Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ThreeFifthsOfABrain on 2024-05-23 23:26:57+00:00.

Kind of a small one, but lately my Dad and older brother have been trying to push the job of making the shopping list onto me. Of course, because I don't know how much they need since I'm the least food-interested person in the house, I need someone's help with making the list. As dad had gone to bed, my brother helped me.

Well, he... "helped" me.

He would sit there and tell me which item I needed to check, one at a time, and give me a vague or stupid answer as to how much we needed of something - for example, we needed "35" tubs of mint ice cream, or the amount of beer we needed was "a fridge" - and I was getting annoyed. Especially because he was trying to watch a movie at the time, and kept pausing and unpausing it between items, so I had to deal with him always telling me to shut up and wait for the end of the scene or a good time to pause, which took several minutes per item. For a full shopping list for three people and a cat.

Did I mention it was like 11:45 pm when we started doing this, and this is after he had dragged his feet on helping for three days?

Eventually, I got sick of it and started writing exactly what he said when it came to his foodstuffs. So we needed "an amount" of veggie burgers, "just guess" of tuna, "shut up this is a good bit" of dark cooking chocolate and "look at the silly moggy" of butternut squash. And so on.

By the time we were done, it was past 2:00 am, and I was knackered, stressed, and satisfied with my work. I took the list upstairs to my dad, left it on his bedside table with a sticky note that said "if anything looks wrong, just don't get it."

In the morning, Dad went to do the shopping. He came back with everything I eat and he eats, but my brother was missing about 85% of his food items. When my brother asked WTF happened, my dad said that he "couldn't tell" whether we needed to get some things because the amounts of those things seemed "unusual" or "costly", and felt that it was safer if he didn't buy those things. It turns out Dad had been kept awake by my brother's movie for two and a half hours last night and was as sick to the back teeth with it as I was.

My brother had to walk up to the local shop and buy as many of his things as he could from there (they didn't have everything) out of his own money. He even had to make two trips because he couldn't carry everything the first time. It's a mile walk there, meaning he had to walk four miles in total to buy his food out of his pocket, Dad wouldn't drive him because he had a long run to do, and I sure as hell wasn't going to help. I was too busy eating my Pringles. That I forgot to put on the list.

I'm still going to have to help make the list in future, but when I do, something tells me my 27-year-old brother will help properly next time.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/OilGlad7943 on 2024-05-23 20:53:49+00:00.

Remembered this from my childhood.

I was in daycare and Christmas was coming up. Our daycare educator (Mrs. May) asked us to cut out a huge stack of A4 Christmas trees with our scissors. Mrs. May forbid each table from going out to play until we had cut out all the christmas trees. She gave each table a sizeable stack of Christmas tree cutouts.

Now, this was unpaid overtime plus child labor. I came up with a simple idea. I got 5 papers, stacked them on top of each other, and cut them at once. All of my classmates at the table did this too.

Mrs. May went around the classroom and when she came back to our table to check up on us, we had already cut out all the Christmas trees. The gobsmacked look on Mrs. May face was priceless. We explained what we did and Mrs. May said that this was not what she expected of us.

True to her word though, she let us go out.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/rickbb80 on 2024-05-23 20:07:12+00:00.

The comments in the machine shop post reminded me of something that happened a very long time ago with a "college educated engineer".

When I was in the Boy Scouts, I was the troop quartermaster for a while. We needed a place to store and organize our camping gear, tents, dutch ovens, etc.

One of the guy's dads was said engineer and volunteered to supervise building some shelving for the small closet we had to store the gear in.

He produced very professional blueprints, (yes for simple shelves). I was only 13 or 14 at the time but my dad was a self-employed carpenter and took me along on jobs when not in school as his helper. So, I knew how to read blueprints and a bit about building shelves from wood.

I took one look at the plans and saw a very big problem and tried to point out his mistake. Which was my mistake. To say he was highly put out by being corrected by a kid was an understatement. Lots of words like I know what I'm doing, it will work don't worry, etc. The usual engineer self-righteous babble.

So, me being me, I shut up and backed off. His plan to get the shelf into the small closest? Build it in 2 halves and put each half in and then attach them together. BUT, he had no support under the split, down the middle, of each shelf.

We got it built, installed and he was quite proud of himself, "see it's fine". OK says me, lets get all the gear stowed.

First tent, (canvas about 10 pounds), went up on the top shelf, in the middle, right at the split. And it went right through that shelf and all the other shelves all the way to the floor! An entire Saturday wasted.

He stood there dumbfounded and speechless, I looked at him and said, "it needs supports under the shelves that aren't cut in the middle".

Next week I came to the troop meeting and looked in the closet, supports installed, gear arranged. He never spoke of it again.

(Edit to correct grammar)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/hankiepanki on 2024-05-23 19:33:34+00:00.

I grew up in an okay town that has since become a bit…snobbier. I was driving down my old street last year and i saw my old neighbor, Andrea, sitting on her front porch, so i stopped in to say hi.

Turning into the driveway, i noticed a regulation sized soccer goal in her next door neighbor’s small front yard….which is VERY out of sync with the rest of the neighborhood. It made me laugh a little. After a quick catch up, i learned a couple of things: she’s the last of my old neighbors who still lives on the street and the neighborhood has become very “keeping up with the jones’ “ with the exception of her next door neighbor. I asked about the soccer goal, and here is the story:

The neighbor has a young daughter who loves soccer. She would spend hours in the front yard kicking goals into a small goal anchored in the front yard with tent spikes. Apparently, another neighbor (they don’t know who, but they suspect the people directly across the street) complained to the township because of the “semi-permanent structure” in the front yard. The neighbor got upset….obviously, it was basically a toy in the front yard! Cops came to their house, they got a warning. Then they thought it would be ok as long as they took it down when they weren’t home, but nope. Cops were called again and they were fined WHILE the daughter was using it! The fine said something about having a semi-permanent (because of the tent stakes) structure.

Cue malicious compliance: they weren’t allowed to have a semi-permanent structure, but they COULD have a permanent structure! So, they went, got a permit from the township, dug the holes, filled it with concrete, and built a regulation sized goal and hung the permit on one of the poles! Now the mystery neighbor has to look at that goal every day

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/LesbianFox_5745 on 2024-05-23 02:12:57+00:00.

It's funny because he doesn't do this in the winter for the heat even though the building uses an oil heater which is enormously more expensive than a few air conditioners. It's a fucking money grab.

My apartment is the hottest in the entire building. Even with an air conditioner going, it still gets to 90F (32c) during summer peak and in the winter I have the heat off.

I have four windows in my studio. One is blocked by one of my desks, but the other three are open. So I am going to put three ACs in. You want your $50? Fucking take it, but I will make sure I have the coldest room in the building the entire summer.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Hotdogwater88888 on 2024-05-23 01:24:28+00:00.

Let me just start off by saying that I fuckkkkking hated my last job. I was serving tables at a restaurant (not corporate, I would never work for a chain). They worked us like dogs, and I made next to nothing. The amount of unpaid sidework we had to do was astronomical. The criticism from management was nonstop. The manager very obviously never liked me, and constantly made me feel like I was terrible at my job. No, they just sucked ass. I’ve been out of training for 2 days at my new job, and I’m already being moved up to bartending.

Towards the end of a lunch shift on my second month at that job, yes I was still new, the manager approached me and said that we needed to talk and took me outside. I was having a good shift, so I figured it can’t be anything bad, and went happily. The first thing out of his mouth was “so, today can be your last day.” First of all, I find that to be a really disrespectful way of talking to employees, especially a new one. I was obviously confused and said “what? Why?” And his reasoning? “Because you can’t think that certain tasks aren’t your job” and “I didn’t see you buss anyone else’s tables today.” … obviously someone told him that I didn’t think we should have to wash all the silverware (hire a dishwasher), buss all the tables (hire a lunch busser), or wash the bars glassware (are we not tipping out the bartenders already? Are the bartenders not using silverware that we then have to wash, polish, and roll? They can wash and polish their own glassware). But that doesn’t mean I didn’t do it. In fact I was usually the first one back there getting the silverware started. I was like “??? I counted 4 tables today that weren’t mine that I bussed.” Then he said that “maybe” he didn’t see me doing it, and will “just give me the benefit of the doubt.” Like dude… fuck off. I shouldn’t have to wait for you to be looking at me to do my job. And this is beside the fact that there was other servers working there who didn’t do anything, still couldn’t enter orders without my help, yet I was the one being threatened over petty things? Take that shit somewhere else.

I literally immediately started looking for another job. In the parking lot lol. A few weeks pass, and I happened to stumble upon a job posting for a restaurant that I’ve been trying to get a job at since last year. I interviewed the Wednesday before Mother’s Day, and was hired the same day. Originally, I had planned to stick it out and work my shifts through Mother’s Day. But then I got to thinking… my last check for 2 weeks of work was barely $600…that’s only $300 a week… I actually hate the manager… on second thought, I don’t think I’m gonna do that for them.

So I came in on Friday, and told the manager “so, today’s actually gonna be my last day.” LOL, god that felt good to say. When I was ready to leave, I rolled some silverware only to help the other servers that were working, did my checkout, and brought it to the manager. They said “I don’t remember making cuts” to which I replied “I’m cutting myself”, to which they replied that I’m “burning bridges”. lol well guess what pookie, today seems like a good day to burn a bridge or 2. Toodles!

And I’ve been LOVING my new job. Everyone is so nice, I fit in really well there. We do such little sidework that it almost feels wrong. They actually have support staff, so no more bussing tables or washing silverware. And added bonus, they’re only open for dinner, so I will never have to work before 4 pm! My last manager can kiss my ass lol, I’m beyond happy that I left.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/AtlasShrugged- on 2024-05-23 00:07:57+00:00.

Ok this is sort of a “back in the day” MC.

I was swing expeditor/scheduler/shop assistant. I didn’t run the machines I just helped get done what needed to be done on our shift.

Had an old school machinist come in at start of shift and explain the blue print was wrong and if he followed the attached manufacturing procedure it was gonna result in a bad part. He showed me the issue and I agreed right away. Said I’d catch the engineer before shift the next day.

Call engineer, he says “its right just do it”

Call him again next day, same result.

Move it up a level and he storms into Our office pissed off on third day. I try and show him the drawing and procedure but he insists it’s correct. He tells me I have no idea what we are doing in our shop, just follow the procedure as it’s written.

I had logged all of the calls etc and asked if he would put that in writing and he does.

Cue MC. I go to same machinist , tell him the issue. It’s a 16 hour job. He sits and reads for two days and then hands paperwork, no part, into Quality Control (they check measurements and confirm it was manufactured correctly ) they ask what’s going on where is the part?

I come by and explain that according to both the drawing and procedure the machinist was to machine a 12 inch part down to just over 13 inches shorter than it started at. Thus the produced product, nothing. Usual ask about why did we do this, I showed them the records I had.

So they wrote it up as a procedure issue.

2 days later same engineer storms in, but brought his boss (the one I initially went to when I got no response )and starts accusing me of sabotaging his part.

I calmly show both of them everything, explain that we knew it was an issue and tried to fix it but we were over ridden .

Boss looks at engineer and says “why aren’t you listening to people that are trying to help?”

And the engineer replies “they didn’t go to college to become an engineer! They don’t know what they are talking about” and walks out.

I look at Boss and he says “we will get you a revised procedure and drawing , I assume you still actually have the original stock to make it from?” I laughed and told him I wasn’t stupid of course I do.

Engineer was no longer with the firm a couple weeks later.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/TheMobydickler on 2024-05-22 12:14:46+00:00.

Resubmission because the last one accidentally got deleted somehow.

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

This beautiful country of ours has a fairly low population density generally for reasons dating back to the infamous famine. (Watch Black 47 for reference). It also however has layer upon layer of civil servants and bureaucracy. We have a beautiful system of government where we have 2 houses and a representative for every 30000 people as a fact of law. Underneath that we have a local government system with Local Authorities in each county and city, each with their own elected councillors and administration. Planning, fire safety roads, refuse collection and some 1other things are administrated by these local councils which leads to the public service being the largest employers in the country. All in an island with a Southern Republic that has with an area of 26,000 square miles with at the time about 31 or 32 local authorities and a population of 5.5 million plus or minus. It's totally over the top but that's a discussion for another day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A perfect teaching moment and petty revenge combined.

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

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Illustrious_Log3261 on 2024-05-22 11:37:30+00:00.

So, my wife is having some issues at her work with multiple people of different levels of management telling her different things to do depending on who's the manager on duty at the moment. I said she should do what the acting manager told her to do and when another manager came on duty complaining about what she was doing to relay what the previous manager had told her and to let them work it out. I also said that she should document everything so that she could relate it to HR if it became necessary to do so. I then explained to her about 'malicious compliance' and what it meant.

This started me thinking about an incident at my old job at a manufacturing plant about 12 years ago. The building had two areas: A production/packaging area, and an attached shipping/receiving warehouse. The production area was air-conditioned/heated. The warehouse was heated, but only had roof exhaust fans and no AC, so it got pretty hot in the summer, but was bearable (we just moved slower). On end of Friday we closed all the dock doors and shut off the exhaust fans and close the overhead door that separated the warehouse from the production areas (during the week the overhead was open but had those plastic flap strips you could drive a forklift through to keep the cool air in production). One Friday the newish manager, who spent little actual time in that building, told us that we should keep the fans on and the separation overhead door open during the weekend to keep the temperature cooler in the warehouse. Why he cared I really can't fathom. We tried to explain to him that with the dock doors closed the roof fans would simply suck all of the cold air out of the production area, but he blew us off with the standard, "You will do as I instruct you to do". So... cue MC. Monday comes that morning in July and it was hot as hell in the production area. The warehouse was the same temperature as always, and the coils on the production AC units had frozen and we had to have people to come out and service them.

All the manager had to say was, "Keep that separation overhead door closed at all times!"

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Snjxx on 2024-05-21 17:31:02+00:00.

I worked at a call center of nurses to give advice on whether the caller needed to go to the ER, GP, manage symptoms at home etcetera. As it's health advice it's crucial to document everything, because if someone was for example instructed to stay at home while exhibiting clear stroke symptoms, we'd be responsible.

Well, a new manager was hired above our own "floor" manager to increase productivity as the number of calls increased rapidly (beginning of covid). She felt it was necessary to reduce the time we spent on finishing on documenting after the call had ended. In addition to medical records, we had to fill out a short questionnaire about each call to monitor the reasons people call us (internal purposes, not really my expertise). So, it obviously took a while. Average time I think was around 3 minutes after each call.

The new manager informed us that 90 seconds was going to be enough and she had asked the IT department to make the program push us a new call after those 90 seconds whether we were ready or not. The call would ring (loudly, first on headphones and after 10 seconds on the computer's sound system), new patient information screen popped up, everything unfinished was pushed to the back and we had to either decline the call (only allowed in emergencies) or let it ring and try and work over the ringing which could not be muted.

It was horrible, the noise was unbearable and just in a few hours we workers complained so much that the new manager just told us to take the new call and finish up the old one while talking to the new patient.

Cue malicious compliance.

Patient information law (similar to HIPAA in the US) violations here we come, having two patients' info up at the same time, trying to figure out why the latter called and wrapping up the previous one. How many documentations were written on the wrong patient's records?

We tried. It was even worse than before. It took us about an hour to realize it would never work and so we took the new call, asked them to wait for a second, muted the call and finished up the previous one. The customers were not happy, but us workers gladly directed them to avenues to give feedback through.

The company got so many bad reviews and online complaints in the first six hours that they had to regroup and stay late on that Monday evening to undo everything. We went back to normal on Tuesday, 2 hours later than we should have opened, due to reprogramming. The new manager was with us less than three months, don't miss her a bit.

I had the most chaotic, head ache inducing 8,5 hours of my life that day, still have nightmares of that ringtone.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Aggravating_Dot_5217 on 2024-05-21 13:15:33+00:00.

I not sure if this story belong her or in AITA.

Lets start with a bit of background. I work for a very big company but due to my speciality my work is split across the main company and one of the smaller companies. The MD of the main company allows my days to be split in half. The big company is very laid back when it comes to my work. As long as my work is done by the deadline date, they pretty much don’t care what I do during the work week.

In the smaller company I report to the C-suite but the CEO. Lets call the CEO, RA ‘cos the sun doesn’t rise until he gets out of bed. RA is most interested in what I do during the day. If I didn’t know better I’d say that RA thinks that I don’t work but sit around playing computer games all day.

RA send anything 20 – 30 emails to me per day and more than half will be the same question just phrased differently. Each email response is usually anything from 2 – 5 typed pages. I have even had emails sent to me at 11 Pm and at 8:30 the following morning an email asking why I haven’t responded to the previous email. If I am asked the same question multiple times I ignore the majority of the emails and only answer the question once.

When I am working I need to concentrate and most days I close my email client so that I’m not disturbed. Last Monday, I’m working quite happily and I get a WhatsApp from asking me to please read an email and respond post haste (to quote RA). I stop what I am doing as I get the sinking feeling that something bad is about to happen. As per usual there are 30 emails from RA.

The first email starts off by stating “You must always answer emails as quickly as possible as it is unprofessional and shows disrespect to the writer of the email.”

Cue Malicious Compliance

I stop what I am doing and start to respond to each email individually making sure that my answers to the same questions are different. I further indicate that I only work for him half day and will stop my work at exactly the middle of the work day. I spend the next day and a half responding to emails and not doing my work, even though there is a deadline looming for RA and his little company. These days when I walk into the office in the morning RA seems to have spent the entire night responding to the emails and in the process dragging other members of staff into the email trail and the email is getting so complex that I don’t know what’s going on.

Yesterday, I was expected to have finished RA’s work and when asked to present the outcome, I simply said that I had not finished. When asked why, my response was that I was so busy responding to emails I wasn’t able to do the work.

RA lost his mind and started to threaten me with being fired. He said that there was a customer that was waiting for the result of my work. He then asks why was emails put above doing my work and all I did was produce a copy of the email. My Boss from the big company was also present and all she did was laugh.

She then told RA that I will no longer do any work for his company and he must find somebody else.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Illuminatus-Prime on 2024-05-21 01:08:13+00:00.

A man was hired as my assistant at a tech-oriented business.  He spent his breaks and his lunches getting drunk.  I overlooked his behavior and covered for him because he was going through a contentious divorce.  Surprisingly, he eventually accused me of treating him like crap.  [EDIT]Then he engaged in a profanity-laden rant where he accused me of a lot of illegal, immoral, and unethical activities before telling me to leave him the hell alone.[/EDIT]

(Yes, I now know that I was 'enabling' his behavior, but I had once gone through a messy divorce of my own, and I was feeling sorry for him.)

Cue the Malicious Compliance

I stopped covering for him, cold turkey.  It was bad enough when no one could find him because he was passed out in his car, but being passed out on the floor of the men's room with his trousers around his ankles on Customer Appreciation Day earned him a dismissal.  Of course, he said it was all my fault.  It was not.

The Fallout

Because it was discovered that I was capable of doing both my work and the work of my erstwhile 'assistant', I was allowed to work on my own after that, and without any 'adult' supervision of my own.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Dependent_Price_1306 on 2024-05-21 00:29:14+00:00.

A story of equal parts petty revenge & malicious compliance

So I work for an MSP and yesterday one of my larger accounts told us out of the blue they had decided to change MSPs because they wanted to go a different direction moving forward & wanted to do the handover today. None of the regular hand over period, nothing to justify the abrupt way this has been handled, no allegations of incompetance or wrong doing.

So to make the handover as secure as possible & to protect the passwords document from potential snooping in transit, I converted the 11 page work doc to jpgs & imported them into a new doc. Usernames, passwords, URLs & encryption keys all gonna have to be typed out.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/BrushMelodic on 2024-05-20 13:00:10+00:00.

Sometimes just the threat of malicious compliance is all you need.

Years ago, a gentleman owned a chain of auto parts stores. He always named each store "(Name of Town) Auto Parts" and put the initials on the building. One of the stores was in a town that started with a "W"; inadvertently placing an, at the time, racial slur on the building. (I'll let you go down the rabbit hole.)

After being up there for many years, the City Fathers (think City Hall today) came down and told him he needed to take that down because it's offensive. The owner said "It's the initials of the business, how is it offensive?" The City says "We don't care; take it down or else."

At that point, the owner looks them dead in the eye and says "Okay. I'll change the business name to 'Frank's United Chicken Kitchen' and put those initials up there."

It took the Fathers all of a minute to say "Nevermind, keep it like it is." They left and never had any other issues with them about the sign.

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

Que the Malicious Compliance

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

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

Traumatize Them Back thought you all would like my story:

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

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

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

“What is dessert” I queried?

“Ice cream sandwiches” answered the counselors.

Damn. Game on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I love ice cream sandwiches,” I answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A perfect teaching moment and petty revenge combined.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manager: Yes! Just go ask the designer now.

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

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

Manager: Huh? (Puzzled look)

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

Manager: I do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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