior employee (me in this case).

I kept this in mind and have been shadowing Harry's job for the past few months. A stellar employee retired last week. I approached Harry and told him that I took his suggestions to heart, and have decided to automate his role with AI.

I told him he could accept his redundancy package or be retrained in Azure. He chose to be retrained in Azure.

Unfortunately for Harry, he'll lose the comfy priveleges being a middle manager entails. Fortunately for our coworkers, they will have an impartial AI making decisions. Fortunately for me, I won't have to pay for a redundant role.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/anomalousfloatingchi on 2024-05-15 23:25:56+00:00.

I have a second to senior position in my department at work so theoretically I have my choice of station to go to when I come in as long as my senior doesn't want it. My senior co-worker has a station she always goes to and it's understood that she likes the third station and I like seventh station. Our stations are even denoted by personal items and magnets, my station is preferred because I have medical issues with overheating and the floor fan points at that location.

My personal items at that station include a back up fan incase the big one just isn't enough. Now this fan is way quieter than the big fan (the new manager complains about the noise of the big one, I have poor hearing and it doesn't bug me). Recently the new manager has started stealing my station because the fan in it is quieter when everyone knows there's a preference, whatever it's the least awful thing she's done so it doesn't matter much to me as long as I'm not there to need the station.

Where she crosses the line is stealing my station right at the start of my shift. I ask her if I could have my station since there are plenty of open stations, she says, "no you need to be able to work at any station."

Knowing that I have an agreement with the office that I can always have the floor fan on if I need it, I start to get some ideas and question, "so I can have my personal fan from my things first right?"

She quickly gives me that awful manager-who-thinks-they're-god face, "no, go to your station now and start typing or I'll write you up for not starting on time"

I comply like the peaceful worker drone I am and click on the big fan while going to the station right next to her. At this point I'm already sweating but I'm close enough to the fan that I won't pass out. Just then she clicks the fan off, I sluggishly click it back on. It goes off and on for a whole hour but at this point I'm seeing spots so I give her a heads up. "The office says the fan stays on if I need it on"

She goes to click it right back on, "I don't care, this thing is too loud, I'm almost office staff anyways and things will change around here soon." Within the next two hours I'm unresponsive due to heat sickness.

At this point I've been magically placed in a medical unit for a few hours, I don't know how I got here or who called but my girlfriend brought my things from work but all she got out of the managers was that I'm dismissed for a few days. All I know right now is that the new manager has a paradigm report to worry about and I hopefully get my spot for now on.

Edit: I fixed the spacing and as for the fan, I stopped taking it home because the lobby staff kept making me give the receipt for it and not buzzing me out until I proved it was mine (part of an old manager's rules because a coworker kept trying to take a keybord home) but I'm going to just suck it up from now on so I know I'll have my fan.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/syphylys24 on 2024-05-15 17:38:52+00:00.

Years ago, in the early 80's, fresh out of high school I worked in the stock room of a now defunct department store. One day I get a call to load some driveway sealer in a customers car. I show up at the operators window, the customer show me their receipt. they to to the parking lot to retrieve their vehicle. they pull up in a brand new chevy Berlinetta Camaro with white interior. he asks me to put the 3 large buckets of driveway sealer behind the front seats on the floor. I told him that's not a good idea, he insisted that's what he wanted. so that's what I did. I lifted one of the buckets to move it over and there was a black ring on his brand new carpet. he obviously pitched a fit. asking for the manager etc. I had the operator page my manager. He shows up assesses the situation, asks me what happened. I explain to him that I tried to talk him out of it. He looks the guy in the eye and tells him that it's his problem

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/sundried_potato on 2024-05-14 21:07:55+00:00.

Almost 10 years ago, I worked at a company where my department analyzed survey and secondary data, compiling it into handbooks each quarter. After six months of joining the department, my manager, who joined us two months after me, reorganized our tasks in an attempt to improve our efficiency.

This manager was promoted internally and was notorious for kissing up to management. He was technically not qualified for the promotion due to a different background required for our department, but one of the C-suite member liked him a lot. He did have some expertise in other areas, but generally had an unpleasant personality, so, many people in the company didn’t like him much.

Along with three new projects, I was assigned the handbook task for the first time. The meeting was in February, so my first handbook would be for that year’s Quarter 1. In the meeting I also asked my colleague who had managed the project for 4 years to explain the usual timeline. She said it took 6 months, a timeframe agreed upon by management for years, considering the person handling it would also have other important projects.

This means, for Quarter 1 data, the printed copies of the handbook need to be ready by 30th of September. The 6-month period includes collecting the analysis from survey managers, and for secondary data, I would have to contact the data owner and do the analysis myself. I also have to work closely with the outsourced company that does the design and printing.

I carried out the handbook project smoothly along with my other tasks, and by late July, the only thing left for me to do was to proofread the content. The next procedure required me, my manager, and the designer to review and finalize every page before sending it to the Unit Head for approval. Printing and delivery take about 2-3 weeks, so we aimed to submit the design by mid-August and confirm the final version for printing by the last week of August.

However, on the last Friday of July (a whole 2 weeks before our target timeline to send the design to the Unit Head), this conversation happened:

Manager: OP, I need you to finalize everything today, because we are sending the design to the Unit Head on Monday.

Me: Next Monday? Why? We have two weeks.

Manager: Well, the Unit Head wants to see some changes around here, so I thought we could speed up the publication of this handbook to start. I told the Unit Head we would send the design to her on Monday.

Me: Okay... you could have discussed this with me first. I mean, the proofreading is almost done, I can get it done by today, but we still need to sit down with the designer to finalize and sign off. The appointment is in a week.

Manager: Can you do it tomorrow? Go ask the designer.

(Now, it was not normal in our company to come to the office and work on weekend. And of course I already had a plan for that weekend so this was really annoying to me. At least I knew that the designer would have no issue moving it to the next day, because he is very cooperative.)

Me: I can try... but tomorrow is Saturday. I’m not sure if he can make it. And are you sure we want to rush this? Because even if we meet the designer tomorrow, the hardcopy will be delivered just 2 weeks earlier than the normal deadline. Is it that significant?

Manager: Yes! Just go ask the designer now.

So, I called the designer, and as expected, he had no problem meeting on Saturday.

Me: Mr. Manager, the designer is okay to meet tomorrow. Is 10am okay with you?

Manager: Huh? (Puzzled look)

Me: Uhmm... You also need to be there for the sign-off.

Manager: I do?

Me: Yes, you literally need to sign off on the final version to send to the Unit Head. It’s the normal procedure.

(Tbh, he didn't need to be there aside from following procedure. He had already seen the design a few times and likely wouldn't have contributed much to the meeting. I would have loved for him not to be there anyway. But at that point, I was quite excited to make him come to the office on the weekend when he obviously didn’t realize he ALSO had to be there with the designer.)

Manager: I can’t tomorrow, I’m going [somewhere] until Sunday.

Me: Well, if you want to send this to the Unit Head on Monday, then YOU HAVE to be here tomorrow.

Manager: Sigh... let me get back to you.

About half an hour later, he came up to me with the sourest face ever, “10am tomorrow is fine", and walked away.

I’m guessing he must have pissed off someone when he had to change/cancel his weekend plan.

So the next day, he came in 1 hour late, not smiling at all, and was rude to the designer and me. He was really unhappy to be in the office on that day, but we got it done by 1pm.

The following week, the story of how *I* made my manager come to work on Saturday was told around the company. Apparently, the plan that he had for the weekend was a group trip with some of his buddies who also worked in the company, and he had to make new arrangements to get to the place by himself and arrived late. A lot of people thought it was really funny (including the Unit Head and some of his buddies) and laughed at the image of him walking into the office on Saturday for some trivial yet necessary work.

Nevertheless, the next 2 years that I worked on the handbook, he never promised anyone to have the handbook ready before the 6-month timeline.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Downtown_Diamond1932 on 2024-05-14 17:40:37+00:00.

About 14 years ago, I was working IT for a large medical center, one of several owned by the same people. The regional CIO personally put me in charge of setting up and issuing laptops to doctors and other medical staff to go to patient's homes when they could no longer come to the hospital for any number of reasons including disability, lack of adequate transportation, etc.

When we got a new shop supervisor (who was only promoted to that position exactly one year to the day after being hired from the outside, something that left myself and a lot of the other IT techs very upset), he made it abundantly clear that he was going to make several people's lives miserable, including me. He'd look at my Outlook calendar (we all had to share access to our calendar with him) to see when I had someone scheduled to pick a laptop up, do their three-month software update, etc., then a few minutes before the person was supposed to arrive, he would order me to do some menial project halfway across the hospital that he could have just as easily done himself or delegated to one of the new people. If I tried to tell him that I had an appointment, he'd threaten to write me up for insubordination.

Cue malicious compliance: One day, the regional CIO was due for his 3-month update. Right on cue, the shop sup tasked me with unboxing, then installing monitors on the first floor. About 15 minutes later, when the regional CIO arrived, he called to asked that I return to the office. I headed back up right away.

The shop sup didn't know and never met the regional CIO, so the shop sup had no clue who he was dealing with. When I arrived, the CIO asked the shop sup to leave the room. He asked me what was going on, since I was always punctual & thorough to a fault. I told him about the shop sup making several of the lives of anyone he disliked miserable with reassigning trouble tickets in multiple random floors at the last second, just as they had projects scheduled, or in my case, as I had appointments close to arriving for the laptops. The CIO even asked why the shop sup always seemed to be out of the office most times the director came up, and could never get him on the phone. I just told the truth; "He's been much too busy chasing skirts and shooting the breeze with his friends, sir." When the CIO asked if the shop sup had a girlfriend on the side, my response was "which one? He has us too busy running around to count them."

He told me to wait outside the office for a few minutes, and brought the shop sup back in to have "Come to Jesus" moment with him. The shop sup was put on 90-days' unpaid suspension, and was written up for gross insubordination for talking back to him, among other things. The CIO even asked HR to start an investigation to see what other department regulations he violated.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Plantastrophe on 2024-05-09 16:35:28+00:00.

I actually wasn't involved in this one, but I saw it firsthand... and it was a MALE Karen and a FEMALE cashier.

Back in the 2010's, I worked as a part time employee at the Mall of America GAP store as a janitor. My shift ended as soon as the store opened and normally I would go home when it was all done. But It was around Christmas and I decided to stick around to do my shopping.

So, I was browsing a jewelry store, when a man bought a very impressive small glass bird and asked for it to be gift-wrapped. The woman at the checkout was more than happy to oblidge. But as she started getting out the wrapping, the man stopped her and told her he wanted it put into the wrapping machine. The woman told him that the bird was too small and fragile for the wrapping machine and needed more precise care for gift wrapped. But the guy wouldn't listen and started throwing sexist remarks at her before she finally yielded and put it in the wrapping machine.

And wouldn't you? In just two seconds you could her it shatter. A glass bird came in, a pile of glass dust came out. The man completely lost it and accused the woman of incompetence or negilgence. The woman reminded the man that she warned him that the bird was too small and fragile for the wrapping machine. But he just wouldn't listen and he got very hostile and sexist towards her. She then called security and that was my signal to leave the store.

Moral of the story, Karen is not exclusive to women. Never forget that. What do you think of this?

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/TheBigCahoona43 on 2024-05-14 06:07:18+00:00.

So, there I was, working at a mid-sized IT firm as a software developer. My team had always been pretty laid-back, focusing on results rather than the exact hours we were glued to our desks. Our projects were delivered on time, our clients were happy, and our team morale was high. That is, until we got a new project manager, let's call him Dave.

Dave was fresh from a highly regimented corporate background and had ideas about “proper workplace management,” which basically meant micromanaging everything. He'd schedule unnecessary daily status meetings, demanded we fill out hourly work logs, and insisted that everyone strictly adhere to 9-to-5 office hours with minimal breaks.

One day, during one of his infamous "efficiency crackdowns", he sent out an email with a new policy that all coding must be done strictly within office hours to "ensure collaboration and supervision". This was ridiculous because creative work like coding often requires flexible hours for maximum productivity. But Dave was adamant, and he ended his email with, "If you think you can find a loophole, think again. Follow the rules, or we'll find someone who will."

Challenge accepted, Dave.

I decided to comply—meticulously. I coded strictly between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM, not a minute earlier, not a second later. If I encountered a bug or was in the middle of a complex piece of code? Too bad. 5 PM means the end, no matter what. My teammates, fed up with being treated like schoolchildren, followed my lead.

The results were predictable. Projects that usually took a couple of weeks started dragging on. Tasks that we could have completed in days with a bit of overtime took much longer because we couldn't capitalize on the bursts of late-afternoon productivity we were used to. Our workflow was severely disrupted, and the quality of our work started to deteriorate.

Dave noticed, of course. He had to answer to upper management for the "sudden drop in productivity and lack of commitment", which he knew was a result of our dissatisfaction with his new policy. When upper management called for an impromptu Zoom meeting with the entire at 4:30 PM to address the ongoing project delays, the entire team logged in to explain our situation.

In the meeting, Dave spent half an hour shifting blame and berating individual team members. He didn't even mention the 9-5 policy that had led to the whole situation. As the clock ticked towards 5:00 PM, the tension in the virtual room was palpable, and our team hatched a plan over text.

Right on cue, as the clock struck 5:00 PM, one of the employees spoke up, "In compliance with Dave’s 9-to-5 rule, we must log off now." Without missing a beat, every team member clicked "Leave Meeting," leaving a stunned Dave to face the executives alone.

This abrupt mass exit highlighted the impracticality of Dave’s rigid policy, making it clear to the executives that change was necessary. The incident, quickly dubbed as the "5:00 Zoom Exodus," led to another meeting, where Dave was publicly admonished and instructed to abolish his strict rules in favor of more flexibility.

And as for me and my team? We made sure to celebrate our little victory with a well-deserved happy hour... after 5 PM, of course.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/The_double_T on 2024-05-14 00:47:57+00:00.

Germany was my first duty station when I was in the Army. After FTXs (field training exercises) the platoon would get together for a platoon dinner at the local Hofbrau. Since it was always the start of a 4 day we would all get hammered at the platoon dinner. Well PSG (platoon sergeant) eventually said we could only have two beers with dinner. So we started ordering the one liter steins. Then PSG said we could only order 1 stein with dinner. So we started showing up to the hofbrau early to have beers before dinner, and still ordered the steins and then have one with dinner. Usually by the end of the night all of us were at least 4 steins in and absolutely obliterated but still only had one stein or two beers with dinner. Good times, good people.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/mirandabrokedown on 2024-05-13 15:50:21+00:00.

About a decade ago, I worked at a well known bookstore as a seller of books. For anyone not aware, there were sections/duties that people were assigned to during shifts and it changed frequently. It wasn’t uncommon for shifts or duties to be swapped (relevant later in the story).

There had been a recent change in management, and a fresh employee (let’s call her Lexa) received a promotion to be an assistant manager despite having limited experience and quite the undeserved chip on her shoulder. (Pretty sure she got the job because of her friendship with the departing AM whose position opened up.) She was very much a delegator who spent a lot of time hanging out in the back office.

I knew Lexa wasn’t liked by a few of the veteran employees for the seemingly undeserved promotion. I was a part-timer going to school, so I wasn’t invested in moving up or challenging the store leadership. Didn’t make much of a difference to me. She and I got along just fine overall and usually exchanged pleasantries with bits of conversation.

Until one day.

I showed up to work, clocked in, and saw my department was Kids. I hated working in Kids as it was a Saturday (super packed), and the person who I relieved was terrible at cleaning up whatever section she was assigned to.

I called up Lexa and asked her if I could switch with another bookseller (who liked working in Kids) that also just clocked in. Before waiting for an answer (yes, partially my fault), I asked the bookseller if she would be cool switching with me. Lexa, hearing me ask this question, yells over the phone, “NO! YOU WERE ASSIGNED TO KIDS, SO GO TO YOUR SECTION!”

I replied with a simple, “Okay.”

I go to my section, and as expected, it’s a disaster. Books on the floor, kids running around, toys strewn about - it was exactly what I anticipated.

I got right to work on recovering messed up shelves, making stacks of the books to return to their proper locations, and picked up toys/trash. I was a man on a mission.

Wouldn’t you know it, but apparently there were some shelves and furniture that needed to be moved around.

I get a call on my store phone. It’s Lexa, and she needs my help with said task. Mind you, there were enough people on the book floor to help if she also left the back office to get it done. Her tone was much different, and she sweetly asked if I can leave Kids to go help with the project.

Well, Kids is a mess. I was diligently working just to keep up with the unrelenting entropy due to the Saturday afternoon crowd. Could I have helped? Sure. Did I have an excuse not to? Sure did.

I firmly replied, “Sorry, I’m busy in Kids.” Nothing more, nothing less.

The shift ended, and we went go to the break room post shift. Lexa talks to all of us and mentions how we need to remember to work as a team. Her demeanor was mildly sheepish, and she avoided making eye contact with me. I sat there, staring right at her with a dumb look on my face, pretending I don’t know she’s indirectly talking about me. I did find out from a couple of friends she did help out which required her actually doing some work instead of hiding out.

We never had any run-ins after that and she moved a couple of months later. In any case, I worked my assigned section like she told me to.

On the bright side, I cleaned up Kids and organized it so well that the Kids lead thanked me the next time we worked together.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Lonely_Metal755 on 2024-05-13 07:59:40+00:00.

I worked at a cafe in a big shopping centre for a few months between jobs I actually liked. The manager was a nut and liked to throw her weight around.

Every evening she’d tell me to clean the coffee machine and get ready to close up. Every evening once I was done, she’d ask me to make her a coffee ‘for the road.’ I’d have to make it and then clean everything again.

I offered to make it for her before I cleaned the machine but she complained that it wouldn’t be hot enough.

I received a better job offer and was looking forward to one more week before leaving. However, the next night she wanted her coffee after we’d already had to stay back and I definitely wasn’t getting paid overtime. Everyone had left 30 minutes before. I had had enough.

I took care to spill coffee grounds everywhere, use as many utensils and jugs as I could and just make a huge mess. As I handed her the coffee I told her ‘I quit.’ The look on her face was priceless as she realised she’d be the one cleaning up.

Worth being poor for a week!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/katielynn493 on 2024-05-12 19:51:14+00:00.

I was working a closing shift at McDonalds and at the end of the night (this night in particular, I was in grill) It was getting late and we were slow so I started minimizing what we had in stock and was going to cook the rest of the food to order for the last half hour of my shift. The closing manager came up to the table to see what I had and told me to fill the trays because we aren't closed yet. I tried to explain to her what I was doing and she didn't listen to a word I said. So I did what she asked. I turned back on the second heated cabinet and told the person I was in grill with to do what she said and fill the trays. He looked at me confused and I told him that she wanted the trays full, she can deal with the waste at the end of the night. So thats what we did, we filled the trays up with food as if it were lunch rush since thats what she wanted. At the end of the night, I emptied out all the full trays into a bucket and gave it to her with her sheet to fill out with how much waste we had and she tried to make me count it. I told her, "I am not closing manager. It is your job to count it. Have fun" and finished closing down grill. Oh she was pissed. The next day, my GM asked what had happened and I told her. All she said was never to do it again. I never worked a closing shift with that manager after that.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/M0Savage on 2024-05-12 11:33:10+00:00.

Twenty plus years ago I was working at a commissary (think grocery store) on an army post. I worked in the produce department and one our duties was to make fruit and vegetable trays for customers one order.

I started out making them pretty much like everyone else. Celery in this spot, cherry tomatoes here, broccoli like so. One day and officer's wife asked if I could make a vegetable tray but she wanted it a bit fancier. I love to cook and wow people with my knife skills. I slided things thin and layered them and pretty soo I had something that looked like it belonged on a wedding buffet.

Of course other people saw it and they wanted something similar. So I became the veggie and fruit tray guy.

My supervisor and I didn't get along very well. I would stop what I was doing and take a customer to the products they were trying to find or I'd go in search if I didn't know where exactly, especially after a reset. For some reason my supervisor didn't like it. She didn't see it as going above and beyond, she saw it as abandoning my duties.

Anyways one day she told me that I couldn't make the trays anymore unless I followed the book which she handed me. No more fancy trays because "it took too long". It took me the same amount of time as anyone else making a regular tray.

I cracked open the book on my break and I smiled. You want by the book? You get by the book.

The next tray I made took four hours. My boss almost went berserk. I told her that with each, individual fruit or vegetable I had to wash, sanitize and rinse them separately because that was what the book says. and with eight different fruits or vegetables I had to spend about half an hour filling and draining the sink each time as to not cause cross contamination.

I transferred to a different section shortly after that.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Defiant-Lion8183 on 2024-05-12 11:00:35+00:00.

Disclaimers

1. No one will be hurt by the MC following. The “users” involved have 20+ years experience doing the thing and this is a tick and flick document.
2. The document itself is a compliance document taken from a full evidence pack that should only be used in full and only by qualified Assessors. This is legislation related to.

So a few months ago, as usual my Boss finds a random bit of information that is affecting her KPIs. 30 people don’t have box X ticked off because they’ve been in the company 20+ years and X box was only initiated 5years ago.

So she finds an information pack containing all the requirements to get X box ticked. Pulls a single assessment page with the clear guide that it’s for our team only to sign. Tells me via email to get all 20peoples external leaders to sign it as evidence.

I was very aware this is not the correct way to do this, it’s just the least amount of paperwork. So I did due diligence and took it sideways to the team next to us who handles stuff like this. Their leader authorises it without thinking it through, I explained my hesitation and another leader overhears and also says “if it’s in writing you can action it” with a sly smile. She knew what I would do.

Lightbulb cue MC. I sent the entire email chain unedited and pointed out both Authorisations. Attached the piece of assessment and sent it with the list of names to all external leaders from the official shared inbox and not my own. I sent this on day one of my boss going on leave.

I had 10 emails sent back in less than 30mins refusing to sign it with a big WTF? They cc’d in all relevant people and pointed out how this breaks compliance regulations.

I replied excusing myself from future speculations until a directive from on high came down. 3 days later I start to hear rumblings from the big bosses at head office. My boss still isn’t back and they would like an urgent meeting to discuss process.

Outcome? My Team is now required to get approval from the document control team before any external document is sent out. I’ve happily stopped editing the horrendous documents big boss sends me to send out (she doesn’t ask for edits, grammar check etc). I’m simply forwarding them to Doc Control from shared inbox with her signature still attached. They have been sending everything back slowing the team down by days at a time per task. Since she didn’t explicitly know or ask for me to edit in the past she didn’t know I stopped, therefore is very picachu face why suddenly her docs are all wrong.

Her KPIs are tanking.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/pathofuncertainty on 2024-05-11 11:30:49+00:00.

Many years ago I worked in a locally run store that sold a bit of everything. I was the low paid teenager that carried heavy things to people’s vehicles. While working one day I get called over the radio that a customer needed 12 bags of concrete (80lbs each). I was expecting to see a pickup truck or something similar backed up to our loading area. Instead I saw a small Honda Civic there waiting for me. Thinking it was a mistake, I asked the driver to relocate momentarily as I had someone coming to pick up multiple bags of concrete. Imagine my surprise when they told me they were the customer I was waiting for.

I asked the customer how much they wanted to take in each trip, as I believed the nearly 1000lb of concrete might be too much for such a small vehicle to handle safely. The customer became aggravated and insisted that they were taking it all at once. I quickly ran this past the store owner to make sure I wouldn’t be held liable for any damages. I ran back, apologized to the customer, and began loading the bags. As I loaded everything up the customer made several quips about how “the customer is always right” and that I was too young and naive to understand that vehicles are engineered with a margin of safety.

It quickly became apparent that there was no play left in the suspension, but at this point I just stopped questioning things. I couldn’t fit all of the bags in the trunk, so the customer cleared their back seat and I loaded that up as well. Upon leaving the loading area you could clearly hear things rubbing. As the car went to exit the parking lot it passed over the elevation change between the lot and the road, there was a loud pop of something breaking, followed by scraping.

I could see that the driver was irate in the car. After a moment they got out, looked around and under their car. The guy sheepishly asked for my cell phone, because his had died and he needed to make a few phone calls. A short time later a tow truck came to remove the car, and the guy waited in our lot for nearly an hour until his wife could come pick him up.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/BaronVonFroglok on 2024-05-10 23:18:07+00:00.

My ex roommate moved out of state a few months ago, but left several items at the apartment. He asked me a month or so ago to send him his acoustic guitar. I haven't been able to afford it yet, but I was looking for a way to package it so that it doesn't get destroyed enroute.

He has been an absolute douche the entire time I have known him. He called me a few days ago angry that I hadn't sent it to him yet. I told him I wanted to package it so that it doesn't get destroyed, and I should have enough to send it on payday. He proceeded to get angry and yell at me to just send it in the gig bag.

I'm am so over all of the harassment. I'm about to just slap a shipping label on his gig bag and see if UPS will ship it.

I am trying to do something nice for you, but if you treat me like shit I will do exactly as you asked.

ETA: After reading comments, I will get a quote for the shipping, make him pay me, and then ship it exactly how he asked... I really hope it shows up broken.

I will figure out if UPS will even ship it that way on Monday and get a quote for the shipping cost. I am definitely getting confirmation that he wants me to send it without packaging it. I'll take pictures of me dropping it off intact at the shipping facility.

I'll update the post when he gets it.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/nicomachus on 2024-05-10 19:27:26+00:00.

Owner receives a letter from the city requiring him to screen his boat from view. He hires muralist neighbor to paint the fence to look exactly like the view of the boat. Well done.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Fuzzy_Concept_4606 on 2024-05-10 16:51:29+00:00.

Hi,

Young woman of color who looks like she is in high school but is actually in her mid-20s. I have one major example of malicious compliance as I have been with my current science consulting role at a boutique firm since graduating college. Most of the people at my company have a PhD and/or MS even though this is completely unnecessary for the job. I do not come from a science background, so this does not benefit me either.

It is a bizarre situation as I am given much more responsibility than many people who are older, more educated, and higher in the company than me; management clearly does not want someone who looks like me to be a leader at the company, but they give me the responsibilities of someone higher-up without the title and compensation.

I have been given several reasons as to why I was not being promoted as quickly as others (Side note: I have been promoted several times. My issue is that I am doing more than others in terms of work load and responsibility and am not being compensated for it properly per my current job description. I have just as much/more responsibility than many people above me and am being treated by a different standard.).

Before my most recent promotion which took 2 years to get, my previous supervisor (also a WOC, but older and with a PhD) told me that I was being treated differently by higher ups at my company based on my age, gender, and lack of education. Although my work product was “perfect,” she said that I was being judged on how I “appeared at first” and “interacted with coworkers” (even though I have friendly relationships with all colleagues, she likely meant that I was too outgoing). She said she wanted to perform an “experiment” with me. She said that maybe I would be promoted if I started putting more effort into my appearance (side note: I am a confident, charismatic person who [respectfully] does not need to put any more effort into her appearance. And even if I did, it is not her, or anyone’s, f*cking business). She said I should wear “tighter” clothing.

So I maliciously complied out of spite. I went from business casual attire that was the standard at my office to full-on business attire. I also never wore makeup to work and wore a full face of makeup everyday for months. While others wore athletic t-shirts, sneakers, and hoodies, I wore dress shirts / dress pants and pantsuits. My pastel-colored pantsuit REALLY caught peoples’ attention, and people would continually ask, “Are you going somewhere with a client?” I would always reply, “No. I received feedback that I need to put more effort into my appearance.” That shut everybody up real quick.

My former supervisor apologized after a week and said she shouldn’t have said that. I kept up the act out of malice for a few weeks after. And I got the promotion a few months later.

P.S. I know this is a massive HR violation (among many others not discussed above). I do not have an in-house HR rep and my company contracts a third-party. I am afraid of retaliation and I do not want to report anything because it will make my job worse than it already is. I know my worth and have been job searching for over a year since this occurred. I am approaching the final stages of interviews for several positions.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Knowledgefromwork on 2024-05-10 02:03:28+00:00.

So this happened about 7-8 years ago in a busy Australian public hospital . We were having the busiest day in radiology when one of the admin staff comes asks about a patient getting a scan today. I explained to her as she knows we are fully booked and are really busy . I note the referral asking for a scan to be done in the next 4 weeks . It was routine follow up and has no clinical Urgency as per the request .

She says the patient is demanding it today . I tell her once again non urgent scans can’t come ahead of life threatening illness and trauma we need to scan . The admin staff returns five minutes later saying the patient is causing quite the scene and states” he’ll wait all day if he has too “ . I have two options . Option one - call security and come kick this man out or comply with his demand .

I tell the admin he can have his scan but he might literally wait all day . This was about 10am.

Come 12 pm the chief radiographer comes and sees me to say there is man complaining about a two hour wait. I explain the situation and say if I get ten minutes which I won’t I will scan the patient . The chief radiographer sees the waiting irate man and offers to book him in a few days time . The patient reiterated that he wait all day if he has too . The chief radiographer advices it’s his choice. He is informed that if he has an appointment he would likely not have to wait long . Come 3 pm we get another complaint from him which we ignore . Again he is offered another time later in the week. He refuses to book in. Come 5 pm I hand over to the afternoon shift in charge and explain about our waiting patient . We move the patient from the outpatients waiting room to the inpatient waiting room where it is bedlam. He again is offered another appointment and told the wait is now about two hours .he says he has waited this long he might of well wait some more.

Trolleys and wheelchairs are going every which way . He sits down and suddenly the situation dawns on him how busy we are with sick patients. You could just see it in his face. The next day I find out our irate patient Waited until 730 pm and was rather sheepish when brought in for scan and quite apologetic.

Patient demands non urgent radiology scan and say he will wait all day for it and he does .

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/powderedtoastsupreme on 2024-05-09 22:00:30+00:00.

I worked as a writer and editor for over a decade, and in that time I had my fair share of bad bosses—like anyone. But there is one that completely takes the cake. I worked for a large media company that had dealings with a number of other companies and subsidiaries ranging from publishing to fashion to sports to tech. You name it, they did it. How our writing department worked was each writer would have specific areas that they would write for, kind of like how journalists have “beats” they cover. So if you were assigned to the fashion arm of the company or one of its partners/subsidiaries, you wrote or edited everything for that arm.

I worked for this company for about a year and a half before a new manager was hired. She was the second in command of our department. Part of her and our department director’s job was to update our internal style guide when necessary. For those that don’t know, a style guide is a reference document for how to either refer to things or how to format things for the company/partners. Before her tenure as manager, this was only done maybe once or twice a year, and the changes were relatively minimal since the style guide was very well established in the company and had been in place for a number of years. After she came on, it was being updated at least once a week, if not multiple times a week. It legitimately became an obsession for her.

Aside from the general annoyance of keeping up with it, it didn’t take long for me and my coworkers to reach the conclusion that our new manager didn’t have the faintest idea what she was doing. Each new version had more and more glaring errors.

At first, we all ignored these changes, giving her the benefit of the doubt and hoping, albeit naively, that these new directives were mistakes. That was until people started getting reprimanded for not following the style guide. I was the first to get a one-on-one, closed door talk.

One of the departments I wrote for was sports, and she had seen that I had not been following the new rule of how I was to refer to the men’s and women’s teams I covered. Truthfully, I had willfully ignored it hoping that it was just a mistake. To my horror, however, it appeared my new writing manager didn’t understand basic grammar. You see, the change she implemented removed the apostrophe from “men’s” and “women’s”. So, for example, if I was covering “men’s basketball”, I was to refer to it as “mens basketball”. Her rationale was that the men didn’t own the team; therefore, it should not be possessive. Apparently, her understanding of the English language didn’t evolve past grade school explanations.

I was honestly pretty dumbfounded at first. But once I got over the initial shock that the second in command of our department didn’t realize “mens” was not a word, I tried bleakly to explain that men is already plural and that a possessive “‘s” doesn’t always denote direct ownership (read: men’s bathroom). She stared blankly at me for a few seconds, and for the briefest of moments, I thought maybe I was seeing the cogs in her head turn. She however, doubled down. Realizing the fight was lost, I told her that I would implement the changes going forward.

Now, here’s where my malicious compliance comes in: We worked for, and with, some very high profile companies, and mistakes were not tolerated for things that were outward facing. Realizing her idiocy could cost me my job, I made a simple request: Could you please email me the exact style guide rule you’re referencing and how exactly you’d like me to implement it, with examples of where I messed up? She looked at me like I was stupid for not understanding what was being asked of me, but she still wrote it all down in an email for me. I also made sure any further style changes were referenced in an email and specifically asked that if there were further changes to please cite how I had done them in the past, along with how she would like them to be done from now on.

Sure enough, within about 6 months of this, I was fired. And at my exit interview, I handed HR a folder containing every written communication regarding the style changes, along with quite a bit of evidence that she was passing off her projects to other members of the dept and changing people’s work behind their back.

She was fired three months after me, along with our department director three months after that. Turned out, my little folder sparked a full investigation by HR, and after interviewing other coworkers in the department, they realized she had done all of it to have grounds to fire people within the department she didn’t like. I just happened to be the first on the chopping block. The projects she was passing off to other people? She was taking the credit for what they were doing to make herself look good. Those changes she was making to other people’s work? HR realized that she was changing things to make it explicitly incorrect. You gotta love software that tracks changes and timestamps and lists the user. On top of all of this, they also discovered that she had, at best, exaggerated (and, at worst, fabricated) large swaths of her resume.

By the time she was fired, I had already found another job in a different department at the same company. It was a good gig, and my new manager wasn’t a complete cunt. Eventually, I moved on from that company, but if anything, my time there taught me a very valuable lesson: document, document, and document some more.

Edit: To address some questions/things mentioned in the comments:

This was ~10 years ago in a U.S. state that has laws that basically state a person can be fired for any reason provided that it isn’t prejudicial (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc). Writers also aren’t exactly top earners. I did well enough to support myself, but legal action would have been difficult to pay for. Not to mention, I was subject to some very strict NDAs because of the company/clients/partners/subsidiaries I worked for and with. Any legal action would have put me at risk of a counter suit. I was happy that justice was served and I had a job elsewhere in the company with good pay until I moved on.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/TheLightningCount1 on 2024-05-09 16:02:12+00:00.

This story is from a few years ago. Its how I helped my sister and somehow got her company to willingly bypass their own idle time requirements.

Her company went work from home after the lockdown and stayed working from home. At first they required an always on camera system but that quickly went away as the amount of unintended nudity that comes from your average household is quite startling.

Then they went with a system that tracks your idle time in teams. The amount of write ups, meetings, group meetings, and eventual terminations for what was the dumbest requirement ever cause my sister to ask for help.

She sent me an amazon link for one of those USB sticks that jiggles the mouse. I told her dont use those as even lazy IT can detect them.

At the time, amazon wasnt selling mechanical mouse turners yet, or at least at reasonable prices, so I looked at building one. I found an STL file for this flowery mouse holder which I modified to be just straight monocolor and 3d printed it. I cut out 1.5 inch circular disk and put it on a weak motor and connected it to a power source through USB.

I set the wheel to spin every 1-12 seconds for a total of 2-5 seconds at a time but ran into an issue. Sometimes the disk spinning would not actually move the mouse.

I found a company that would print stickers at a dollar a sticker if I ordered 5 of them. SO I found this basic pattern of squares and lines crisscrossing each other and had it printed to just under the dimensions of the disk.

I stuck it on there and the mouse turner worked perfectly. I quickly ran into another issue. Since the disk was raised, it quickly got hung up on the mouse with the sticker. So back into design I went and made it where the dimensions were slightly larger for the base and sit it where the disk would be 2mm below the actual mouse.

After printing it the mouse sat on the cradle and the disk spun without touching. The mouse cursor would randomly just move in weird directions at the times the disk spun.

So with that all out of the way I got a free lunch out of my sister and delivered it. It hooked into her laptop's USP port, never being detected, and would turn her wheel decreasing her idle time down to zero.

Within 2 weeks she was recognized as a top performer. She was watching crime dramas with her volume at max until she got a notification that customer submitted a request. In other words, her productivity stayed exactly the same.

So she calls me up and asks if I can make more of those. Thankfully I saved the STL files and could order more stickers if I needed. I told her I could make each one for 25 bucks. The cheapest on amazon at the time were like 50 and it only cost me roughly 12 bucks to make them, which went down to 8 bucks to make them at the end.

She said several coworkers were asking her about it and she said she would just give them my number.

Within a month I had built out 50 mechanical mouse turners. Which was kind of waste as this company only had 32 employees. I miscounted. Sometimes I would meet 5 or more of her coworkers at a restuarant at the same time just so I wouldnt have to drive all over dfw.

Then one weekend I get a call from the CEO of that company. See all of his workers were using these mouse turners, and he wasnt. So when the company published the report on idle times, his was abysmally low.

That phone call was one of the most surreal I have ever had. At first he thought I was one of his employees. I told him I wasnt, I worked for a waste management company. (I dont but I wasnt about to tell him.) He asked me about the mouse turners. I told him that I designed them for a friend, but that person no longer worked for his company. (Again lies. I was protecting my sister, not like he couldnt figure it out but still) He asked if he could get one.

This is where the conversation went VERY weird. See I tried convincing him to give up the idle timer requirements as it clearly wasnt important and only harmed his company. I laid out all of my points for it and pointed out that the ceo of the company is buying a device specifically designed to bypass his requirement.

He would not budge. He was so into his company dogma that he just wanted one from me. I already had a few left over so I told him I could make him one for 35 bucks.

Here is the really screwed up part of the story. See he asked for a full list of my clients, promising that no one would be fired, he just wanted to know how many. I told him that a list would be unnecessary as its every single one of his employees. Literally all 32 excluding him.

His response was to have the company reimburse each employee the 25 dollars for the mouse turners and set it up where his company would contact me each time a new employee started. I said I had 10 left over from the initial batch of ones I made and can just give him those and have him contact me when he runs out.

He agreed.

Well that kind of never happened as a company on amazon made what is basically the same thing I was making for like 15 bucks. Theirs is much nicer than mine was too lol.

So a company set idle time requirements which caused issues at the company. Now the company buys devices for each employee so that bypasses the idle timer.