Malicious Compliance

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

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

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

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

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with more expected all the time, working long hours (up to 60 hours and some of those unpaid) and working in an outdated facility which would become unbearably hot during summer.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Very minor and petty but funny.

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

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

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

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

Enter our guest Bob.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[edit] grammar, details

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

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

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

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

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

But most importantly I clocked out at 5:30!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Job 104 completed step 5.

Job 110 starting step 12

Job 110 completed step 12.

In case you did not know-

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

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

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

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

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

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

“When you get a page you respond. Period”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

END OF MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE

Start petty revenge. :)  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I sure am glad I kept that short! :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/JMJimmy on 2024-06-21 15:48:28+00:00.

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We have two Huskies. Tanuki is a bit dumb and doesn't eat his food right away, and there were 3 cats that start to spray if food is not available 24/7. Nish is wicked smart and will devour whatever he can.

Nish comes from a pack of 60 wild dogs where they'd hunt what they could and eat whatever food the community had on offer. This was obviously very competitive and that meant he was very food motivated. We got him at about a year old and right away he devoured all the cat food. So, we put the cat food on top of a shelf. Nish jumped up on the dining room table to reach it the second we were out of sight. About a week after getting him it became clear he'd need a friend that could play at his level. That created the problem of having to teach him not to eat the puppy's food.

I used Cesar Millan's techniques and tought him not to eat what was in the bowls that were not his. Being the smartass that he is, he also malicously complied with our instructions. He does not eat from cat bowls or Tanuki's bowl. A cat kibble falls on the floor? He vacuums it up. A kibble falls on the lip of Tanuki's bowl, it's his because it's technically not in the bowl just on the bowl. Cheeky little shit is still doing it 5 years later.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/rickbb80 on 2024-06-21 14:18:44+00:00.

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Reading a post about wonderfully helpful sales managers triggered my experience with one.

A very long time ago when I worked in the printing industry, I ran what was called the prep dept, or pre-press. We made all the printing plates starting from the artwork down. This was before computers, so it was mostly large sheet film and large cameras, etc. think 30 x 40 inch large. This is important to remember.

So, the story. We had a customer that never, ever approved anything on the first printing. Even though she signed off on the artwork and signed off on the color proofs we provided. She always made changes even tiny ones. She could never seem to find these issues on the artwork or proof, only the final printing.

Because of that, for this customer we always made sample runs using a much smaller press and small plates, think 11 x 14 or so. She would make her changes and then we'd run the samples again, rinse and repeat until she was happy then we would scale up for the actual production run later. This was actually much faster to make plates for and much less costly than setting up giant multi color printing presses which are made for high-speed, high-volume printing, not sample runs.

Mr. sales manager comes in the dept. one day and announces how he's going to save us a ton of money with this account. We will fly her down to the plant, and she will approve the designs in person, (about 25 different ones this go round), then we could immediately run the production and save all that small one-off prep for samples. This will be really impressive, etc.

I tried really hard to tell him that this was a recipe for disaster, costs involved, how she never approved anything without changes and any changes would take a day to get back on the large presses, etc. etc.

I was talked over, he knew what he was doing, he had talked to her, he had approval from the ops manager, blah, blah, the usual sales BS.

So, well ok then.

The big day comes, she doesn't like anything and wants changes and we've gone through all 25 designs before lunch. Many thousands of dollars down the tubes and a whole day of the production presses time wasted.

He comes to me in a panic and wants to know how quickly we can get the changes made. I reply tomorrow if I can talk everyone into working a double, 2 days if I can't. But, but, but she's flying back out this evening.

Sorry I can't re-invent the laws of physics.

Owner of the company comes to me to show him the problems and what changes she wants. So, one design I show him her comments on the sample where the polka dot background had dots that were 1/32 of an inch too big.

All the changes are minor like this and no one else but her would have even noticed. He asked did she not approve the artwork, yes she did, did she not approve the proofs, yes she did, here is her initials on them.

All these changes could have been quickly done and back on the smaller press within hours, not days. Cause, you know, we've done this for her for a few years now.

Mr. sales manager gets fired, since this was a large and high profit account, but on the way out he tries to throw me under the bus for sabotaging him, like it was personal, sigh.

I don't miss those days or him at all.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/WordWizardx on 2024-06-21 06:19:25+00:00.

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My wife and I bought her car 2.5 years ago and it’s had weird mechanical problems ever since. It was a few years old, but since it was a $BRAND car and we bought it from the $BRAND dealership, they included a half-assed dealer warranty that basically said if we brought it to them for repairs, they’d be more liberal in what was considered “their fault” for recalls and whatnot. In practice, it meant that we paid for a series of useless little fixes out of pocket because they kept tweaking something small and swearing the car was fine to avoid admitting that fixing the problem correctly (on their dime) would probably involve taking the whole engine apart.

A few days ago we got a letter in the mail saying they’re DESPERATE to buy back our car, they’re so in demand, they’ll offer $5K over blue book value! At that point, the car had been sitting in their shop for three weeks straight and they had stopped returning our calls, so my wife and I decided it was malicious compliance time. You want to overpay for a lemon? You’re welcome to it!

Of course, when we got there they backpedaled so fast you could practically smell the smoke - corporate sends those letters, not them, that’s only for a car in perfect condition, ours clearly has serious engine trouble, etc. My wife turned it back on them - SURELY the car was in good shape, right? After all, the last three times they’d given it back to us, they claimed everything was fixed!

As much as I’d like to say we stuck it to them and everyone clapped, we actually came out with a pretty reasonable deal (especially considering our theoretically-$6K car probably needed $10K of repairs.) They gave us blue book value for it in good condition and waived the service fees for the last three weeks (which probably would have been another $1500), and we bought a new car from them instead of from someone else. Now they have their lemon back and we’ve got a vehicle with an ACTUAL warranty. It feels good!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/co0ljj240 on 2024-06-21 05:30:34+00:00.

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Backstory

I'm 16 and my dad was pretty adsent for the first 8 to 9 years, showing up for events and then going somewhere. And near the 10 year mark he started showing up more and more starting to be more active in my life. He had other kids from a past relationship and I still talk to 3 of them and having one of their numbers. Me, my mom and some family was living with us had our own place and he had his own house living with the younger 2 of the 3 and two dogs. But due to some financial difficulties me and my mom moved in with him the change was weird but i was fine.

The MC

Me and him went to go get food at a fast food place. On the drive he wanted me to call one of my brothers and ask him what he wants. I didn't have that brother's number so I asked for his phone so I get his number, he hands it to me and I look it for and put it in and calls him he doesn't answer and I think he most likely doesnt have my number saved either, so I call him on my dad's phone and asks me "Why are you calling him on my phone I told you to call him on your phone" I tell him "I don't have his number saved so I thought he doesn't has my number sav-" he cuts me off and says "I don't care, don't think for anyone. Just do what I say" and so I will. When getting home he asks me to just feed the dogs and so I give the dogs their food closing the dry food bag to not let the food go stale but leaving door open for the dogs to come in and leaving the wet food container open on the kitchen counter. He sees the doors open and the container and gets mad at me for leaving the doors open and not throwing the container away and asks me "Why didn't you close the door and throw it away. You know how I want you to do things" and I told him that "You told me to just feed the dogs and I did what you said and you told me to not think for anyone and so I didn't" he tells me to forget what he said and to throw the container away and so I did.

Sorry for any mistakes it is around 10:30 pm while typing this and I'm tired, have a good day or night to anyone who reads this :)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/thebeardedguy- on 2024-06-21 04:08:59+00:00.

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Many years a go I worked in Aged Care as a Personal Care Assistant, the lowest rung of Nursing staff, basically responsible for all the physical labour, such as showering residents, assisting them to go to the toilet, getting them in and out of bed, that sort of thing. I loved my job, I genuinely did, and for a while worked at an agency going form place to place before getting poached by a specific Nursing Home which is where the Malicious Complience takes place.

I had been working there for about a month doing 4 days a week, all afternoons 3-10 PM, and two of those afternoons were back to back Wednesday and Thursday, and this is where the other nurse comes into play. Every second Wednesday, without fail, she would call in about 20 minutes before her shift (the 10 PM - 6 AM overnight shift) was due to begin, leaving no time to get agency staff in to take over, now I could wait until they arrived but by the time they got there it would likely be after 12 and my trains home would not be running, so in the end I took on a double shift, 3 PM to 7 AM, leaving me tired mentally and physically trying to get home on a packed morning rush hour train, so not much fun, but given the other option was to leave my residents without proper care, and that would never, ever, happen. This meant that by the time I got home it was around 9:30 AM and couldn't get immediately to sleep due to needing to eat, shower and do the plethora of tasks needed to be done before going to bed for the day, meaning I wasn't able to get to sleep until around 12:30, and my train to work left at 13:00. This was obviously untennable, and after trying to do a double, followed by a regular shift sans sleep a few times I realised I was becoming a danger to my residents, my fellow staff members and myself due to not being able to maintain concentration. In the end I told my RN that on the Thursdays after a double I would not be able to do my shift for fear of someone getting hurt which would open the nursing home, and myself to potential legal trouble, not to mention someone suffering because of my choices.

So this had been happening for about 6 months now when I get called up to the office of the owner who promptly sat me down and berrated me for "taking every second Thursday off" and "not being a team player". I tried to explain why it was that I was taking those Thursday's off but she would not listen so in the end I walked out with a write up and a threat of termination if "this behaviour continued".

Fast forward to the next Wednesday when, as usual, the other nurse called in 20 minutes before shift start saying she couldn't make it, leaving us a nurse down for the night, so the only person on for that entire shift would be a Registred Nurse, and you can't lift or assist people with only one person without using a hoist, and even then you are meant to have two people for safety reasons. The nurse in charge of afternoons rolled her eyes after the call and said "Looks like you are doing another double Bearded Guy" to which I replied, I can't, and since staying until agency staff get here is not an option since I wouldn't be able to get home, I suggest you call the owner and see what she recommends, and if she needs me to stay I will, but only if she gives me the direction herself and then confirms it with you.

After 10 minutes the owner hadn't answered any attempts to call, and I said "sorry I have to leave, and the RN for the night shift began to get angry, to which I responded "I will get fired if I stay here and then need to take tomorrow off, or someone could get harmed if I stay and then work, neither of these is a great outcome so I have to go".

Now I knew they were never going to be able to get agency staff with such short notice, and that even by the slimmest of chances they could find someone it would be several hours between regestiring the request and someone showing up. So I walked out the door, and hung around the corner for half an hour, knowing I would get a call sooner rather than later, and that I needed to be close by in order to get back and ensure my residents got the care they needed over night, and had my idiot grin to wake up to in the morning, especially for the 3 people who loved early morning showers. The call came, I returned and two nights later I got a call from the owner, who 'authorised me to work doubles as needed and take the next day off for safety reasons"

As far as I know the nurse who did the late call ins was still working there when I left a year later.

In the end my Residents got the care they deserved and I got to get some sleep after working 15 hours straight.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Kyra_Heiker on 2024-06-21 03:05:22+00:00.

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I am a part-time gastronomies service worker, I typically work breakfast buffets or coffee service for something to do and a free breakfast while getting paid. The work is fairly easy and doable for someone a little bit older with a bad back and bad knees. I actually work for a temp service, my boss sends me to different hotels or companies for specific events.

I was helping with breakfast service at a hotel and it was not very busy so they were trying to look around for something for me to do to get their money's worth. They decided that they wanted me to unload pallets of cases of bottled drinks in glass bottles. I told them that it was not allowed because of the terms of my contract and that they had requested service personnel not dock workers. Also completely impossible with my limited physical capabilities, but they insisted. So I went to the first case and started taking out each bottle and setting it on the side. They asked me what I was doing, I said I was incapable of lifting a full case of glass bottle drinks so I would have to unload each case bottle by bottle, move the case and then refill it with the bottles. It would have taken hours instead of about 15 minutes. They sent me back to the breakfast buffet, lol.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Milled_Oats on 2024-06-20 23:28:08+00:00.

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So every morning I walk my dog at the off lead dog park. As it’s a small town all the dog walkers have become friendly. I ( mid 40s) made friends with June (75-80). June told me this lovely MC story from About 25 years or more ago.

June was working as a school teacher and was retraining as a social worker. She left teaching for two years working as a social worker when her previous school asked her and run a class for at risk children. The deal was she would teach children aged 12-18 ( grade 7-12) who come from backgrounds of emotional, physical and sexual abuse.

The job was causal , so she didn’t get paid for holidays, sick leave etc. she was supposed to teach six kids with an Aide but ending up with twenty kids and no teachers aide. As you can imagine their behavior was terrible. She believed she could help and she said she did make some real differences. The work was really stressful but she was passionate about it.

After three years and multiple promises of making her a permanent staff member, getting an aide plus smaller classes June was burnt out. She demanded help from the principal who refused and told her since she has complained, it’s for the last time and sacked her . He told her she is causal and she go complain to everyone and everywhere but as a casual worker you have little rights.

So June did complain to everyone, school Inspector, the union,department of education( it was a state school) and even her local Member of parliament who told her she has had a tough deal but this is the life of a casual worker. She finally complained to the state authority that deals with safe work practices.

They were interested as the school has breached state policy on class sizes for special needs kids,teacher aides, providing a safe environment etc. they ordered the department of education to pay her worker’s compensation while they sorted it out. So now June was paid each fortnight including leave and all benefits. 52 weeks a years instead of 40.

The fallout was big after the investigation ,lots of people sacked or moved on. What this did was leave June without a boss. The safe work practice department closes the case as they believe it was now a dept of education matter to pay June out. Everyone has forgotten about June and she got lost in government paperwork. They still paid her and she kept quiet. It took ten years before they found her in an employee audit. Then they paid her out.

June was ready to retire about then so it worked out beautifully.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/TacoSunday on 2024-06-20 07:25:26+00:00.

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I have a 6 month old (2 year warranty) automatic litter box from Meowant. The rubber liner started to disintegrate. After offering that I could buy an entirely new drum, they decided they would honor the warranty if I wrote them a 5 star review on Trustpilot.

Since this is extortion, I was pretty mad about it. But then it occurred to me: I'm very petty.

So now they have a 5 star review on their Trustpilot page that's a copy and paste of them demanding a review for warranty service.

Hope my part gets here soon.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Dr_mombie on 2024-06-19 23:48:15+00:00.

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I work at a small doctors office. 2/5 employees are out this month. I am mostly keeping the fire relegated to the dumpster in their absence.

The doc sees geriatrics and hospice patients. As such, we are regularly faxed nurse visit notes from various home healthcare services that he has to sign off on and we fax back. Sometimes this stuff can get lost in the sauce, but we generally try to stay on top of it.

One of those home health billing departments decided she wanted to harass me daily by fax and phone calls until she gets her documents. Fake nice with cheerleader level cheer, and writing all sorts of unnecessary and messy shit on the fax cover pages. We talk to her multiple times a week. She knows we are short staffed, but she really needs these docs signed STAT for billing purposes. Out of all the tertiary healthcare organizing wizards who are understanding and willing to give me grace, this billing packet simply can not wait.

I have actual patients to assist, prior authorizations to submit, phones to answer, charts to update, refills to approve, and generally higher priority stuff to do. She calls again. Fine. I drop what I'm going to organize and sort out the signature packet situation.

I got the signatures for the specific packet she wanted. I made a fresh cover page. Then I shuffled the ever living fuck out of the packet she is harassing me for. It's all for the same patient, but 3 different document sets. Everything is out of order. Some pages are upside down. I plan to keep shuffling and faxing this shit sandwich to her until my coworker comes back next week.

Becky in Billing got 2 packets today. Tomorrow she's going to get a shuffled packet with a "This page is intentionally left blank".

Feel free to add in more ideas for this packet.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/oldButNotTooTired on 2024-06-19 20:36:41+00:00.

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My coworker told me to share this here - new reddit account b/c mine is super identifiable haha

I work on an IT team for a small company, and one of the things we support are marketing campaigns for our company. So to set the cast, let's call my boss Kathy and there's Peter the sales manager. Peter has this brilliant idea of targeting a cross section of two audiences for a new marketing campaign. He pitches it in a meeting and everyone gets super excited about this. After the meeting Peter asks Kathy to set it up.

Kathy pushes back immediately saying she is confident that this new audience is not worth our time, and it is maybe 200 potential customers (out of 200K). Now Peter has a LOT of sway in the company and doesn't want to admit he made a mistake about 'his' customers and said 'well I already said we were going to do it, so just do it.'

So I put in the requirements and it is worse than Kathy thought: 47 people. Once again, this is escalated to Peter, who insists we just do it and he complains we are behind schedule on getting this done (admittedly it has been a few business days because we did not prioritize this stupid request). I pass along the new audience to our marketing folks who design a campaign, setup a couple of new pages on the website etc.

Now re: profitability: Our average transaction sales are pretty small, but a lot of repeat transactions from our customers. But just with the time I've spent on it there is no way this campaign is paying even my salary, much less everyone else who spent time on it. Kathy doesn't want me to spend another second on it, BUT ... Peter, who again, we have kept in the loop this entire time, wants to see it in our Power BI reports for the sales team and the C suite.

Normally something this small would be rolled up into an "Other" category, but hey Peter wants to see it so I make sure that it is listed. In the updated bar chart there is a line of text at the bottom, no bar associated with it because after 4 weeks:

Clicks: 2

Sales: $0

I was not at the meeting after this went live but I heard Peter went on a long spiel about the growth potential of this new campaign. Kathy and I are confident he's going to put it in his self review about how innovative he is. Assuming he still has a job.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Mondood on 2024-06-19 20:03:46+00:00.

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Just as I was pulling into a gas station, an older car driven by an 70+ yo man was pulling out.

As I was pulling in, I noticed his rear tire was almost completely flat and stopped to roll my window down to point at his tire and warn him.

Not listening, the old man rolls up his window while telling me to F-off and gets unreasonably mad waving his hands and making faces.

The road he was driving through only connects with a long busy highway with few exits. Now, I don't wish ill will on anyone and could've made more of an effort, but I was always taught to respect my elders; F-off I will, then.

Maybe he'll realize his mistake while he's sitting on the side of the highway. Most likely not. That's life.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/tanksandthefunkybun on 2024-06-19 02:15:02+00:00.

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I’m a server and I take great pride in my ability to efficiently run my section. The key is maximizing each trip to and from the kitchen. So, rather than getting table 31 a refill, then table 32 more salt, then drop the check at 33, you check in at each table on your way to the back, grab everything in one go and head out to the dining room cutting down three trips to one. As long as the customer trusts me to do my job we’re all going to have a great experience.

That said my biggest pet peeve is when a customer asks every employee that passes their field of vision for the same thing. For example extra ranch (why is it always extra ranch). Im not talking about when you ask me for the ranch, then see me come from the back and it’s clear I’ve forgotten it. I’m talking about when you ask me for more ranch, then 3 seconds later ask the food runner who just dropped off your fries for more ranch, then the manager who topped off your water for more ranch, then as the three of us are in the back clamoring for the squeeze bottle like a bunch of religious zealots desperate to touch the hem of our ranch God’s buttermilky robe a fourth motherfucker turns up telling us that table 32 wants more ranch.

My MC in those moments is I make sure every single person that was asked drops their own ramekin of ranch off at the table. Then I come up last with the final ramekin and the biggest shit eating grin you’ve ever seen. I completely ignore the fact that most of their table is now taken over with little dishes of ranch, rearranging some if need be to make room for my final contribution. Because, hey, if you asked 4 people for ranch you must want a lot of ranch and isn’t it great that you have it now :):):) meanwhile the look of embarrassment, or shame, or even anger I get from the customer is enough to keep me from running headfirst full speed into a brick wall the next time someone yells at me because their ahi tuna poke appetizer has raw fish.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Lynxesandlarynxes on 2024-06-18 19:14:46+00:00.

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This MC happened nearly 10 years ago.

The relevant context is that, at the time, one’s salary for this job was made up of a low basic salary but a big uplift for the “intensity” of the job you were working (in terms of working hours outside of 9am-5pm). The way that employers made sure jobs had the correct uplift was through a process known as “monitoring”. In order for monitoring to be valid, a certain proportion of the employees on that job had to complete a diary of their working hours for two weeks. Of course the diary was on an archaic electronic system, a pain to fill in, finicky, slow and generally made in a way to make it non-user friendly.  

In this particular location I was working in there was one job which everyone dreaded working, because it was widely acknowledged that the workload was extremely high i.e. frequently working 2, 3 or even 4hrs of unpaid overtime every day to get the work done, and this was not adequately reflected in the overall pay. 

This had been going on for the better part of a decade, and it was abundantly clear that the workload vastly outstripped the compensation. However every time anyone complained the employer would hold up their hands and say “the monitoring doesn’t reflect that” - often because the threshold proportion of employees filling out the monitoring hadn't been reached - and wash their hands of the situation. They went full “these are the rules we're just following them”. Essentially the workers on that particular job were so overworked and the monitoring process so laborious that there was never enough people filling it in to reach the threshold. 

Cue MC.

My best friend and I were suffering through this job for four months, alongside three others. In fact, over the course of the year fifteen of us would work that job. 

It came to the monitoring period and my best friend and I were meticulous about filling in the monitoring. We logged every single goddam second we worked overtime, not missing a day for two weeks. Not just that, however, we lit a fire under the asses of everyone else. We texted, called, cajoled, harassed or otherwise persuaded all the others on this job to fill out their monitoring accurately too. In fact we were so driven that all thirty employees filled out their monitoring correctly.

Well the monitoring period ended and lo and behold it demonstrated we were being vastly underpaid for our roles, risking big penalties for the employer. Not only that, but it turns out they had fudged the payment rates for a number of other jobs too. The employer wasn't defeated yet, as they once again pointed to the rulebook saying that any monitoring which showed a change in pay was due had to be repeated. So they set up a second fortnight of monitoring. 

You can guess what happened. Instead of being defeated by another round of monitoring, the cohort suddenly had the bit between their teeth. The second fortnight of monitoring we did significantly less badgering of people because suddenly everyone was rather motivated to do it themselves.

The second round of monitoring came and went with the same results as before - significant underpayment! 

The employer continued to stall but we pointed at the rule book they had so often thrown in our face. They ended up having to pay people who were doing the underpaid jobs more to make them up to the correct level of income. Furthermore, the rule book said that payments were retrospective for the whole year, so even those who had worked those jobs before the monitoring happened got back-paid.

Overall I was owed and received nearly £10,000 in back pay. I reckon the employer shelled out the better part of £250,000 in owed pay, and all because we stuck to the system like they told us to!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/darkmoonfirelyte on 2024-06-18 16:29:02+00:00.

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I've been at my new job long enough I can share this now without feeling like there'd be blowback.

I'm a web designer. Every place I've been I get put in charge of the fleet of websites whatever company or group is running, and then I go through and do my thing, making the sites are tight, efficient, and user friendly as I can. Web design is like any task: just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, and for websites that means the designer in charge has to be the arbiter of clutter. If things get to be too much on a page, or requests come in that would degrade the U.I. of the site, we had to reject them. We want sites to be fast, light, and easy to use.

Being the person in charge of the sites, I was generally the one to reject requests. "We shouldn't do this because x, y, and z reasons." I was told by my bosses that I couldn't say "no" and that I had to be customer focuses even when the requests to update the site were coming from those without technical knowledge or the desire to understand what I was saying and the reason why I wouldn't do something. This could also go over on r/BoomersBeingFools because most of the people that hated me (someone younger than them) telling them "no" were also of that generational set.

Regardless, after a number of times of them getting a "no, because," from me, them going over my head to my boss, and then my boss saying, "just do it," I had to come up with a solution. If they were going to go around my informal process based on my knowledge and experience, I would formalize it. At the organization I was working at, we had "standards", which were signed off by the higher-ups and had the word of "law" and "guidance" which did get some sign-offs but didn't go through the length formalization process. Standards you had to follow, but everyone thought guidance worked the same way. That was the loophole.

I wrote a 60 page web update guide going over everything in the process, ensuring that any question I'd be asked, anything that needed to get done, any stupid question that had come my way over the previous two years, was answered. I then got my boss to sign off on it, and then sent it around (and also posted it on the internal use portal, too). From that point forward, the guide was what we followed.

Best part, and this is the Malicious part (for those wondering), I never had to get any changes to the document approved. It was designed as a living document, and I was the sole person in charge of it.

Requestor: "Hey, I want to do this on the page..."

Me *goes and edits the Web Update Guide to specifically disallow what they were requesting* "Oh, I'm sorry, as per the Web Update Guide we can't do this..."

Worked like a charm and made my job easier from that day forward.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/manchuck on 2024-06-18 15:07:45+00:00.

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In my twenties, I spent my weekends as a soundboard operator for a local community theatre. After all the mics were set up, it was pretty simple, and I really enjoyed it. One actor made a request to be able to hear herself on stage.

Now before I continue, I need to explain how the soundboard works. Basically, there are two sets of volume controls. One is the fader (you know this as those sliders) which controls how loud that channel is going to be to the audience. Above those are a bunch of knobs which will direct the sound to other speakers. We used these to direct sound to the orchestra (so the conductor knows where we are in the show), the dressing room (so the actors know) and to some speakers pointed on stage (called monitors, which allow the actors to hear the orchestra). These fall into one of two groups: pre-fade and post-fade. Pre-fade means that the volume would stay the same level no matter what the fader was set to, and post-fade is just the opposite. We would pipe the orchestra into the pre-fade since there are not a lot of mics that can pick up ambient noise (band members talking for example). The monitors on the stage were plugged into the pre-fade channel. Once we set those levels, we never had to touch them, which made it easier to focus on what was happening on stage.

Since this actor wanted to hear herself while on stage, it meant that I had to add her to that pre-fade channel. This meant that when she got on or off stage, I not only did have to slide the fader down but also turn the knob to avoid picking up what was happening in the dressing room. This was NBD as I had time to make all the adjustments. However, she kept complaining that she couldn't hear herself. So I would make small adjustments trying to find the right balance. But each time she got off stage, she would say that it was not loud enough. One show, I had the volume up so loud, that it made her sound very muted in the house since I had to turn her down in the house, and yet she still complained it was not loud enough. It was so loud that I went backstage but didn't even make it that far (it was so loud I heard her through four rooms with cement walls.) That's when I came up with a plan.

The next day, I set the monitor level at a reasonable volume (Let us say it was 10 o'clock on the dial). She complained again that it was not loud enough. So Instead of turning her up, I turned the dial down to 8 o'clock. After she got off stage, I asked her if that was better. She didn't say it was worse, but she wanted it louder. I turned it back to 10 o'clock (the level I wanted her at). After she got off stage that time, she exclaimed that it was just perfect and to keep it there. After that, I kept it at 10 o'clock, and she never complained again.