Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Auirom on 2025-02-05 14:20:06+00:00.

I shared this in a comment a while ago and was told I should share it so I thought I would finally get around to sharing it with a little more information.

About a decade ago I worked for a big name company electrostatic powder coating semi wheels. The GM (who was actually a really good boss) got a trainer to come in and teach me what I was doing right and wrong. After a week we got things narrowed down with the settings on the machines that my quality improved a lot and my quantity of wheels I could paint in a day improved by about 5-10 per day. I was now averaging anywhere from 50-65 wheels a day. I used those same setting for almost a year before that same GM started messing with them.

I had a few wheels from a trash company come to me covered in dried mud one day. Not the first time and wasn't going to be the last. I had knocked off as much as I could before stripping them and did my best to blow off what dust was left. I still missed some spots on the edges. Usually when this happens I end up with tiny holes on the edges of the rims. That day the GM had come back to get a count of paint to see what needed to be ordered.

GM: "What's with all the holes on the edges of these wheels?"

Me: "It's from dirt. I didn't get it all off when I blew off the wheels."

GM: "Dirt doesn't cause this. I think your settings are the issue."

Me: "I'm telling you it's dirt. Everytime we get these customers wheels in with dried mud all over them this is what happens."

GM: "Dirt doesn't cause this. I'll have some people come in to check this out."

He left after that. Fast forward to next week and he meets me in the morning with about 4 other people.

GM: "These guys are going to look over the machines and adjust things so we no longer have issues."

Me: "I told you it was dirt."

GM: "The professionals are going to adjust the settings and you will leave them where they are at. If you don't you will get written up. This is not up for discussion."

Ok. Message heard loud and clear. I'll leave it to the professionals and not touch a thing. Thankfully my powder gun had multiple settings. I asked the "professional" to set his new settings on another preset.

The next day I noticed the wheels I painted were coming out yellow. I also noticed that the paint was very thin in certain spots. Due to my new settings the positive charge was blasting powdered paint away from the wheels.

A few days go by GM comes back and sees all my new painted white wheels yellow and asks why everything is coming out yellow. I told him it was because the oven was set to high

GM: "Why didn't you change it? That's over a 100 wheels that need to be redone!"

Me: "I was told not to change the settings the professionals set so I didn't touch it."

He walked over and turned it down and told me to leave it. A week later I get called into the office. One of our biggest customers was complaining that their wheels needed to be removed and repainted after a week or two due to starting to rust. We delivered over 150 wheels a week to them.

GM: "What is going on here? The paint too thin and the customer is complaining. Do I need to call the professionals back in to look things over?"

Me: "It wouldn't change much cause I haven't touched anything on the machines since they were out last time."

GM: "Just fix it. I don't care what you do just fix it."

He never questioned me again when it came to powdered coating.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/USMCLee on 2025-02-05 14:02:55+00:00.

Years ago my wife was working on getting her father VA benefits for assisted living.

They wanted all medical records, all financial records, any sort of record you could imagine. Each document had to have his name, SS# and something else on every piece of documentation. So we order a stamp with all the information and stamped everything.

Made copies.

The first time they asked for new documents we naively sent just the additional documents.

We got back a notice 'Please send U,V,X,Y,Z documents'. Which were included in the first batch of documents. So we sent the entire batch plus the first additional documents back.

They asked for more documents, so we added them to the batch and resent.

Repeat 3 or 4 times.

By this time it had to be over 10 pounds of paperwork and it barely fit in the USPS box.

We got a letter back 'Please only send the requested additional documents' which we completely ignored the next 2 or 3 times ( so not complying but still malicious).

Finally got his benefits approved and everything was great until....

VA building could collapse from all the stored paperwork

Apparently we were not the only ones maliciously complying.

Inspired to tell the story from this post

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ITGoddess83 on 2025-02-05 13:16:24+00:00.

The ladies post who said that the government agency wanted all the forms reminded me of the time that I was dealing with an insurance company about a car crash. I was waiting on a check from them and I kept calling and finally the guy said well. We never received your signed forms and I said I fax them on X date. He said nope sorry no faxes from you and I said OK fine I’ll fax it five times this time and he laughed at me any condescending way. So I did what I said I would do and every single time I faxed it I made sure to write an extra page in there saying just making sure you got it or something to that effect and I did in fact, fax it five times. About two hours later I received an email letting you know that my check would be sent out the following business day.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/LawEnvironmental7506 on 2025-02-04 14:03:06+00:00.

So, this story is not something super interesting, but I wanted to share it because it makes me happy.

I live in an apartment complex on the highest floor. When I moved in, I was short on time and painted the walls up until 2AM. The ladder made some sound and my neighbours knocked, we were almost done anyways, so we called it quits and thought everything is fine.

A month in and I get a letter from the company that owns this building that says something along the lines "Disturbance of Peace - We got a complaint from your neighbours about construction sounds and regular use of the washing machine in the middle of the night. Please be respectful towards your neighbours and don't be too loud between 10PM and 6AM." I was pissed, since the "construction sounds" were only ONCE and I never used my washing machine in the middle of the night, especially not regularly. But I didn't want to start an argument with the company or beef with my neighbours so I thought, since I wasn't doing that anyway, I would just ignore it and if there's an other complaint, I'll reach out.

A few weeks ago, I had my sister over on a Saturday and we watched some TV at night and she accidentally kicked over a glass bottle, happens. Instantly there were three loud and angry knocks coming from below, which somehow ticked me off really bad. Now, since I am obviously too loud, I decided to strictly adhere to the rules and time my washing machine in a way, where it ends exactly at 10PM and starts at 6AM, especially Sundays. Usually I did laundry at around 5PM, but I got a change of heart and hope that my neighbours are annoyed when my machine wakes them up at 6 in the morning on the weekend, just like they obviously wanted me to and they can do nothing about it, since I'm not breaking any rules ☺️

Edit: I get that they are probably trying to sleep and I know that the 2AM painting session was a mistake. I am upset, that they reacted with complaints to the company and banging on the ceiling instead of talking to me.

People are clumsy and drop stuff. I heard other neighbours vacuum and drop things at night and I simply don't care, things happen. But if they want to be childish, I'm going to be childish.... by sticking to the rules 😅

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Alarming_Spread_2883 on 2025-02-04 07:17:20+00:00.

This is a doozy that happened to me at my old job (a server at a breakfast place) where I fully acknowledge that there’s no need for an AITA, because IATA. And I know it.

I was having a particularly overwhelming shift and about 3 hours into a 6 hour shift, two people came in that were particularly known for their being divorced and completely loathing one another quite openly to the servers and staff, and were overall very loud and rude to guests and staff alike. Every other weekend they would come in to go over paperwork and divorce things and the server who would get them always got sympathy from the rest of us. I had the pleasure of serving these lovely people a few times, and all of the times were so insanely different in terms of weirdness, but let’s just get into this one. They come in and it ends up being my turn in the rotation. Yikes, but I thought me and the guy were chill because the last time I served them I told him I liked his dinosaur shirt, and his ex wife made fun of him for it, and I told her I thought it was a cool shirt and he and I high-fived and it was the most invigorating experience of my life. I come up to them and ask what I can get started for their drinks, and I can tell it’s going to be a tense experience already. They were both very snappy and rude and I was doing my best to just stay friendly. Fast forward and I’m asking for their orders eventually and the guy orders 4 eggs. I explain to him, we double our yolks. If you order 4 eggs, you will receive 8 total eggs. He tells me no, he wants 4 eggs. So I tell him, okay, so that is going to show up as 2 eggs in our system and on your respite. He tells me no. He wants 4 eggs. At this point, I don’t know what to tell him, but I try one more time. I tell him, yes, you will receive 4 eggs on your plate. But it will say 2 on the respite. He says, no. I don’t want to pay for 2 I want to pay for 4. I’m done. ATP I’m more confused than he is. I tell him okay, and I write it down on my order sheet. I put in the order… manually because we do not have a button for 4 eggs BECAUSE WE DOUBLE OUR EGGS. The head cook calls me over, he says 4? I say, that’s what the customer ordered. He says, okay. And he makes the most beautiful over easy sheet of 8 eggs, with a side of bacon. It comes out and I serve it to him. He looks at me and says, this isn’t what I ordered. I say, yes it is! 😁 and he says, fine I’ll take it. I got yelled at for it at the end of my shift but it was sooooo worth the look on his face when I served it to him, and the laughs it got from my coworkers who told me they wished it was them to serve it to him. One of my favorite memories from working at that place.

I have a picture of the 8 egg beauty but I can’t post it here 😔

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Fig91 on 2025-02-03 18:43:52+00:00.

Nothing super special but gave me a laugh today.

My sons school for the 100th day of school asked for the kids to bring in 100 of the same coin. They are going to be donating the money to the local food pantry so it is for a good cause and we are doing pretty good this month so I decided to give him 100 quarters ($25) to donate. So on lunch I head to my bank and go in. I'm directed to one of the windows and tell the nice lady I need to withdraw $25 in quarters. She says ok and goes to get my quarters. She comes back with 3 rolls of quarters.

"I can only do $20 or $30. They only come in rolls of $10."

I point out that she has a tray of change and ask "can you take $5 from the loose change?"

"No. They only come in rolls of $10. Do you want $20 or $30?"

Ok. I really need the $25 so I ask for the $30. She goes to process my request in the computer at another window and comes back with the 3 rolls of quarters. I then tell her "can I go ahead and make a deposit?"

"Of course, how much were you wanting to deposit?"

"$5 in quarters."

The range of emotions that crossed her face as I broke open one of the rolls and began to count out my $5 in quarters was priceless. She then takes it and tells the guy at the other computer that we needed to deposit $5 in quarters back into the account. He asked her what happened and she told him I asked for $25 but rolls only came in $10. He then asked her why she didn't just count out $5 in quarters from the loose change that is on each desk. I just smiled as I waited for my deposit reciept.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Agyaani_ on 2025-02-03 03:40:52+00:00.

So, I used to have this manager who was obsessed with thoroughness. Every task, every report, every email—“Be more thorough,” he’d say.

At first, it was just minor tweaks. But soon, it got out of hand. He started rejecting reports for not having enough detail, even when the numbers were completely self-explanatory.

One day, I submitted our usual weekly report. Simple, clear, and to the point. He sent it back: “Not thorough enough. Resubmit.”

Alright. If thoroughness is what he wants, thoroughness is what he’s gonna get.

I rewrote the entire report into a 20-page epic. I included:

• A detailed breakdown of every number, with footnotes.
• A section explaining why negative numbers exist ("because math").
• An entire appendix on the history of our software vendor.
• A glossary, just in case anyone forgot what “profit” meant.
• A disclaimer: “In case of an unwanted event, these numbers may become irrelevant.”

I sent it off and waited.

A few hours later, I got a one-line response: "This looks good. But next time, keep it simple."

Oh, so now we like simple? Sure thing, boss. 😏

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Agyaani_ on 2025-02-02 18:59:41+00:00.

Alright, Reddit, gather 'round for a story of petty revenge and malicious compliance that left my boss red-faced and my coworkers cheering.

I work in IT support for a mid-sized company. My job is to fix tech issues, set up systems, and generally keep everything running smoothly. I’m also the go-to person when my coworkers have questions or need help with something tech-related. It’s not technically in my job description, but I don’t mind helping out—it keeps things running smoothly, and people appreciate it.

Enter Boss. Boss is the kind of manager who loves metrics and hates anything that doesn’t directly contribute to them. One day, Boss calls me into their office and says, "I’ve noticed you’re spending a lot of time helping other people. That’s not your job. Your job is to focus on your assigned tasks and nothing else. Stop wasting time helping coworkers."

I tried to explain that helping others actually prevents bigger issues down the line, but Boss wasn’t having it. "No. Your performance is based on how many tickets you close. If it’s not a ticket, it’s not your problem. Understood?"

"Understood," I said, smiling sweetly.

The Malicious Compliance Begins:

From that day forward, I followed Boss’s instructions to the letter. If it wasn’t a ticket, it wasn’t my problem. Here’s how it played out:

1. Coworker Asks for Help? "Sorry, I can’t help you unless you submit a ticket. Boss’s orders." The ticket system quickly became flooded with minor requests that I used to handle in seconds. Boss started getting complaints about response times.
2. Boss Asks Me to Fix Their Printer? "Sure thing! Just submit a ticket, and I’ll get to it as soon as possible." Boss was furious but couldn’t say anything without contradicting their own rule.
3. The CEO’s Laptop Won’t Connect to the Projector Before a Big Meeting? CEO: "Can you fix this real quick?" Me: "I’d love to, but I need a ticket first. Boss’s policy." CEO: stares at Boss "Is this true?" Boss: sweating "Uh, well, we’re trying to streamline processes…" CEO: "Fix it. Now."

The Fallout:

The ticket system became so overwhelmed that IT response times plummeted. Departments started missing deadlines because they couldn’t get the tech support they needed. Boss was getting heat from all sides but couldn’t backtrack without looking incompetent.

Finally, Boss called me into their office again. "Okay, you’ve made your point. You can go back to helping people without a ticket."

I smiled and said, "Just to clarify, you’re officially rescinding the 'no helping without a ticket' rule?" Boss sighed. "Yes. Consider it rescinded."

As I walked back to my desk, a few coworkers shot me knowing grins and subtle thumbs-ups. Word had gotten around, and everyone was quietly enjoying the fact that Boss’s ridiculous policy had backfired spectacularly. One of them even slid a coffee onto my desk with a note that said, "Thanks for taking one for the team."

TL;DR: Boss told me to stop helping coworkers unless they submitted a ticket. I complied, flooding the system and causing chaos. Boss eventually caved, and I got to enjoy the sweet taste of malicious compliance.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit on 2025-01-31 17:39:29+00:00.

I work as a school janitor. Half my day is spent in the lunch room emptying the trash cans and sweeping up. At most schools, you get 15+ minutes in between each lunch period to do all the cleaning. At my school, I get less than 2 minutes, if I'm lucky.

Normally, if a trash can isn't full, I just dump one can I to another, and then tie off THAT bag when it gets full. It's a lot faster than having to replace every bag every time, AND it saves a ton of bags. I also sweep up around the tables, and, if I see a big mess under a table, I ask the kids to move their feet and sweep that up to.

I do it this way because it's the only way to keep up and keep things clean. If I pulled every bag every time instead of dumping one can into another, not only would I run out of bags halfway through the week, but it would also take way longer. If I only swept under tables when there was no kids sitting there, I would literally never have an opportunity to sweep under tables.

Enter the lunch ladies. Most of them are nice but there's this one older one who is just a miserable human being. She yells at everyone including the kids, and is just always angry about something. Earlier this week, she yelled at me for dumping one trash can into another instead of pulling the bag. Why she chose today to do this, I don't know, since I'd been doing this every day for the past 3+ years. I know how to do my job and didn't ask her opinion, so I just ignored her, didn't say anything, and kept doing what I was doing.

Fast forward an hour or two, and I'm getting a call from my district boss that there was a complaint filed against me. The lunch ladies are saying they don't like that I dump cans instead of pulling bags, and they don't like that I sweep under the kids feet. My boss tells me just stick to cleaning in between lunch periods. I try to explain that that's literally a period of less than 2 minutes and isn't even a fifth of the amount of time I'd need to do it that way, he says just do it anyway to keep the lunch ladies happy. He's a good dude, but he's just trying to squash complaints and keep them from going further. He says from now on, I'm ONLY to empty trash or sweep the floors in between lunches, where there's not students in the cafeteria, and also I'm to pull the bags every time. No more dumping cans.

Cue malicious compliance.

Starting then, I ONLY cleaned in between lunches when there was no kids. Of course, this is literally like a knife and a half, so I only had time to get to half the trash cans. And since I was replacing every bag instead of dumping cans, each can took longer. I didn't even have time to sweep AT ALL. The trash cans I couldn't get to would fill up and overflow, and the kids don't care and just keep piling trash on top. The floor got more and more covered in trash, since I didn't have time to sweep at all.

I did this for the rest of the week. The same bitchy lunch lady tried to scream at me to go empty the trash when I was standing there on Tuesday, but I explained "I was told by my boss that you guys didn't like me sweeping or emptying trash around the kids, so now I'm only allowed to do that when the cafeteria is empty. Id love to go get that trash can, but there's kids eating lunch right now so I'm not allowed." She tried to argue but I just told her I'm following direct and explicit orders from my boss. There was nothing she could do.

When the final lunch ended, I cleaned as much as I could before 2pm and then stopped, as that was my lunch time and the union REQUIRES that we take our lunches at our allotted times. It's nom-optional and zero tolerance for deviation. And after my lunch, I have to go clean classrooms since school is out, and classrooms take priority over the cafeteria. End result? The cafeteria never got fully cleaned. When the lunch ladies came in Monday and found it still half filthy, they went through the roof and complained to my boss. He called me ina and I explained that I was just follow orders, and the lunch ladies were the ones who asked I do things this way.

Suffice it to say, I was told to go back to doing it however I thought was best.

You wanna stick your nose in my business and tell me how to do my job? See how that turns out.

Oh, and also since then, I spent the rest of the week calling THEM out on all the things they were doing wrong. Previously I just kept my mouth shut and minded my business, but now? Now we're doing this the way you wanted.

Door propped open because its incredibly hot in the kitchen and you need the air flow? Sorry! That's a security issue, doors CANNOT be propped open. Greasy wax paper in the cardboard recycling? Sorry, that can't go in there! Normally I'd just grab it as I see it, but now? I waited till the end of the day and then tell them. They had to pick it all out by hand. You guys like having the radio playing in the kitchen? Sorry, not allowed! Shut it down.

TL;DR: lunch ladies tried to tell me how to do my job. They got what they wanted. Didn't like it.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Agyaani_ on 2025-01-30 17:29:17+00:00.

At my previous job, we had a strict expense reimbursement policy. The rule? Only expenses with receipts were reimbursed—no exceptions.

One month, I traveled for work and had a few small expenses, like bus fares, street parking, and tipping, where getting a receipt was impossible. I submitted my report, clearly listing these minor charges, totaling about $20.

Rejected. My manager: “No receipt, no reimbursement. Policy is policy. We need every receipt for Audit Purpose”

Fine. Cue malicious compliance.

The next trip, I went all in:

• Needed a bottle of water? Bought it from a fancy café with a printed receipt.
• Short taxi ride? No cash—only expensive app-based rides with e-receipts.
• Instead of public transport, I took more costly options that provided invoices.
• Tipping a server? No cash—added it to the bill at high-end restaurants with detailed receipts.

My total expenses? $280 instead of $20.

When finance processed my claim, my manager was furious: “Why is this so high?!”

Me: “Well, you said no receipt, no reimbursement. So I made sure everything had a receipt.”

A new policy was introduced the following week: "Reasonable expenses may be reimbursed at management’s discretion—even without receipts."

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Nervous-Mess7 on 2025-01-30 04:21:03+00:00.

Where I work many of my coworkers have visible tattoos and it’s never been an issue. Even some of the assistant managers and higher ups have tattoos that can be seen while in uniform. For some context, during the summer months we are allowed to wear shorts if we want to do so. I get very warm during the summer and just don’t handle the heat well so I opt to wear shorts almost every day from May-August.

I have a tattoo of a mermaid of the side of my lower leg. It’s a typical American traditional mermaid and she has breasts. The nipple of the mermaid is a black dot, simple and small. It’s not overly sexualized or drawn in a pornographic style. Plus it’s on the side of my lower leg mixed in with many other tattoos so it doesn’t stick out. For a few weeks I had no issue with the tattoo, I even had one manager comment on my leg pieces saying he liked the style.

However, one day one of the assistant managers came up to me and told me my tattoo was all of a sudden inappropriate and out of line for work. She demanded I wear pants or completely cover the chest of the mermaid tattoo everyday. I asked her if a customer had complained or if our manager had said something. She said no, that only she took offence by the tattoo and she demanded I cover it.

I asked a bunch of people and they thought she was being ridiculous but this particular manager had a history of steam rolling over everyone and getting her way. Even other assistant managers had issues with her in the past. So I decided, fine, I have to cover the nipples of the mermaid. That’s what I should do then.

I went to several craft stores to find as many sea shell/sea themed stickers I could find. I also bought some small gem stone stickers and thread. I used the gem stone and thread to make tiny breast tassels for the mermaid. They were super cute and drew lots of attention. I had coworkers and customers all commenting on how cute the tassels were and how creative it was to do that as a cover. The assistant manager that had forced me to cover the tattoo saw what I had done and she wasn’t please. She had thought I would use bandaids or something to cover the tattoo instead. But I got her to admit that I was technically following her demand as the mermaid nipples were no longer visible.

The longer I had to keep the tattoo covered the more creative I got with it. I used all sorts of fun, flashy stickers and designs. I even used googly eyes at one point. All my coworkers loved it as they agreed it was unnecessary to demand me to cover the tattoo in the first place.

Eventually that assistant manager was fired and when she left I stopped covering the mermaid. I haven’t had any issue with any other managers about it so I think the issue is resolved and at least I had some fun while it lasted.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/creomaga on 2025-01-30 03:56:52+00:00.

In high school we had student teachers shadowing the English department. They acted as assistants to the teacher while getting whatever experience they needed for their degrees.

My English teacher liked to assign topics she thought would interest us as a way to focus more on the writing than the topic. She rarely commented on the subject matter but would tear the essay itself to pieces and give specific detailed feedback to build the writing skill. Some of us went all out on these assignments. Most of the class gave a collective eye roll and handed in something that met the word count.

Then there was Roy.

Roy did not like homework. At all. In any class. He felt it was a personal insult that he had to be at school anyway, and the idea of taking schoolwork home was downright offensive. This was compounded by his firm conviction that English was an unnecessary subject. He skated by in most of his other classes because making him do the work wasn't worth the hassle.

Once it became clear that Roy wasn't going to do anything in this class either, English teacher takes it as a teaching opportunity for the student teacher and the three of them sit down together. An agreement is made that student teacher and Roy will work on his homework during detention time, as an alternative to actual detention for not handing homework in. Student teacher does most of the assignments, Roy hands them in. Praise all around. This goes on for several months.

Student teacher eventually realises she is getting duped, and starts insisting Roy do his own work. Big assignment that is to be presented to all three year level English classes is handed out, right before a break so we've got plenty of time to work on it.

Break ends, first week back we are given the schedule of when we're presenting to the classes. Roy is scheduled for the end of the week. Student teacher offers to help him finetune his presentation skills, and finds out (to noones surprise but hers) that he has done absolutely nothing. She flips her lid and tells him he has to do something, it's worth a huge percentage of the end grade. Roy tells her to write it herself and goes off to smoke at the bike sheds.

So she does.

At the end of the week Roy takes his place to present "his" assignment, cocky in the belief that he'll ace it because all the other work "he" did got excellent marks. His topic was superhero fiction and the presentation was being marked on a number of things including visual aids, presentation skills and vocabulary. He starts off strong and is using a LOT of big words and complicated language (student teacher had even spelled things out phonetically in the notes for him). English teacher's eyes are getting wider and wider, and then we get to the visual aids.

The superheroes in question were the Powerpuff Girls. We got a detailed version of the origin story and details about various powers and abilities, and a great deal of speculation on what their activities would be once they had grown up. This included multiple visual aids which were not quite homemade porn, but not your wholesome superhero drawings either. I should note here that this was late 90s so the images were not sourced with a quick google the way they are now - so student teacher went to some effort for this.

We were all very impressed at his level of interest in these particular heroes, and made sure to tell him so regularly for the rest of high school.

And no, he didn't pass English.

TL/DR: High school student refuses to complete assigned homework, when confronted tells the student teacher to write it for him. She does and he presents something that would now be considered raunchy fanfic to a large group of his peers.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ZHISHER on 2025-01-29 18:27:26+00:00.

Shared this is another sub who kept recommending I share here. This happened yesterday.

I had just landed for my layover, and I was in the very back of the plane, second from last row. The back was empty-I had a row to myself, across the aisle was a boomer who had the row to himself and who just watched Fox News the whole time. Same deal in the last row-two women who each had their own row.

We land, seatbelt sign comes off, and people start to stand up. I stand up, he stays sitting. One of the women stands up and lines up behind me, that’s when I hear him:

“Where do you think you’re going? No ones getting off yet. Sit down and stop crowding us.”

The woman apologizes and says “I’m sorry, I really need to use the bathroom.” He mutters something unintelligible and boomery.

I tell her she can go ahead of me, and that’s when the guy leapt up and grabbed both seats, physically blocking her. “No! No! No! We get off row by row! Row by row, we don’t go ahead of people, we don’t push and shove, we get off row by row.”

I start saying “calm down buddy, it’s not that big of a deal” but he just keeps repeating “row by row!” He brings his guard stance down and she pushes past him, dude looks like he’s going to keel over from anger. Now the lineup is just me, then him, then the other woman behind us who looks disgusted.

So I say “okay buddy, calm down” again and we start walking. 2 rows ahead of us is a couple, still sitting down, getting their baby packed. They clearly have a few minutes to go before they’re ready, so I stop behind them and do the same stance he just did.

“You guys take your time” I say, parked to make sure boomer isn’t going anywhere.

The dad says it’s okay, they’re going to be a moment, but I say very loudly “no no, we get off row by row. Row by row, you guys go ahead.” The couple had definitely heard our spat and knew what I was doing. We waited a solid 3 or 4 minutes for them.

Then, as we got further ahead, I did it again with another woman who was waiting for the flight attendant to bring her her bag. This lady was more confused when I insisted we wait, but she went along with it. I just kept saying very very loudly “we get off row by row.”

The first time, the boomer said “this is stupid” and I said “row by row!” The second time he was silent. But I certainly wasted a good 5 or 6 minutes of his life he couldn’t afford to spare.

Edit: A few things that have been asked:

For clarity, the woman who needed to go to the bathroom was NOT behind me by this point. She had made her way past us. The woman behind us was a different woman, the last on the plane.

The woman behind us gave the guy a very disgusted look when he first started talking, so I thought she might be okay with it. I looked back once or twice to make sure she was good, she smiled at me, so I figured it was okay. She smiled at me again when we were off the planes.

Why did she not use the bathrooms in the back of the plane? No idea. I didn’t ask.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/IAmWeasel93 on 2025-01-29 16:05:16+00:00.

I got hired as a line cook when I got out of culinary school, it was a big hotel chain. I got hired for the day to day work and we had 8 other line cooks and a head chef who was always bragging about his work load and how he: spared us from the paper monster. The head chef was for a better word absent from the kitchen floor and basically a pencil pusher. He did the ordering, the haccp lists, stocking, time sheets, rosters, schedules, communication with HR/GM/F&B and he made the menus.

For the most part the work paid oke and there was not much hassle. Thing was the menu's we had to cook were outdated and very uninspiring. Like think about the cook books from 70 years ago uninspiring. At some point we as a kitchen team were done with that and we requested that we make the menus, head chef for some reason was happy to oblige.

So now comes the kicker, we had a after hours menu with simple meals: BLT, pizza, salads, soup, fries, hamburgers. For some reason, corporate decided that the after hours menu had to go and be replaced by the normal day to day menu. This led to the following situation, almoste nobody ordered food during the Night Shift. Turns out when people come to a hotel late they are either to tired or to drunk to eat a meal that takes around 15 min to serve or are in no mood for a sauteed salmon in white wine sauce. This went on for like a year and corporate saw the nose dive in the Night Shift revenue across the board and they made the only logical decision to combat this problem: fire all Nightshift line cooks or relocate them to other hotels if they could not be fired. Of course the after hours menu was not changed nor was it removed, no instead it meant the shift had to be picked up by another.

So this is where the tale really started: So I worked there for about 2 years and I got in some trouble with the head chef, we didn't see eye to eye. This lead to the following situation:I had to pick up almost every night shift. I would come in at 4 in the afternoon and leave around 5 in the morning. I worked 40 hours on paper but in reality I worked around 50ish. I didn't mind as overtime was paid out and me as a 21 year old could do a lot with the paid out OT. Things was, it was so boring. In the beginning I cleaned the kitchen, checked the walkins for spoiled goods, set up a part of the breakfast and did some minor paperwork. After about 3 weeks I ran out of work to do, every 2 or three days I could clean something or check the fridges but what first took an hour now took like 10 to 15 min. So i did the logical thing and started reading books, watching Netflix, talk to the night manager, starting to experiment with new recipes and hanging out with the interns. Basically i was f-ing around on company time.

So after a while I got called into the office of the GM, I got a verbal reprimand for slacking. When I asked him why he told me someone told him what I did during Night Shift. So I of course explained to him what I did and that in between these hour's I had little to do. This led to a discussion between corporate, GM and my union about what I could and could not do within the position I was hired for but that's a story for another time.

At the end of this whole ordeal I was tasked with kitchen paperwork and chef just unloaded his whole workload on me. Telling me to get to work and that the time for slacking was over. He said this all smug and apparently he was assuming I would not finish this or I would come begging for help. I had to do time sheets, order produce and answer emails. Chef was always bragging about the work and that it took a whole week. After one look I knew he was not familiar with computers and the various programs he had to work with. Within a month I had figured out that our time management system could be linked to our payroll system and I only had to check if the breaks were logged correctly, hit the sync button and place a request for validation by the GM/HR. Same went for our ordering software, I could upload a produce list and order from an iPad while walking around to the different walkins and freezers, also I combined this with the two day spoil check. Within 2 months or so I found out that the work schedule sheet could be copied to another week and with another software link I could sync our HR app so it would automatically generate a warning when someone was on leave or vacation. it took me 2 night shifts to do all of the above and the other 3 I could “slack”. Due to this chef had nothing to do in the office and in turn was slacking, he had nothing to do during the day but to sit around in his office. After about 2 months “somebody” slipped this info to the GM. After that chef had to work in the kitchen and his 9 to 5 changed, he had to do breakfastshifts as he failed to do line cook work, he was stuck 30 years back when sticking everything in jelly was a trend.

Soon after this corporate got wind of this great innovation and asked our chef to document this all and send this over to them. When I left the company due to other reasons, corporate were contemplating cutting the head chef's position and making the F&B manager responsible for the kitchen.

TLDR: was accused of slacking, automated the entire head chef's position so he slacked.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Honigmann13 on 2025-01-29 06:49:39+00:00.

I'm not sure if this is the right sub - but it's too good not to share.

A friend of mine told me this episode from his childhood. The house he lived in with his parents was on a curve. It was the main road to a huge disco. (You can imagine how it continues.)

His room faced the street. For a while everything went well, until almost every other weekend a car couldn't make the curve and crashed into the house. So he has stories about how he was woken up by a car in his children's room. Unfortunately most of the cars weren't broken enough, so the drivers fled. Since there were no perpetrators, his parents were left with the costs.

They wrote to the city asking them to do something to make the curve safer. Of course nothing happened.

Then they came up with an idea:

Since the city isn't changing anything about the curve, our problem is that the perpetrators can keep driving.

They laid tree trunks across the lawn in front of the house. The solution to the problem began the very next weekend. Cars continued to drive into the house. But the trees had damaged the axles of all the cars so badly that they were no longer drivable.

This led to two results. All damage was paid for from now on and, strangely enough, the number of accidents on this bend decreased so that only two or three cars got stuck in the tree trunks a year.

Note:

Of course, my friend didn't have his children's room facing the front the whole time. After the accidents started, he had another room in the house.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Crusbetsrevenge on 2025-01-29 01:57:37+00:00.

This is a few years ago now. I was working for a local flooring retailer. It was a cool job and for the most part the customers were cool. Until one day, let's call him Jonesy, not his name just how I think of him. Comes in and buys some tile. He buys probably 6 different colors for different areas of the house. I explain at the time if he has any full boxes when he's done we'll take them back and get him a refund. He says okay and leaves.

A couple days later in strolls Jonesy and wants to return his tile. Ok no problem until I see that ole Jonesy has brought back 3 or 4 tiles from each of the colors he bought. He has not one single box. I don't have a good way to return single tiles. I let him know why I can't and what we can't do. Dude immediately goes full boomer and starts raising his voice at me and telling me how we lied and misrepresented our process. After a couple minutes I'm thinking this is in no way worth it so I just make up some item roughly the cost of his tile and hand him the cash. As he's walking out the door I hit him with the polite, "have a nice day" to which he responds with a couple expletives.

Here is where the malicious compliance comes in. I knew what he returned was the last of those tile colors and we weren't getting anymore in. So I grab one of the loader and have him immediately take them out to the dumpster and make sure he breaks them in the hope ole Jonesy runs a couple short. A couple days go by and nothing. I was a little disappointed as I thought my plan was awesome. Then about 4 days after he returned his tile he comes in all frantic and needs more. I let him know that since I only had a couple tiles of those colors I couldn't resell them so they were thrown in the dumpster. But he was welcome to see if there were any that were still usable. He looked super pissed but couldn't do anything so I took him out to the dumpster and let him look around but all that was left was broken pieces. It was awesome.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Monsignor1979 on 2025-01-28 11:11:02+00:00.

Back in the early 2000s, I was collecting all my change in one of those big plastic water jugs (for water dispensers). I had it about 60% full and needed to cash them in to make ends meet, so I lugged this thing into my local bank. Now, I learned the hard way prior to this, that the bank would not accept pre-rolled coins. They told me there was no way to verify that the rolls contained actual coins, and that they would have to rip everyone of them open to verify. After the explanation, it made sense. But, it was kind of frustrating since I spent the money and time to roll all these coins up thinking I was helping them out. So, this time I kept them all loose in the jug. I also know they have one of those coin counting machines, because I seen them use it the last time, and it made light work of all the coins they had unwrapped from the rolls.

But, it been a few years since I last did this, so here I was waiting in line for the next available teller with my jug of loose change (probably weighing 40-50 lbs worth). When my time came, I waddled the jug up to the base of the teller desk and told them I wanted to cash it in. This is when they told me that they charge something like a 10% fee to count the change. I turned my head to the right where there was a small room and sure enough, that same coin counting machine was sitting in there.

I said "You aren't counting it, you're just pouring it into that machine and it'll count it for you."

They simply replied "It's just our policy, sir"

I then said "You're my bank, isn't that a service you're supposed to provide to me?"

And they said "We charge the same rate for everyone."

So, I asked how much change they would take without charging me the fee, and they said "$50". So, I knelt down, tipped the jug over, and poured as much of it into my hand as possible and put a couple handfuls worth onto the counter. Looking perturbed, she counted it all by hand and gave me maybe $22 and some change. I put it into my wallet, grabbed my jug, and dragged it to the back of the line behind two other customers.

When it was my turn again, I waddled up there, knelt down and place a couple handfuls of coins on the high counter. When I stood back up, you could tell she was pretty perturbed about what I was doing and eventually just gave in. She told me to bring the jug over to the swinging door at the end of the desk and with the help of another teller, they started pouring it into the coin machine.

I made the point to tell them that I knew almost to the cent how much was in there, so don't try to pull any fast ones on me. About ten minutes later, it had chewed through all the coins and the total came to within a few bucks of my own count (might have had a handful of Canadian coins in there or some likely miscount due to worn coins). I remember it ended up be over $1,000 in pocket change but I can't recall the actual total.

But, that was the last time I saved coins. Nowadays, I hear most banks won't do this at all and will just refer you to those coin counting machines you see at hardware stores or Walmart that rob you of a large percentage of the total.

TL:DR My bank wanted to charge me 10% to cash in my large jug of loose change, so I attempted to cash it all in one handful at a time to avoid the charge until they finally gave in and counted it all for free.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Party_Shape557 on 2025-01-28 09:12:03+00:00.

I'm going to start out by saying that English is not my first language and I wasn't sure that this story belongs here as this is my first time posting.

I used to work in Media Intelligence which is a really niche market in the country that I am from. I started as an assistant and learnt everything from scratch as I switched from the hospitality industry (Pretty big step I know) I was eager to learn and was really interested in what they do as I was trying to get into media back then.

First of all, as I learnt everything from scratch, I got really good at what I do after just six months working there. I was in a three person team and I had one of the best bosses and a rally good colleague which were veterans in the Industry. Both of them helped me a lot to get me where I am then. They left the company after just a year there as upper management was just plain hot garbage. The company had four changes in direction within a year and it was stressing my team out. They did ask me to leave with them but with me being young and naive trying to prove myself, I declined.

The story, after my boss and colleague left, it was just me in my team and I was in charge of a few markets. I was asked to be on-call for technical support and was not offered anything in return. At the time, I was pissed but also trying to prove myself, I obliged. I got really stressed out from working thirteen hours a day for a few months at that point and I kept asking my manager to hire more people as I can't be working like this and it's stressing me out. My manager went on and on saying they DoN't HaVe ThE bUdGeT fOr It, so I just forgot about it drowning myself in work.

One day, the CEO of the company came and we had dinner as he was growing close to me since I was the only one person left who actually know the in and out of the old and new system that the company used. Keep in mind, this CEO is a cheapskate and will try all and every way to suck you dry. He asked me what I wanted to change in the company during dinner so I started of with asking for two new hires for my team where he gave me the same answer as my manager so I asked him for a promotion and a raise which was also declined saying YoU dOnT hAvE tHe NeCeSsArY eXpErIeNcE yEt. I was pissed.

As a normal person would expect, after working thirteen hour days for months, you would need rest. I had almost three weeks of PTO saved and I needed the rest. The manager threatened to fire me if I took any PTO as no one was able to do what I did. I took the PTO anyways, I got well rested and all was good until I came back. There were two new faces and I was pretty confused so I asked my manager who were they and she told me they were my replacements. She told me my notice was two months and I had to train them before I leave. She couldn't do anything as I was the only one in the company who knew how to run the legacy and the new systems so realistically she couldn't say that I was not training them properly as she didn't know how things work.

Here is the part where the Malicious Compliance happens, since the manager did not know how things work. She told me to train the interns on the legacy systems to "know better" on how the company was built up and I did just that. She told me strictly to just train the interns on the legacy and she will be dealing with the rest. Sure, I'll do just that.

It was until my last week when the shit really hit the fan. My manager found out that I have been only giving training on the legacy system and I didn't give them my notes with tips on how to run the system that needed to be used for daily operations. My manager called in the CEO and the Managing Director to hold a meeting with me asking me why I hadn't trained my replacements properly. I just told them I did what my manager told me to which the manager denied until I forwarded the CEO and MD the email that my manager has sent me which the call promptly ending.

After I left the company, I was patiently waiting for the call that was bound to come. It was my manager, she demanded me to get back to work and said that the firing was just a prank blah blah blah. I told them, pay me triple my wage and I'll consider it, they called me crazy and ended the call. It's been two months since that call and based on a good friend from another department, my old manager is neck deep in this shit show.

TLDR: Fire me from taking PTO, get fucked.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Grumps1954 on 2025-01-28 07:50:36+00:00.

Just after the invention of the printing press I worked for a small, but highly respected, academic publisher here in the UK. I was part of the sales team, criss-crossing the country visiting universities and bookshops promoting our titles. It was a good life, before even car phones, never mind mobiles. Once we were out on the road we were pretty much our own bosses. Our sales manager had done the same job, knew how things worked and was perfectly happy to allow us to make our own arrangements and decisions, as long as our territories were profitable year on year.And they were.

Then the stars realigned and we were taken over by a much larger publisher. So now, instead of knowing pretty much everyone in the company, it was just a voice at the other end of the phone when we needed to get something sorted. As is often the way with such large organisations it ran on tram tracks. For example, as reps we had company cars, for which previously there had been a set budget and we could have whatever we wanted as long as it fell within the financial restraints. Not now, there was a choice of three, and that was that.

Came the time when they decided that company wide people were not using their time efficiently, especially with regard to meetings. Thus highly expensive consultants were drafted in, and one of their recommendations was that everyone, every single employee, should go on a time management course. It was just the merest coincidence that this consultancy also provided the course.....

Eventually our sales team got the word, and we had to jump through these particular hoops. In vain we pointed out that: we were not office-based so we rarely had meetings and, if we did, they were organised and run by somebody else; we could hardly tell a customer or university academic that they were taking too long and could we please go a bit faster; and finally, time management for us was avoiding traffic jams and road works so as to get to our next appointment on time. Until matter transfer was developed no course in the world was going to improve that situation.

As you can probably guess all this fell on deaf ears. There could be no exceptions, the trams were heading down those tracks with no possibility of stopping. Somehow this course lasted three days, I have no idea how as most of it consisted of stating the blindingly obvious. In addition there were travelling days at each end as all three days were 9-5. So the four of us had most of a week in a 4 star hotel, with virtually unlimited food and drink, gaining nothing but weight from the whole experience. I can only guess what we cost the company, even at those long-ago prices it had to be a long way into four figures. Plus the time off the road, as for a week the sales team had not sold a single book to a single bookshop.

We were supposed to write follow-ups, detailing just what we had got out of the course, but, after discussion with our sales manager, this requirement was quietly dropped. Probably just as well...

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/sanjuro_kurosawa on 2025-01-28 06:30:37+00:00.

Just following orders...

Republican U.S. Senator Katie Britt said that that federal bureaucrats, “should now be on notice that malicious compliance will not be tolerated and will be swiftly corrected.”

She said newly appointed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will “correct and get to the bottom of the malicious compliance we’ve seen in recent days.”

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Enteprise-srl on 2025-01-27 15:45:47+00:00.

A few years ago, I worked at a mid-sized company where the atmosphere was… let’s say, not ideal. The manager had this ever-growing suspicion that people were just waiting for the right time to leave. He believed that morale was low, and that the team was barely holding it together. And while I’m not sure where he got this idea, he started imposing more and more controls on us to “monitor” productivity.

One day, he introduced a new rule: “Every task, every email, every conversation must be logged. No exceptions.” The justification? “I need to know exactly what you’re doing, and I need to be sure nothing’s falling through the cracks.”

Now, here's the problem—my team was already working at full capacity, dealing with multiple tasks every single day. But suddenly, we were being told to log everything. If you were sending a simple email, you had to log it. Writing a report? Log it. Setting up a meeting? Log it. Every little action had to be documented.

I tried explaining how ridiculous this was. But the response was always the same: “I need to make sure you’re on task.” He didn’t trust us to do our jobs, so he created a system where every move had to be tracked and validated by someone else.

I didn’t see any way out of it, so I decided to comply. But I wasn’t going to make it easy. I started logging everything—and I mean everything—down to the smallest tasks. Simple emails? Logged. A quick 10-minute meeting to touch base? Logged. I even started logging the amount of time I spent thinking about the best way to word my emails—because, hey, it was part of the task, right?

To top it off, I made sure my logs were detailed as hell. I meticulously logged every action, no matter how insignificant.

The result? It was chaos. The logs were piling up, but all they did was waste more of my time. The manager was reviewing everything and asking questions about tasks that had no bearing on the big picture. Meanwhile, I could barely get through a day without constantly being interrupted by the need to document my every move.

And then, it happened: the manager finally asked, “Why is everything taking so long?” I gave him a simple reply: “You asked for everything to be logged.”

He didn’t like hearing that. But the best part was when he finally realized that the whole system was making us less productive. His solution? We were told to “just log what’s necessary.” The policy was quietly dropped, and things slowly started to return to normal. But by then, I had already built something of my own.

After all the frustration of logging every single action, I realized there had to be a better way. So, I started building a tool that could automatically track everything—without the annoying back-and-forth or wasted time. I wasn’t looking to change the whole company—I just wanted a way to do my job without all the micromanagement.

What started as a workaround eventually grew into a full-fledged solution, and I realized that this frustration had pushed me to create something far more effective than the system we were using.

Funny how the lack of trust can sometimes spark the most innovative ideas.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Agyaani_ on 2025-01-27 12:16:26+00:00.

A few months ago, my manager got obsessed with tracking our productivity to the decimal point. Every task had to be logged, measured, and analyzed. No exceptions. If it wasn’t on the spreadsheet, it didn’t count.

So, one day, during our weekly team meeting, he casually said, “I don’t care how long it takes, just make sure everything is logged perfectly.”

Cue malicious compliance.

I started logging everything.

• "Reading the boss’s email" (3 minutes, 42 seconds).
• "Deciphering vague instructions" (5 minutes).
• "Refilling water bottle to avoid screaming" (2 minutes, 10 seconds).
• "Thinking about whether this is real life or a sitcom" (7 minutes).
• "Contemplating the meaning of corporate jargon" (4 minutes, 30 seconds).
• "Strategic sighing to release frustration" (9 seconds).

Soon enough, my task tracker looked like a surreal diary of corporate life. I even color-coded it for extra precision.

When he finally looked at my logs, he freaked out: “Why are you wasting time tracking all of this?!” I reminded him, “You said EVERYTHING needed to be logged.”

Surprisingly, we had a new policy by the end of the week: log only what’s necessary. 😎

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edit/Update:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Boss: overtime?…

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

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

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

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

Me: or nobody expected to be called on it.

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

Me: correct.

Boss: I have to go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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