Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/joejarred on 2025-03-16 07:48:22+00:00.

Context: I was paying close to £600 a year for travelling 8 hour journeys on rubbish trains.

TL;DR -  a lot of train companies will repay you if your train is delayed. So I started targeting tickets I predicted would be delayed to ride for free.

Some pretty brutal ‘all-dayers’ - but I’d use them as an opportunity to get a load of work done.

How to predict when a train will be delayed:

- Strike action

Strike action = staff shortages. RMT has to notify the public two weeks before they plan to strike. There is usually a knock-on effect lasting several days, before and after. 

- Engineering works 

You can monitor planned works online in real time. 

- Weather

Snow, generally.

I started monitoring these risks, chose specific days when I knew there would be ‘trouble on the lines’.

The journeys were delayed every time.

All I had to do after was take a photo of my ticket, fill out an online form, and send it to Avanti for full refund.

Honestly I can understand why people would just want to pay and get there quicker, but depending on how expensive your long-distance tickets are, it might be useful.

Hope I don't get flamed in the comments for this. As far as I'm aware there's nothing illegal about doing this.

Edit: I go into detail here if more pointers are helpful: 

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Milled_Oats on 2025-03-15 22:03:01+00:00.

So this happened a while back with a large Australian hospital. The Friday before Xmas senior management drop the dreaded restructure notice. Standard spiel about realignment, better patient outcomes, efficient practice blah blah blah. They give notice to the staff and unions that consultation closes first Week of January. The new employment structure will take place in February.

Under the conditions of our industrial award the employer must make genuine consultation available where the employee has the opportunity to change the employers mind about making them redundant. The other thing is redundancy payouts are generally good in Health in Australia with a worker with 13 years work history gets a years pay with $113k tax free plus entitlements such as annual leave and long service leave paid out. Each year you work your redundancy increases in value to a maximum of 13 years.

About 4-5 percent(200 plus) of staff are going to be made redundant. The union launches into the industrial court arguing that the time given especially over Xmas is insufficient. The court agrees and extends the time by two weeks but issues two statements. 1. The industrial court will Not slow down this restructure anymore and 2. It strongly reminds the unions( there was multiple) that you can only consult.

Hospital management see this as a big win and are bragging how they are going beat us.

The unions have a combined meeting and decide that if the staff can only consult then ask as many questions as we can. The members are asked to field as many questions as possible. My union alone gather 1200+ questions with 700 of them unique, another 800-900 questions coming from the other unions.

As you can imagine management does not respond well to our combined 2000+ questions. They attempt to push on. We head back to court where we remind the judge of his must consult orders. the court tells our employer that they must answer the questions. The restructure is on hold by court order.

What were the questions like ? Some question were about legal ramifications due to industrial award requirements, others about professional legal standards, some questions about day to day operations, and others about how they would be personally impacted.

The court orders both sides to meet back in a month and hospital management must answer all questions. We get our answers in three weeks time that consist of yes, no, maybe, possibly and unsure answers. All one word answers. This is not genuine consultation.

We head back to court and the judge is furious about lack of real consultation. The hospital argue it’s too Many questions to answer but the judge reminds them they only have to genuinely consult.

Come June we are in a legal Holding pattern when hospital management declares that they are changing the restructure on feedback given and issues new restructure papers.

The restructure will take place in four weeks time. New restructure requires new consultation which the hospital isn’t willing to do. Back to court the unions go to remind the judge about genuine consultation. We won again by just consulting.

Come December( 1 year after starting all of this) the hospital hires a consultant to get the restructure done. She has the same attitude as hospital management and tries to rush through the restructure without genuine consultation. We head back to court and at this stage the Judge has had enough and notes the unions have played by the rules and the hospital hasn’t.

We hit back with even more questions and judge decides he will set down monthly meetings with him chairing them to work through this mess. In total the restructure takes over three years with loss of a lot less jobs lost than expected. In fact it was a fraction of jobs expected to go. In some departments we gained jobs by arguing about workloads etc.

The vast majority of people who lost their jobs were close to retirement age and received a handsome payout. They also got 3+ plus years pay as the restructure took place over that time.Some of the unions members had worked Less then the 13 years work history maximum payout before the restructure. The three plus years of delay increased their pay outs.

All we did was consult by asking questions as the judge ordered.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Tiara-di-Capi on 2025-03-15 05:54:49+00:00.

TLDR: they changed the Saturday roster at work, arrogantly ignored my admonitions, so I let the new roster mess itself up.

At my ex-place of work they had the bright idea to switch the Saturday schedule. Instead of the rotation of 4 Saturdays, now people would be scheduled on either the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th Saturday of the month.

Rrrrright... (Those of you readers who have ever had to make work schedules already know when the problem will present itself!)

I repeatedly asked those planners before the introduction of the new roster if they were sure they wanted to implement this, in this way, they repeatedly assured me "Yes, this will be a more clear schedule and if everyone has a set Saturday there will be no need for further planning!"

If you say so...

I was assigned Saturday #3. No problem with that.

Now I was the Veronica there, my other colleagues were not interested in stirring the pot, so the 1st month, no problem. The 2nd month... 5 saturdays!

So the team that was assigned to the 1st Saturday had to show up for Saturday #5. Then on the 1st Saturday of the following month, the team from Saturday #2 had to come in. And on Saturday #2, yep, they expected team #3 to be present.

And they were, except for this Veronica. Even on the Friday before 2 of my group (#3) colleagues mentioned to me something related to the next day, and I told those 2 "Oh, but I won't be there."

"But we're supposed to do the Saturday shift tomorrow!"

"Not me, I am assigned Saturday #3, not #2."

"But we are on the schedule!"

"Well, I don't know about you, but they told me I'm on the schedule for Saturday #3, and tomorrow is the 2nd Saturday, so it's not my turn. Definately not."

And what do you know... next morning, Saturday #2, at 09:35 the phone rang at my house. (We have to be at work at 09:00 to open doors at 09:30) You do understand that I had switched of my cellphone before goingvto sleep...

My sister answered, I could hear her from my room, where I was leisurily lazing in my bed.

"Hello?"

"...?"

"T? Yes, she's home, but asleep."

"...!"

"Work? I'm sure she doesn't, she explicitly told me she's gonna sleep in today because she isn't scheduled!" (Yes, I told her that!)

"....?"

"Absolutely not! We have an understanding that when she's sleeping late I have to let her. I am definately not waking her up when it's her free Saturday!"

"...!"

"Yeah, I don't know about that. I can tell her to call you when she wakes up, but it's her free Saturday, so I can't guarantee that she will. Or when." (My sister can also be a Veronica.)

"...!"

" [Actualy she did not say the next words literally, but something in that direction:] /Well, not my monkeys, not my circus./ Have a nice day, goodbye!"

(I had wanted her to say that probably someone must've made an error in the planning of the roster, but the monkey thing was also very cool!)

After she hung up she came to my room and we had a big laugh.

And the following Monday... NOT ONE OF THE PEOPLE OF THE PLANNING NOR MY SUPERVISOR NOR ANY OF THE HIGHER-UPS DARED TO CONFRONT ME ABOUT MY ABSENCE ON SATURDAY #2 !

Nor on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday....

And on Saturday #3 I was there, alongside the whole team of Saturday #4... We had 1 surplus worker that day! 😂😂😂😂😂

(But would you believe that I still -had to- send out an email every month to remind everyone that I will not work on Saturday #1, nor on #2, I will be present on Saturday #3, but not on #4 AND ABSOLUTELY DEFINATELY NOT ON SATURDAY #5❗️

Yeah, I'm that petty. They kept up messing it up for allmost a year.)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Ok-Pea3414 on 2025-03-14 18:13:27+00:00.

So, for those who are unaware, companies usually have engineering staff talk with engineering of parts suppliers, detail down the specifications and whatnot, and then the list goes to the purchasing department or the purchasing folks of that particular engineering department.

This is because engineers don't want to involve themselves with 30/60/90 days due, terms and conditions of sale, validity of quotes, remember the correct quote PDFs because they have hundreds of them, and working with finance department to understand what is the best for the overall financial health.

Also, in fairly large companies, you have buyers dedicated for each vendor or buyers dedicated to certain products, like pneumatics, electrical, heavy duty construction, mechanical components, made to order parts etc. And the buyers themselves have internal pathways and routes so that each required product finds themselves with the correct buyer, because the engineers are dicks and to lower their workload they will more often than not, dump all the parts on a single buyer.

A new VP comes in, sees 'Buyers' as bloat, fat to be trimmed, and makes a decision.

He lays off 8 buyers in that engineering department which makes whole factory material handling systems. Systems that handle nearly all the materials moving through multi hundred thousand square footage, from raw materials warehouses and yards to finished goods sections.

We had to order the stuff ourselves. Before we did though, 3 senior staff engineers ask that to be sent in a department wide email. VP does so.

And now, starts then compliance. Vendors ask what due terms do you want? Not aware of how deep you have to go, engineers ask for the best price. Due in 15 days after delivery. Sure, let's do that. Turns out, that vendor usually was on a net 90 day due, because paying off in the next quarter would be more sensible.

What department do you want me to bill it to? Of course mine, because I'm ordering it. (Engineers blissfully unaware, the billing happens by sales department as it gets easier to finally do profitability analysis since whichever sales department got the contract, pays for the parts too). Turns out our department didn't have a single process or work route to get bills and pay them.

Now, by the time we get to the bottom of the purchasing list, the offered quotes have expired, so we get back to vendor sales teams, and get a new quote and wait, doing nothing much until we get quotes and then order stuff.

End of quarter, department finances are a total massive fucked up mess. 8 figure mess. CFO is red faced, steaming from her ears, trying to find out what is going on.

Engineers:

Oh! The best price was net due 15 days, so I selected that.

Well, I was ordering it, so the bill should come to us. Why would other department pay for the stuff that I'm asking for?

CFO: Who asked you to do the ordering yourself? This is not your job.

Everyone shows her the email.

End of day, VP walked out, to be never seen again.

All the buyers who were let go, were rehired, and all of them negotiated a pay increase of $6.5/hr.

TLDR; VP not realizing importance of buyers who were paid $38.5/he lays them off, giving their responsibilities to engineers who made $60-90/hr, who didn't have the knowledge of workflow and actual work to be done. Engineers did a good job from their POV, costing the company tens of millions, and VP get laid off, company hires back the laid off buyers at a higher wage.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/RearEngineer on 2025-03-14 12:31:53+00:00.

Back when I was a junior engineer, I was working with a piping contractor supporting a gas plant project that was in the final stretch before commissioning. We were under intense pressure to hit deadlines, and everyone was feeling the heat. One of my responsibilities was reviewing materials before installation, i.e. basic quality control to make sure we weren’t about to install something that would bite us later.

Then the pipes arrived.

These were large-diameter, high-pressure pipes for a critical gas line. But the moment I saw them, I knew something was off. The mill markings didn’t match the material certificates, and some of the weld seams looked rough. When we took a closer look, we found surface defects and laminations at the bevel, classic signs of poor-quality steel from a dodgy mill.

I flagged it immediately. My lead engineer took one look and agreed - these pipes weren’t fit for purpose. We raised it with the project manager, expecting him to do the obvious thing, that is to reject the batch and order replacements from an approved supplier.

But this PM wasn’t like most project managers. He wasn’t an engineer, had a Bachelor of Commerce and had landed the job thanks to his uncle, a senior executive. He had zero technical knowledge and didn’t care to learn. To him, just another job to push through quickly to up his bonus, and rejecting the pipes would cause delays something he was desperate to avoid since it would probably affect his bonus.

His response?

“The supplier says they meet spec, so they meet spec. Just install them and move on.”

I pushed back, explaining that if these pipes failed under pressure, we were looking at a major incident. He waved me off.

“Just get it done. If it’s a problem, the pressure test will catch it.”

Alright, mate. Let’s see how that goes.

The pipes were installed as-is, and we moved on to pressure testing.

I stood back and watched.

As we ramped up the pressure, the pipe’s weld seam split wide open and ruptured the pipe. The force of the failure sent a shockwave through the system, and a few of the pipe supports even bent.

The pressure test failed. Spectacularly.

Now, instead of a minor delay to replace the pipes before installation, we had a catastrophic failure that shut down work for weeks. The entire line had to be cut out, re-welded, and re-tested. The supplier was blacklisted, and an internal investigation was launched into how the pipes had been approved in the first place. We were also made by the client to bear the cost of rework.

As expected, the PM tried to shift the blame. But my lead engineer simply pulled up the email chain where we had clearly raised the defect concerns. Management didn’t take long to connect the dots.

The PM was taken off the project immediately and was sacked a month later following initial investigation results and even his uncle couldn’t save him. Never saw him again after that and last I heard he decided to pursue a career outside of the industry.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/LeRoixs_mommy on 2025-03-13 14:48:31+00:00.

I submitted this as a reply to a previous post but it seems like it should stand on it's own.

Sometimes it's not just software developers that are short sighted, maglement falls in that category too! My company changed their email processing system to a much more sophisticated program than what we were using. Before rolling it out, we all had to be trained on the new program and I was scheduled for one of the last classes....which of course was delayed.

Enter maglement. They decided to run a test on the new program so they asked my team to switch over to the new system for two hours so they could gauge how it would work. The first two times they tried this, I raised my hand and asked if I could continue to work on the old system as my training was not scheduled until X date next week. My request was granted. The third time they tried a test, my training class had been delayed again, BY THIS SAME MAGLEMENT MEMBER, lets call him Paul! This time my request to stay on the old system was denied. I told Paul I had no idea how to use that new system since I had not been in a training class, but he insisted I use it anyway. It might as well have been the controls of a space ship, nothing was labeled and I had no idea what all those icons meant. I could see the incoming email, and I know how to type, so I replied to the email, and then just sat there doing nothing. After about 20 minutes of sitting unproductive, Paul walks up to me and asked why I was not answering emails? I said, "I did, it is right here." He says, "Why didn't you send it and move on to the next email?" I replied, "I DON'T KNOW HOW! AS I KEEP TELLING YOU, I HAVE NOT GONE THROUGH THE TRAINING!"

Oh well, I needed a break from work anyway. Sometimes the only way to get your point across is to beat them at their own game!

Edit: For context, this happened about 20-25 years ago and we went from the Adante program to Kana. I don't think Adante exists any longer but it was as simple as riding a bike verses running the space shuttle with Kana. Once I was trained on Kana and used it for a while, I was fine.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/OnyxState on 2025-03-13 12:04:23+00:00.

I'm a utility line locator, which - for the purposes of this story - you don't really need to know what that is, just that I have a company vehicle that I drive from home to my first job site (designated in a ticketing system I access via a work laptop) to start my day, I drive from job site to job site (hitting probably 30 different sites throughout the day) and then drive the company vehicle home after my last job. The company rules are that you clock in at your first ticket and clock out at your last ticket. This makes sense, most other companies don't pay their employees to drive to work and home from work. This rule is enforced by an automated system alerting your supervisor if you clock in more than 10 minutes before you check in at your first ticket, and you are more than .5 miles away from that ticket when you check in at it.

So, I've been doing this job for just about 2 years, no mandatory lunches, when about 4 months ago they started enforcing them, and apparently they've always been mandatory. We had a huge zoom call about it and they told us that they know we stop and take lunches even though we aren't clocking out, etc etc. There's only 2 rules when it comes to taking a linch. The first is that you have to, and the second is that it must be completed by 2pm. They have an entire automated system that will alert the supervisor if either of those criteria are not met.

I'm my opinion, my workaround is simple and elegant: I clock in at home, dont clock in at any tickets, immediately clock out for lunch, drive to my first ticket, clock in once my lunch ends, and then clock in at the ticket. Apparently, the system that checks between clock in time and check in at first ticket only counts on-the-clock minutes, so it doesn't count the lunch I took as time between my clock in and check in. And since the lunch was taken before 2pm, there's no notification to my supervisor that I haven't taken a lunch. I've been doing this for about 3 months and no one has said anything to me. I have been wanting to post it here, hoping I'd get caught and there'd be some fun, climactic ending to the situation, but since everything is automated, I don't think they'll ever find out. 😅

Edit: I think most of the commenters aren't understanding that this enforced lunch is unpaid. When I was taking it, I wasn't eating anyway, because I don't eat lunch on the diet I'm on. I was being forced to use at least a half hour of my own time everyday, to sit in my truck and do nothing. If any company wants to force someone to do anything, they should be paying if they want to make me do anything with my time. So, for everyone saying things about me not eating TAKING THE LUNCH DOESNT MIRACULOUSLY MAKE ME EAT. lol

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/dobdob2121 on 2025-03-12 16:14:29+00:00.

I used to work for a company that constantly, but carefully, innovated with its employees and technology. I had a very busy job that involved a lot of travel. The company had computers at each of its offices. Employees like me would use them to manage all of our complex jobs and travel arrangements, which were core functions of the company.

One day I was at an office and some people from IT had a small table set up with a sign asking for 5 minutes of our time to help them make our computers easier and faster for us to use. I volunteered and they had me sit at their table in front of a notebook. Each page in the notebook mimicked a redesign of the computer screens that we used. The IT testers asked me to interact with the mock-up just the way I would interact with the computer if I had just now walked up to it and found it like this. They wanted to see how ready their design was for employees to use without additional training.

I tapped "buttons" on the page mockups and they flipped to the resultant next "screens" in their notebook, all while using a stopwatch and making notes. I successfully logged in and navigated the menus to the function I needed. When I tried to use the function, however, I got stuck in an endless loop trying to back out of it when I couldn't figure out how to use it. They kept flipping back and forth between two pages that each had a BACK button I was trying to use to get back to the menu.

I stood up, grabbed my bags, and started to leave. They became quite animated and asked me to stay and complete a feedback questionnaire. I told them that I just had. If I had encountered a computer like that at work I would have just gone to another computer, leaving my login active and compromising corporate security on that computer because it didn't work and I didn't have time to figure out what was wrong with it and how to fix it. They said that they really needed more information in order to get it right.

I said I agreed with them as I walked away.

(That redesign never got implemented.)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/pynkhoneyy on 2025-03-11 23:25:16+00:00.

TL;DR UPS lady wouldn’t take an Amazon return w/out a box and wanted to charge me $20 for a box, even though I was told multiple times that it was supposed to be packed and shipped for free, so I complied and boxed the package up.

Okay so I ordered a faulty walking treadmill from amazon that had a broken 3 prong plug. When I contacted Amazon they told me I was past the return window and that I had to contact the manufacturer, mind you I was only two days past the return window and I kindly asked to speak to a supervisor to see if a one time exception could be made as I am Prime customer and doesn’t Amazon pride itself on customer service 🙄 so after Amazon refused to return the item, I contacted the manufacturer. They also gave me the runaround and did not want to replace it either.

So I contacted Amazon again and I explained the situation to them and now magically I am offered a “one time exception” and they appreciate my business so much and they are soooo thankful for me being a prime customer. Now Amazon told me to take it to any UPS store and they would package and return it for me for free. This was also confirmed via telephone with UPS. Now for those wondering, I opened this package in February soon after I opened it and as I just moved I threw away all of the boxes and everything after cleaning up. I get to the UPS store and I lug this 50 pound contraption to the front desk and hand them my return label. The lady immediately looks at me and tells me I need a box, I politely explain to her that I was informed by both Amazon and UPS that the return packaging is free. The woman then tells me at least 5 times that no it is not and that I will need a box. I am a college student who has 31 cents to my name. She tells me the box is $20. I just spent my last $30 on medication so I do not have $20 and I was told by multiple people that this was free of charge. She then rudely and loudly tells me I need a box and thats the policy embarrassing me in front of multiple customers Okay. Fine.

A UPS driver tells me he will borrow some tape from the store and a box cutter and will help me tape up some boxes to return it. Now he goes back into the store and asks for tape to help me and the lady at the counter tells him no. Surprise, Surprise!

I go outside to the dumpster and proceed to tape up multiple boxes with the help of the kind UPS driver and get some painters tape from a nearby little caesar’s and somehow get it into a box 🤷‍♀️. Now they will have to repackage and re tape the box. The UPS driver thought it was hilarious. Picture of box

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Yakusaka on 2025-03-11 13:45:59+00:00.

So, I work in complaints for a major telecom operator. (Yes, I got promoted since my last post here). And we are swamped. We are working in crisis mode as we don't have enough people to do what we need to do, and every complaint that isn't solved in 15 days, one way or another, accrues fines from the regulator.

Now, in crisis mode we just auto approve small claims as it's cheaper than the fines for being late. I get a huuuuuge claim on my desk, easily 100 times more than the fine for being late. It's 14 days old. I go to my supervisor but he says it's too big for him. He can't authorize it and he thinks it would be cheaper to take the fine and work out everything in due time, but he'll check with his superior and get back to me. Fine. I go back to work, doing other cases for the rest of the day.

Next day, my supervisor's boss comes to me asking why that particular case is on 15th day. So I tell him. He'a furious. Everythimg should be apprved. It's crisi mode. We cant allow to be fined and so on. So I ask him to authorize it, saying once more it's 100 times more than the fine would be. He say he doesn't care and he'll authorize it. I say it needs to be investigsted.Omce more he just says he'll authorize it.(Now for some clarificatiom, his bonus is reliant on the late cases. Fewer late cases, more bonus). So I say fine. Sign here. And he does. I process it and forget about it.

Come the end of the month, a huge comotion happens. Sector director is in my supervisor's bosses office yelling like there's no tommorow. I get called in and the issue is that case. And the jerk who authorized it is trying to throw me under the bus. It turns out it was a fraudulent complaint and we had to investigate ot beforw makimg a decision. Sector director just asks who authorized it mad I bring him the signed papers. I get sent out.

A few days later the boss gets the sack. Gee, I wonder why.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/basicyesh on 2025-03-09 20:15:12+00:00.

Hi, might ramble a little as had a drink but I've  remembered a great story for you.

A couple years ago I used to be a waste collector. On my first week I turned up at clients and where their waste was I had to squeeze down a path with the building one side and cars the other. As I'm trying to avoid all the cars I accidentally pop the end of the guttering of the building. No massive problem I thought. The manager storms out.

M: 'I've just had to replace this whole guttering because of one of your lot.'

M: 'okay I'm sorry and I understand but I've got to maneuver around these vehicles as well.'

The manager clearly wasn't happ6 and I continued the day.

The next week I head back. I stop at the front of the alley and I go in and make every single car move so I don't have to squeeze through anymore. Took 15 minutes of waiting but oh well.

I did this every week until I left. Pulling people out of meetings to move there cars even if I could squeeze down just to be safe.

Never changed but I felt a little sense of accomplishment as i got paid hourly and people had to take time out of their day to appease this woman.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/tokyoflex on 2025-03-09 09:12:54+00:00.

So this guy got MC on me yesterday.  I currently work in a retail shop selling things.  And in this shop things go with things.  Meaning you buy the big main piece (BMP) you want, then we tailor the rest of the pieces to work with the big piece, and suddenly you have a customized package that costs twice as much that does its job and is pretty awesome.  

So Customer comes in and asks a few questions about BMP, I ask him a few identifying questions, and we go from there.  I make a couple recommendations for BMP, he likes it, asks a few more questions, and we settle in on a BMP.  Awesome!  From there we go to customization, and settle on five or six accessory pieces to complete the package (a pretty big sale for us).  Before he swipes his card I run him through the complimentary brochure—service, maintenance, resources, etc.  

Me: “And here’s a $50 store credit to use on your next purchase…”

Him: “Can’t I use it today?  Apply it toward accessory?”

Me: “It is good on your next visit, sir.”

Him: “Okay.  Charge me for BMP today.  Put the rest aside and I’ll pick it up tomorrow. Or maybe I won't. Who knows.”

Me: Pause.  “Sir, I’ll go ahead and honor that credit for you today.”

Him: Smiling.  “Thought you might.”

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/dvdmaven on 2025-03-09 01:04:46+00:00.

I was working at a major equipment manufacturer as a sys admin. One day, a salesman came charging into the admin area yelling about his report not printing. So I called up the spooler and saw a huge (140 MB) print job clogging the queue. This was back in the days of text-based everything, the report would have been thousands of pages long. I told him what the problem was and he told me to kill the big print job, as he HAD to get his report out. I killed it.

About 10 minutes later he was back saying his report had vanished. I said, you told me to kill it. Do you think I would have killed someone else's print job on your command? He got a bit upset, so I called up his keyboard logger (which he didn't know about). I looked at the SQL command and said, you were trying to print out every sale every person made for the last five years. He wanted me to fix it, but as a sys admin, I did not have access to do anything to the Oracle database except run the nightly backups. Go see a database admin.

Got a call from the lead database admin asking why the salesman had command line access to the database. I had no idea, but I called up the keyboard logger for the salesman and said, He's logged in as [DBA who left the company] Oops! The account was killed and the salesman got fired.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/IAmAQuantumMechanic on 2025-03-08 22:51:24+00:00.

I work as an engineer, which means I spend most days in front of various computer screens. 

I've always had great eyesight, but recently I was recommended by an eye doctor and opticians to get "computer glasses" to reduce strain.

As these are considered PPE here in my country, my employer is required to provide these glasses. Since people have different preferences, my company has decided to let people buy whatever glasses they want for themselves, and then refund a certain amount to the employee. For me it came out to be roughly a third of the cost, as I went for some more expensive frames etc. (I broke my nose as a kid, so I've always had trouble finding sunglasses that sit right)

In any case, HR said that the requirement for me would be to leave the glasses at work, since they are considered work PPEs. The problem is that I have two workplaces. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday I work in one office (location A) and one Tuesday and Thursday I work in another (location B). It takes 15 minutes to drive between the two offices. I was specifically told I was not allowed to take the glasses home. 

I think you know where this is headed.

I got the glasses on a Tuesday. 

Every Tuesday and Thursday I would leave the glasses in my office at location B. The other days, I would go to location A, check in, go back to the car, drive to location B, get the glasses, drive back to location A and start working. At the end of the day, it was time to return the glasses to location B.

Since this is interoffice travel, the company have to pay me for the driving, and I also have to be paid wages since it is within my work day. Wearing PPE is mandatory.

It took about three days of me doing this until I was given "special permission" to bring my glasses home.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ArtistOk7719 on 2025-03-08 20:19:08+00:00.

I was working for the toll authority before they got rid of them for ez- pass. This guy comes through with a toll of about 5 dollars. He raised his cupped hands up towards me full of pennies and nickels.

Once I took them he said

"Here you go! Enjoy counting! " while laughing to himself. So I told him

"Enjoy waiting right there until I'm done counting, otherwise I'll call the state troopers to bring you back."

He pouted the entire time while I stacked pennies, and, accidentally knocked them over, having to start again a couple times.

He was over by 20 cents. I gave it back to him and said "Here's your change. Aren't you glad you waited?" :)

Edit: for those worried about the people behind this guy, it was a slow day. No one was waiting but him

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Gnorziak on 2025-03-08 12:15:09+00:00.

Train Driver Here, somewhere in Europe. I recently remembered a case of malicious compliance I was involved in years ago.

During a typical early shift, we were usually driven from our depot to the train yard by a van. This yard was rather large, stretching for kilometers with countless tracks.

Every day, each and every train set and locomotive goes through a thorough inspection, with safety systems and brakes being extensively tested. And we take these tests very seriously—if the excrement were to hit the fan, we would be in the front row quite literaly.

That day, one of the final tests failed. I couldn’t resolve the issue myself, and the helpdesk didn’t see an immediate solution either. So, I called dispatch for instructions. Meanwhile, we were about 20 minutes away from the time I was supposed to leave. I would leave the yard empty, without passengers, to drive to my departure station.

"Hello, train 1234 here. I'm experiencing technical issues and cannot depart from the yard."

"OK, fine. We have a spare on track L7. You can take that one."

So, I started walking there. L7 was about a 15-minute walk away from where I was standing.

When I arrived there, 5 minutes before the intended departure time. I saw that this train hadn't been used for several days. The brakes, doors, and pantographs of a train all operate on air pressure. Since this train had been stationary for so long, the air reservoirs were completely empty. It would take at least 10 minutes just to start the preparation process, which itself would take at least another 20 minutes.

Just as I put the train into service and the compressors were running to fill the reservoirs, I got another call from dispatch... "Hello, train 1234 driver here."

"Dispatch here. Are you ready to depart?"

"No, I need at least another 30 minutes."

"If you can’t depart within the next 10 minutes, it won’t be necessary anymore."

"You do realize I just told you I need at least 30 minutes?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, understood."

It wasn’t uncommon for dispatch to try to pressure drivers like this, trying to get them to cut corners and depart as quickly as possible. After all, there was still some buffer time at the departure station so it wasn't a very big deal if we had to leave somewhat later than intended. This tactic sometimes worked on young, inexperienced drivers—but not on the seasoned drivers like me. That day, I had just had enough of being rushed through mandatory safety tests.

So, I shut everything down, applied the parking brakes, slung my backpack over my shoulder and began the long walk back to the depot. The instructions were clear. 10 minutes, otherwise it wasn't needed anymore.

The Fallout... Half an hour later, I got another call, once again, dispatch.

"Driver 1234 here."

"Driver 1234, here dispatch. Is there a problem? Your signal is open, but your train isn’t moving."

"Uh, no… I’m walking back to the depot on foot."

"But you told me you needed 30 minutes to prepare the train!"

"And you told me that if I couldn’t depart within 10 minutes, it wouldn’t be necessary anymore."

"You know full well that’s not what I meant!"

"I’m expected to follow instructions, not read minds."

A few days later, my direct supervisor—a veteran who always stood up for his men—called me into his office.

"Gnor, what was the problem yesterday?" he asked with a big wink.

"I honestly don’t understand it myself… I was told that if I couldn’t depart within 10 minutes, it wouldn’t be necessary anymore. I needed at least 30 minutes, so I drew my own conclusions." Big wink in return.

"Dispatch says you-"

"Since all calls are recorded, we can easily find out what dispatch told me."

Long story short? I never heard anything about it again.

For the next few weeks, dispatch was noticeably more cautious when trying to rush me and my colleagues. But of course, it didn’t take long before they fell back into their old habits...

edit: formatting

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/cynical-mage on 2025-03-08 02:58:36+00:00.

Thank you to u/kaltastic84 for reminding me of my own disaster.

To preface this, I'll explain how the bakery worked; each day we had a baking plan. Based on sales figures etc, head office generated that plan. Come afternoon time, said plan would also tell you how many of each item you should have available, so if you had 10, the plan stated 23, you would have to bake 13.

Enter our new, fledgling area manager. He decides that, actually, the bakers needed to bake whatever the full amount for the afternoon says. Now, I tried to warn him. I begged the store manager. I knew what would happen. But orders are orders, I was thoroughly bollocked and told to do my job.

So. Much. Waste. Instead of £30 appropriately worth of product per evening, we were hitting nearly £300. Halfway through the week, store manager tries approaching me about the write offs being a bit higher than usual, so could I figure it out? But still do the full bake as requested from above 🤦‍♀️

After a week, area and store manager both broke and admitted I was right, and they had to take their own bollocking from head office.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/RabidRathian on 2025-03-08 00:00:52+00:00.

Inspired by a few recent posts, I thought I'd tell the story of malicious compliance committed many years ago by my friend (we'll call her Samantha) who worked (and still works) as an accountant.

She wasn't a manager or anything but she had been there for more than 5 years and basically knew so much about how the place ran that she really was a manager in all but title. Samantha was told that she would be 'stepping down' to a lower position (and therefore lower pay) for "operational and restructuring reasons" but it was really so that the boss's daughter could replace her. The boss also told her that she would be responsible for training his daughter, who not only had no accounting qualifications, but had never even held so much as a fast food or retail job. The boss estimated it would take "several months" to train her. What went unsaid was the fact Samantha would inevitably be given the boot altogether as soon as her replacement was somewhat competent, so at this point she knew her days there were numbered.

Samantha quite rightly said, "No, if she needs that much training, she's not fit for the job", so the boss made life miserable for a few months until she had to quit for her own well-being (which worked out for the best as she had a new job in less than a fortnight). The day she left, the boss stood over her with his daughter (claiming that she was the new "supervisor", to add insult to injury) and demanded she wipe her company computer. Still having some sense of morality (even though this boss didn't deserve it) Samantha asked if he was sure and that he might want to take some backups from it first. Before she could finish speaking he yelled over her to "Just get on with it and wipe it clean". She shrugged and did as she was told.

What the boss didn't realise (or had forgotten) was Samantha had been instructed by him to create social media accounts/pages on various platforms for their accounting company's branch several years earlier, but that because the boss was anal and paranoid and didn't want them linked to any of their official company emails for some reason, he'd told her to set them up with her own email account and manage their social media promotion posts in her own name. Not wanting to do that, she created a new email account through Outlook or whatever and used that instead to set up the accounts on Facebook, Instagram etc.

Boss called her in a panic about a week after Samantha had quit because his daughter had tried to access the Facebook account so they could post some advertising in the lead up to tax-time, but couldn't even log in. Samantha said she no longer had the details of the login credentials/passwords and couldn't help him. He said, "You must have written them down somewhere!"

She replied, "Yes, they were in a Notepad document on the desktop of my computer."

The computer that had been wiped the day she left the company.

(note: I have mentioned this story in comments once or twice but I figured it deserved its own post)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Kaltastic84 on 2025-03-07 23:35:24+00:00.

When I was in college, I worked as a baker for a well-known regional bagel and sandwich chain. At some point an assistant manager transferred to my store who was the stereotypical petty, power tripping, ridiculous manager you find in this type of job. Her specialty was yelling at and berating employees in front of customers. I will never not believe that she enjoyed publicly humiliating people.

It was tolerable until I agreed to cover a shift at the store she transferred from. Someone there asked me what I thought of her. I thought I was careful as I just commented that she had very high expectations which were hard for some people to meet. Understatement of the year.

Well, this lovely person passed this back to her which shot me to the top of her shit list.  What followed was a series of write-ups for egregious violations like missing some seeds when mopping the floor or not emptying a garbage can that had a single paper towel in it. Lucky for me I was one of the few people there certified to run the ovens.

My opportunity for malicious compliance came one Saturday lunch time when a charter bus pulled up. I’d seen this before and knew that a bus full of people buying sandwiches is equivalent to 2-3 people bringing bagels to work. Barely a blip compared to morning rush. I went to the counter to help and Ms. Assistant Manager yells at me to get back into the kitchen and start baking more. I tried to tell her we were fine but as soon as I opened my mouth she yelled “Shut your goddam mouth, do what I told you, and don’t stop baking until I say stop!"

Two important things to know is that first, when I took my certification test, they told me I passed it with the second fastest time on record for the local franchise. The second thing is that the ovens were adjustable. You could turn up the heat to speed up the cooking process. I went back to the baking area, cranked up the oven and baked as fast as I possibly could. The ovens had 8 shelves, holding about 48 bagels each. Eventually I had them all filled up and was only gated by how fast they could cook, and I could send them upfront. Ms. Assistant Manager was down at the register this whole time and was not paying attention to stock levels in the bagel bins. I kept bringing out shelf after shelf. At one point, the bins were overflowing so I had to start putting them in extra bins we kept in the back. Once those were full, I started putting them in on metal trays.

The crowd finally died down and Ms. Assistant Manager finally looks at the bagel bins and realizes she never told me to stop. She asked me if there was anything still baking and I informed her that every shelf was full. She lost it and started yelling that I was getting fired until multiple people pointed out that I just did exactly what she asked. The store manager ended up coming in and pretty much everyone told them the exact same story. Ms. Assistant Manager had to bag up the mountains of excess bagels and drive them to all the other stores in the area so that they wouldn’t go to waste. Even after that, we still exceeded the allowed wastage for the day, and she was reprimanded. She still yelled at everyone after that but she was at least more careful in her wording.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Fickle_Can3276 on 2025-03-07 23:07:00+00:00.

Something fun. My manager called me yesterday to let me if I was getting a raise as it's that time of year. After letting me know I was getting a little raise. Yay I thought we were done then they drop the news that after being work from home since the beginning of the pandemic employees were now expected to return to office at least twice a week. Even though we had had a meeting with the big wigs saying return to office was optional. My manager then said oh don't say anything to your coworkers as we haven't gotten to everyone yet. Sure no problem I won't tell my coworkers...nope called a recruiter told them that everyone is going to be expected to return and confirmed it was all employees and to have lots of fun calling and offering remote jobs at a different company. They were excited to have new clients to finds jobs for. I let them know I would be looking as soon as everything is in order.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Albert_Oha on 2025-03-07 21:29:05+00:00.

I'm a bartender in New Orleans. I'm behind the bar a couple hours ago, and this young guy comes in with two of his buddies in tow. I carded him- it's his 22nd birthday. He says last night "they" were out, and they had Irish car bombs, and wanted to know if I could make him an Irish car bomb. I said "sure!". Friends didn't want any, they had hand grenades. I head to the tap, start pouring the Guinness in a smaller than a pint-sized clear plastic cup, as one does with such things.

(Im going to interrupt my own story for lesson time) Irish Car Bombs, for those that don't know, are a drink that is made by dropping a "Bomb" shot which consists of half a shot of Baileys and Half a shot of Jameson (or varying amounts of those depending on your bartender) into a glass containing 6 ounces of Guinness Stout. 

The flavor is honestly wonderful. It's a REALLY good drink. The caveat to this drink is as follows: If you do not drink it VERY fast- within a matter of single digit seconds fast- the Bailey's will curdle. And it's not drinkable once that happens. The reason you only do 6 ounces of Guinness is to facilitate being able to consume the whole drink in a single chug. 

So, back to my customer. 

My customer is marginally buzzed, but not anybody I can't serve. He sees the smaller cup and like a young, cocky idiot he says "Hey! Why are you being cheap with the Guiness? Im paying for it, give me a full sized car bomb!" 

I said "This is the correct size. I can't make it too much bigger because you won't be able to finish it". 

"I'm a full grown man. I think I know what I can handle. I asked for a full size car bomb". He turns around and rolls his eyes at his buddies.

This dude thinks I'm challenging his ability to chug booze.

I say "man, I'm gonna warn against this, but I'll make it if you want it". 

Like a complete dickhead this  "Respectfully, right now, you're my bartender and just need to take my order. I know my own limits. I can handle a regular-ass car bomb". 

I said "Your the boss". He nodded at me in approval of my FINALLY having caught on. 

He turns around and I can tell he's talking a little shit to his buddies.

I filled a pint glass with Guinness. Probably one of the best heads I've ever put out that early into a shift. It was beautiful.

I handed him the beer, then the shot.... 

and I proceeded to watch him bomb his stout...

Upsy-Daisy!

He made it a good 1/3rd of the way before he had to come up for air. It was that second gulp where I knew it happened. I could see the baileys curdled in the cup, sticking to the glass. 

I'm guessing the fact that he damn near had to start chewing the chunks is what made him realize something was wrong.

But dammit, this kid was a trooper. He finished a second big gulp... and the rest was just rotten... I started stocking napkins just to see where this went.

He was on chug three.

I realized I was covering my mouth with my hand at this point, and his buddies just didn't understand the gravity of what they just witnessed.

He had to quit after the 3rd swig. There was still a bit left in the bottom, just floating curdled pieces of the baileys.

Sometimes in literature, we read about people turning green from disgust. This was the first time I had ever seen that. I'll never forget it.

Plain as day I looked at him and I said "you were right. You handled it. Cash or card?" 

No words needed to be exchanged. I rang him out, and I said "thank you so much for that", and he split. 

$0.00 tip. 

Worth every penny.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/dandan14 on 2025-03-07 18:45:43+00:00.

Here's a story that was passed down to me by my mom.

My mom's great-uncle survived polio as a child in the early 1900s, but his lack of physical ability drove him to books and learning. He did very well academically, and graduated with honors from a prestigious university. (My mom has his diploma, this grade sheets, and even a personal letter of recommendation from the university president.)

Despite his physical disabilities he went on to become an accomplished high school teacher. After many years of successful teaching, the administration began to enforce a policy that all teachers must be "certified" and pass a teaching exam.

He agreed to take the test, but he was so insulted that they would question his academic qualifications, that he threw in a little malicious compliance. He answered all of the questions in Latin. Since no one on the staff could read his answers, they just dropped the issue, and he was allowed to continue his teaching.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/mesoziocera on 2025-03-07 16:45:32+00:00.

A bit of background first.

Fifteen years ago, I worked at a gas station as an opener. Because I was young and somewhat tech savvy, I was also the de facto "IT" for the 3 stores near me, and had been heavily involved in setting up a new point of sale (POS) system for their two most successful stores when they were swapped from one gas brand to another. The company had made me the super admin on all registers just for ease of transition. Remember this later.

The owner's wife had been awful to me for the 2 years that I worked there. I got bumped to opener by her husband and she hated have a man be an opener. Historically every single opener was picked by her and was a woman, but her husband came and fired the previous opener for theft while the two of us swapping shifts, so I got a field promotion of sorts. The wife was constantly scrutinizing everything that I did. Constantly calling me in the mornings to be rude and berate me for a bunch of minor things I did wrong.

"You used wet wipes on the area around the drink machine, I want you to use paper towels and spray" We were out of paper towels and the spray we had smelled like a hospital anyway.

"I came in your store last night and there were three rows of snapple apple, you could probably increase sales by putting 1 or 2 of those rows to a diff product" Even though the snapple fridge was 100% handled by the vendor and we'd signed a contract that we wouldn't change the layout of product. etc. etc

Long story short, she was awful to me because I was a dude. I had set up their POS systems because I was somewhat tech savvy. I was made super admin on the new registers they had. I was desperately looking for work, when I found a temp IT job, which led to my current career in IT.

I got a new job offer and gave her husband 2 weeks notice, but never told her because I did my very best to avoid talking to her unless necessary. When she found out it was Tues of my last week and she legitimately lost her mind. Gave me a ton of stuff to do and worked me to the bone until 2pm on the last friday I worked.

Finally the time to depart forever came, and she personally came with an office worker and stood by me and said asked me to delete my account from the register. I knew I was a super admin, and I had been told if I ever left to convert the account. She had been told this but had long forgotten it, so I said to hell with it and complied then went to the other store and did likewise while she watched.

I go about my life, start my new job, and end up about 3 weeks in when I get a frantic voice mail and like 20 texts and calls from her. I called the office worker who had stood over my shoulder with her and got the scoop. She basically couldn't change ANY prices at all when new beer and soda prices started rolling out and her new opener had just let it all pile up because she didn't know how to do it and they were going to have someone come "Train" her. They had a bunch of items 5 or 10% below the price they were supposed to be at. Margins on cases of beer are low and this was nuking their profits.

Once I thought it over, I texted her and said "You asked me to do this, it's on video, and we have three witnesses (the person she had me training, the person I swapped with, and the office worker, who had quit in the 2 weeks since). *Click* (edit: I didn't hang up on her, I'm just being funny lol)

I found out later that they ended up spending $6k to get the company back out to fix the issue. The boss's wife legit had a facebook page at one point with people planning to shit on her grave when she died one day (edit for clarity: she's still alive), so I wasn't the only person she was awful to, but I do feel like I got one up on her, and it feels good.

EDIT: I wanted to thank everyone for making me laugh with your fun comments. My slow friday afternoon has been much more fun sharing stories about this terrible job with everyone in the comments. I added a few small notes for clarity in the body of the post.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/shieldtown95 on 2025-03-06 22:15:04+00:00.

This one is short and sweet.

This happened about 20 years ago. I desperately wanted a cellphone. I did not have one at the time. In a family of 4, my older brother had our sole cell phone line at the time. He needed it more for some reason. My parents had an arbitrary rule: I couldn’t have a phone until my brother needed a new phone.

I’m not sure if there was a deal at the time.. i.e . get 2 lines or a family plan and save $$$ money but that was the rule.

My brother’s phone was perfectly fine…until I broke it.

Got my Nokia phone soon afterwards.

edit because so many people have asked this question.

I slammed the phone vertically (antenna up) on the garage cement floor. It managed to break the parts that held the battery in place. Technically the phone still worked if you held the battery in place but the battery would slip out if you didn’t. With some tape it could have still functioned but the damage/annoyance was enough to justify a new phone.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/i_dont_wanna_sign_in on 2025-03-06 14:01:07+00:00.

I used to be the systems admin/engineer/everything at a company of ~300 people. Most of them were remote sales people with laptops, and most of the sales people had unpaid interns in this training program that, to me, seemed like hell. The interns were provisioned with any computer that I could cobble together. Part of the program was getting the commissions enough to earn an office and a computer (seemed stupid to me, but not my policies). These things were mid grade Dell workstations that when they were new, and had long surpassed their useful lifecycle.

The president, the co-owner, the VP, HR, and my leadership will not allow new equipment allocation to the interns under any circumstances. Not even $10 keyboards that come with new computers. It has to be decommed from an employee or sales rep to get into the hands of the interns.

Well, another quirk about this company is that your service priority was determined by your performance in sales. Which meant that mentors would advocate for their interns and there was constant squabbling over who got less crappy equipment and nearly every sales rep was a self-important jackass.

One rep was having a particularly good year and one of his interns had one of the better crap boxes, but complained about it constantly. I already pool RAM and swap processors whenever possible. So this rep, (we'll call him John) calls me into his office every week or so to disparage me because I'm the one responsible for his intern being held back. (note that the reps are allowed to pay for gear for interns if they want to pay for it, but they NEVER do)

Eventually the company VP (a self-important jackass that the president liked but failed utterly as a salesperson) calls me into his office to discuss my attitude. I'm extremely professional at work and took the beating. VP knew the situation but took John's side and ordered me to improve the situation in some way. Do something, anything, to "enable the success of the intern. Make sacrifices if you have to."

Fine.

I had an off-brand computer case in my office that was gathering dust. It was there when I started and I had no idea where it came from. Over the weekend I transplanted everything in the intern's workstation to the computer case. Since it was coming from a Dell workstation I had to remove all the slides and parts that make the thing easy to service, but I made it fit. It was a rush job, and a monstrosity, and I got to bill time for it. I had to fashion a metal shim to cover the holes that the mainboard didn't extend to. But it worked. Same insides. Oh, and because it was such a mess I had to leave a stick of RAM out since it wouldn't fit. Oh, and I "accidentally" dropped the processor that I didn't need to remove and had to put in another processor from another machine that was slightly slower. Carefully removed the Windows sticker from the old case and put it on the new case, too.

Got into work early on Monday and plugged it in. A few hours later I got called down to John's office and figured I was in for it. The thing was even shittier than before but in a different (not better) container.

Intern was beaming, John was beaming, VP was beaming. They thanked me for my hard work and gave me a $5 gift card to a coffee shop.