Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/VeterinarianWhole250 on 2024-01-18 14:02:53.

My grandfather was tall, handsome, and charismatic, but he was also a womanizer, alcoholic, and petty thief. This story takes place in the early 1940's, during WWII.

Grandpa had a tendancy to act out whenever he didn't get his way. Fortunately, he tended more toward dramatic gestures than physical violence and one of his dramatic gestures was to claim that since no one appreciated him, he'd just enlist and go off to war. (He was young enough to enlist, but old enough to not have been drafted.) He'd then write a letter to the draft board, volunteering to serve, and leave the letter out in plain sight for a few days to make sure that everyone saw it and felt bad. He'd then quietly throw it away once he felt he'd made his point.

One time after he pulled this stunt, Grandpa couldn't find the letter to toss. He asked Grandma if she knew where it was and she said, 'Yes, I thought that you wanted it mailed, so I put it in the post yesterday." It appears that Grandma had had enough of his hysterics and decided to call his bluff.

According to my dad, Grandpa was beside himself for weeks until he finally heard back from the draft board. Fortunately for him, they denied his application because he was a farmer and they needed him to continue producing food.

That was the last time that he pulled that particular stunt. .

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Zanadar on 2024-01-18 13:40:01.

This is a long one, I’ve tried to restrain my verbose tendencies as best I could, but it’s still a lot, sorry. As such the story may seem a bit truncated in places, that’s me trying to keep the word count down. I've kept details vague deliberately since I generally don't like giving identifying information.

Background

Some years back at the start of my career I worked in insurance. My team was new and our boss, lets call her Alice, was VERY ambitious. She’d started off as a Team Lead managing a similar team to ours and through spending most of her time networking, bootlicking and making herself the center of important, high visibility projects she’d managed to score a promotion to Manager and was given our team along with her old one.This was very unusual, since she should have gotten two Team Lead positions to run said teams, but that’s how it had worked out. She had already been disinclined to pay much attention to the actual work even before her promotion, after we basically barely ever saw her. Her ambitions hadn’t stopped at her current achievements, so she was always busy trying to keep climbing the corporate ladder.

So that the teams could actually run, she picked the two most ambitious people from each team and made them do her job with no promotion or pay increase. I was that person from my team. For about a year I trained my colleagues, handled payment authorizations through a roundabout way to circumvent company policy, which said I absolutely wasn’t allowed to do that, handled disputes within the team, checked over and corrected other people’s work, etc.

Our company had a policy that once a year we had a skip-level one-to-one with our boss’s boss. At that meeting I brought up how unnatural our situation was. The Senior Manager replied that she hadn’t known myself and the person from the other team were doing so much and agreed that the structure should be reverted to how it’s supposed to be.Indeed, a couple of weeks later internal postings for the two Team Lead positions get posted on the company intranet. Fast forward a month or so, and Alice has gathered the teams to make an announcement. The person who had been doing the Team Lead job from the other team was being made into one officially. In our team? A girl we’ll call Jane was getting it.

Now I wasn’t the only one flabbergasted. Both teams were extremely confused and several people even voiced that confusion. I didn’t know this at the time and only became aware during my eventual Exit Interview, but Alice had NOT liked that I’d gone over her head, even if she’d benefited from it ultimately. So, in retaliation she’d given the actual position I’d been doing up until that point to someone else. In a one-to-one meeting with her later when I brought the subject up, she got angry and said “Just do your job, stop acting like you’re important!”.

The malicious compliance

Remember how I said Alice was too busy to ever do her actual job? She paid attention to none of it, including individual team performance. Jane had only been picked because she’d been part of Alice’s old team originally and was perceived as loyal to Alice. We’d needed someone to do the really boring data entry parts of the job which nobody else wanted to do, and the other team had recommended her. I guess we should have been suspicious at that point as to why they were so eager, but Alice had approved it.

As it turned out, they’d wanted rid of her, because Jane was stupid. I’m not using that as an insult but as a descriptor. She was genuinely very unintelligent and struggled with anything beyond very basic data entry tasks. When she was made to do anything harder, she’d generally make a complete mess of it. And now she had to actually run an entire team, train people, approve payments, check other’s people's work and so on. All while she herself struggled with anything more complicated than transferring numbers from one system into another. I honestly don’t believe Alice was aware of how big of a blunder she’d made here, she just picked someone she thought of as loyal.

Of course, Jane tried to have me basically babysit every action she took, but I was having none of it. I was going to do my own job, and nothing else, since I wasn’t important. For context for our US friends, we all had contracts with detailed job descriptions and in my country you can’t just fire people for no reason. And refusal to do work that’s not in the job description is certainly not considered proper cause. I was just a regular employee, none of the management functions I’d been performing up till then were my actual job.

The fallout.

The team crashed HARD over the next three of months. Complaints went from less than 5 a month to over 20 on average, a lot of incorrect payments were doing out, a huge backlog of cases were piling up. Nobody else on the team wanted to help Jane because they knew they’d just end up having to do her job for her for no benefit. The funniest thing was, Alice barely had an inkling there was a problem, beyond me being uncooperative (which she was pretty vindictive about), because she was busy advancing her career and Jane didn’t want to admit how hopelessly out of her depth she was.

Things came to a head when the quarterly reports caused alarm bells to ring amongst the leadership team. An internal audit was organized and a lot of the mistakes that had gone through and a whole bunch of leakage were uncovered. Alice had to go explain herself as to why our performance was suddenly so terrible. At this point she’d finally realized she should have paid more attention to the situation, but unbeknownst to even her, it was too late.

Everything from here on is hearsay, I learned it from a friend who was a team lead of a completely different team, so take it with a grain of salt. Apparently there had been talks about outsourcing teams to India, however Alice’s boss (the one who opened the team lead positions) had been staunchly against it, since it would diminish her fiefdom. The proponents of the outsourcing managed to use our team's horrible quarterly results to justify using the two teams under Alice as a pilot for the outsourcing program.

Quite literally the next day after I’d accepted a position in a different company and was planning on giving notice, we were gathered and informed our teams would be shuttered in 4 months and that we’d be training our replacements in India during that period. I heard from colleagues who stayed till the end that Alice was not offered another position after her teams were made redundant. Not surprising really, open Manager positions and new teams didn’t exactly grow on trees.

Sadly the pilot was considered a success (which honestly I personally find somewhat dubious, but the Indian center was certainly a lot cheaper than us), and I learned via Linkedin about a year and a half later that the entire department had been shuttered. So realistically, the whole thing was probably inevitable, but at the very least Alice could have bought herself an extra year if she'd cared a bit more.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/lala_lovemuffin on 2024-01-18 05:05:32.

So I work at a tattoo/ piercing shop. I’m brand new to this shop and the following happened between my other two coworkers one who is an artist and the other is the piercer. On this particular day it’s only the three of us at the shop, it’s also my first week so I’m just meeting my coworkers. For a long time the shop ran with out a front desk person, they eventually hired someone and just recently decided to only have someone during the weekend. This is all new to everyone (apparently) and I’m also new to the shop so I’m just going with the flow. Unbeknownst to me the piercer and artist had a conversation first thing in the morning (I think I was in my booth and heard of this story later on in the week) Went along the lines of; p: it’s bs that we don’t have a front desk person A: yeah, buts it’s fine we are capable of attending people as they come in P: well it’s not my job to greet people or answer the phone. Don’t expect me to take any calls A: okay, bet. Then don’t.

The rest of the day the artist took the phone and answered every. Single. Call. Now this is a busy street shop, particularly for piercings so majority of the calls are questions related to piercings. So every call the artist took about piercings he’d say “ well that’s a piercer questions and I don’t answer those so I guess you have to come in and find out”. All day long. At some point he had to leave for 15 mins and handed me the phone giving me specific introductions to not answer anything about piercings. I was like “okay???“ but did what I was told.lol I found it strange but also didn’t question it. The piercer just sat in his station the entire day and sulked. The next day, the owner was in and the piercer had a 180 change in attitude about answering the phone and not having a receptionist. He started answering calls lol

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ExoticEquipments on 2024-01-18 02:48:24.

Just quick disclaimer.

This is a burneraccount, because my real account gives away where in from and who I am and if anybody i know see this post, i will be easily recognisable.

So this started some time back.

I got fired from my job due to an injury, and had to be hospitalised for a significant time.

In my contract it stated that if had more than xxx amount of sick days in a 12 month period, i could get my contract terminated with 1 month notice

So that happened and of cause I contacted my union. They told me it was a legal termination, but they asked about a specific part of my contract which was about my commission.

Turns out I've missed out on some special commission during my employment and totally missed it when I read my contract when I got employed (Can't really get closer to which kind of commission due to my anonymity)

My union advised me to contact the boss, show him the part of my contract, and proff of the missing comission and try to get a settlement. I was looking for what is equivalent to 3000€

I went to see my boss, and started with a nice chat. After about 10 mins.i brought up the issue, and showed him my contract and showed him that I've never gotten the commission stated in the contract.

My boss told me straight up to contact his lawyers, and that we were done talking and told me to leave

Cue malicious compliance...

I went home, looked every paycheck through and set up a meeting with a lawyer.

We found a lot of small mistakes on my paychecks and summed it all up.

We sent an official letter to his lawyers, and got a answer from them a few days later. Now he was willing to settle for first amount (equivalent to 3000€) i smiled and laughed.

No can do Mr. Boss man. Not anymore. Now I want the full amount. Which is equivalent to 10.000€ + pension + 15% in damages + all the legal fees. And I have proof of everything to back up my claim

Due date of the court. And guess what. He lost big time.

I've now planned a nice vacation and still have more money than I asked for in the first place.

EDIT: Spelling

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/BILLERGIRLBITCH on 2024-01-13 20:36:22.

Back on February 23, 2014 (Sunday) I was driving home from going clothes shopping for my new job I was starting in a week when my car literally caught on fire with me and my then 4 year old son in it. I had just bought $200 worth of clothes AND my laundry was in my car from the laundromat (including my work shirt and white lab coat)

I had already given my notice to my boss that I was leaving and the next day (Monday) I called in to tell her what had happened and that I would not be in due to smoke inhalation issues and needing to go buy a new car. This was supposed to be my last day. She decides to tell me then that I needed to return my 3 work shirts and both lab coats or I would have the costs garnished from my last check. I told her that they were a pile of ash at the salvage yard. She tells me I have to bring them in.

Ok. Will do. (Insert eye roll and a certain finger flashing from my side of the phone)

Tuesday I walked in with a picture of my laundry basket melted in my car and a Ziplock filled with ashes and mud. I recorded myself giving them to her and telling her again what happened. I got a side-eye and a “WTF?!”

I walked out with a smirk.

*Edited to add that I’ve been at the new job now for 10 years in March. Best move I ever made.

Also, my wages never were garnished. I don’t think they legally could but who knows.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/MEM1911 on 2024-01-13 15:32:12.

years back in my early days of employment early 2000, when I worked on the loading dock, we were expecting a big load of tech and products for the new office layout, some fancy upgrades and big tech sending the latest computers and network equipment, plenty of expensive equipment, and my boss told me to keep the trucks coming and going as smooth as possible, so we had the team on with a few extras, my responsibility was to get the unloaded pallets and stack them out of the way and ready for return to their owner, (company owned pallets have to be returned).

6am I recafenated and started the forklift, and got to stacking the Chep pallets ready for collection, around 8:30 one of the main representatives came in early and parked on the dock, this was a problem, as the trucks were scheduled for roll in at 9am, I asked him to use the main carpark he told me to fuck of and do my job, my job was to make sure the truckies had unobstructed access to the loading dock, I interpreted this as "I am too important, put it somewhere for me" so to keep from damaging the car too much, I slid a Chep pallet under it and got to lifting it and I put the offending BMW up on a stack of pallets, the entire time singing, "nothing lifts like a Crown, for picking it up and putting it down" (we had a crown forklift), the rest of the crew were in stitches laughing.

many of the truckies rolled up and knew immediately I was on duty, those guys always had the best stories from, some of them had a good chuckle and made off with a fresh cup of coffee, the day was going smoothly and we worked that forklift dry, as the last pallet came off the tank on the forklift emptied, as I dropped off the last pallet, well we got that unpacked and used a tug (small electric cart puller) to drag the forklift out of the way.

so I contacted the boss and told him to get me a payment slip to go get the tank filled at a fuel station, he came down with the form and the representative, he was all smiles and thanks for the purchase of bulk computers and hardware, but that changed when he spotted his BMW, he was PISSED, and threated my Job, demanded to my boss I get fired, I just looked at my boss and said, "we should look at the security cameras" when my boss reviewed the security footage, he pointed out that I did ask him to move and park elsewhere, he then looked at me and said, "Thanks for another day, see you tomorrow"

the rep wanted the car down immediately, I said "we can't, the propane tank for the forklift is empty and gas delivery is tomorrow at 6am" my boss handed me the pay slip for refiling the forklift tank, he said to get the gas in the morning.

the rep spat some more obscenities and said this will be tagged onto the bill if his car was damaged, he said it wont take much more than a postage stamp to send his boss the footage of him obstructing their loading dock and then my boss looked at him and tapped the sign that said "this is a loading dock, park at own risk, we are not liable for towing or moving your vehicle - fines apply"

the next day:

after detaching the tank from the forklift, I lugged that bugger to my car and drove off to get it filled, upon returning with a charged tank of liquid work juice for the forklift I started that bugger and got to moving the BMW down from its perch and ready for the rep to collect.

so its 6:30am, and he has not arrived, so I decided to place this thing in the nearest accessible parking spot, ... on the street, ticketed spot, as our carpark was not open yet, it was the only safe place available.

I contacted my boss and told him and said, "call the rep, its ready for collection, its in spot XX, on the parking meter line", he responded with an "ok"

then I got to work sending off the pallets for the day, it was a half shift day for me, now as for Mr representative he did manage to collect his car before it was ticketed for not feeding the meter, and I heard through my boss the rep got chewed out and screwed out of his "sales bonus" for acting like a dick.

fuck I miss that boss.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/nobutsmeow99 on 2024-01-12 16:38:34.

The dictionaries, according to the school district's data, remain locked away. Their exclusion demonstrates the preposterously broad language of HB 1069. Dictionaries do contain descriptions of "sexual conduct." Merriam-Webster, for example, defines sex as a "sexual union involving penetration of the vagina by the penis" or "intercourse (such as anal or oral intercourse) that does not involve penetration of the vagina by the penis." But the idea that we need to exclude dictionaries from schools to protect children defies all logic.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Mysterious_Sir_5304 on 2024-01-12 13:40:07.

My boss wants to be copied into every mail from now on? Yes ma'am! 154 emails so far in the last hour, even when they're not even relevant to her. I.e "hi coworker, can you ring John back in 5 mins please" "Hi coworker, just to let you know maxis had her medication on time today" "Hi coworker, Betty sends her love" It'll only last another hour at most..

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/SnabDedraterEdave on 2024-01-11 18:32:31.

Original Title: When China decided to crack down on Hong Kong's civil liberties and I as a citizen still had to pay my taxes to its oppressive government? No problem, I did it so that I actually made them lose money... LEGALLY

Disclaimer: I have long since moved out of Hong Kong, so I guess I'm more or less safe now to share this story from a few years ago.

tl;dr When the CCP started cracking down on civil liberties in Hong Kong, as a form of passive resistance, I took advantage of a loophole an electronic payment service while paying my taxes to make the CCP-controlled government actually lose money prior to deciding to emigrate.

Anyway, much has been said about the Hong Kong protests of 2019-20, so I'll not elaborate further.

In 2020, when the Chinese Communist Party, unable to control the public anger from the protests and increasing police brutality, decided to use the nuclear option of severely curtailing HK's autonomy and basic civil rights that was promised to its people when the city was handed over to China in 1997, that's when I decided it was time to leave.

But in the meantime, a lot of preparation needed to be made for my exit strategy. I was still in a job and still had to pay my taxes. And there was Covid which further delayed my departure by a few years.

Before I finally emigrated (sometime last year), I needed to maintain as low a profile as possible so me and my family could escape from there safely, so tax evasion was a no-no, as much as I no longer wanted to pay my taxes to pay for the salaries of the intransigent officials that were upping the ante in oppressing my fellow citizens.

Instead, I discovered you could pay taxes electronically using an electronic payment service to pay for almost anything, including taxes. You could pay for stuff via mobile phone or on the internet.

For every transaction made, the vendor will be charged HK$2 by the service company. If you're paying taxes, the vendor would be the government.

Now notice here that they did not state a minimum amount for "every transaction". Meaning that if I pay HK$1, and the payment service charges the government HK$2 "per transaction", the government ends up making a net loss of -HK$1.

If I do it multiple times, the CCP government will lose a lot of money. And the fun thing about that (at least when I did it) it was perfectly legal.

Though the main catch was that the service only lets you do up to 50 transactions a day, amounting to HK$50. The CCP government will still lose HK$100.

But that was not going to stop me from sticking the finger to the CCP. So I diligently paid my taxes, dollar by dollar, day by day, using that electronic payment system. I made sure to set aside about half an hour every day after coming home from work, so I could perform 50 transactions for that day.

I lost count of how many months it took for me to completely clear my taxes for that year using this passive aggressive method, and I fully realize this small resistance would barely dent the CCP government's coffers. At least I sleep in the knowledge that the taxes they use to oppress my fellow Hongkongers will not have come from me, as I refused to pay the CCP a single penny anymore.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ENC_SWDV_Rush on 2024-01-11 11:54:59.

When I was in Jr High many years ago, I was usually a quiet person. We had an older gentlemen as our science teacher. About halfway through the school year, he broke his leg. I think he had been doing some work on his house and fell off a ladder. We got a substitute teacher, a middle aged woman who told us initially she would only be ‘subbing’ for about a week or two.

The class was usually not too bad, but one day while she was trying to lecture, people weren’t really listening and it was getting a little bit louder. She didn’t really handle it well and started screaming at the whole class and ranting about our behavior and disrespect. She finally ended with “And if you don’t like it – you can just leave!”

Now I had been sitting quietly the whole time, but her yelling was quite offsetting for me. I listened to her whole rant and kind of took it personally although I knew I shouldn’t. It just kind of set me off,… so as soon as she shrieked out that last part of “you can just leave!” I stood up forcefully. It pushed my chair back about 4 feet (I was in the back of the room,) my chair scraped loudly and made that metallic sound. When I stood up, the whole class turned around and everyone just stared at me. The substitute and I just stared at each other for a few seconds – her mouth was open and then I just walked out slamming the door behind me.

I called her bluff,…

I guess I have a bit of a rebellious streak in me that doesn’t come out all the time, but something about her yelling and losing it in front of the class rubbed me the wrong way and brought it out in me at that moment. I took a minute, walked over and got a drink of water at the fountain then casually walked back in the classroom. She asked where I went – very quietly, and I told her I was thirsty and wanted a drink of water. The whole class was watching when I came back in but after I returned, the rest of the class went fine. She didn’t send me to the principals office, which I fully expected. She kept teaching the rest of the semester because the injury to our teacher was worse than they thought. She never yelled at the class again or made any more ultimatums. She and I never brought it up again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Excelsio_Sempra on 2024-01-11 05:54:59.

Apparently DeSantis passed a law that forced schools(?) to remove books with sexual content from their shelves. So the librarians have decided to remove even dictionaries to comply with the law fully.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/MS822 on 2024-01-11 03:06:57.

Original Title: No OT

My friend isn't a redditor, so she told me to tell. There's a remodel and renovation at her store. We live in a very small town in the southern USA. All the new equipment, fixtures, etc are on the sidewalk and out front. The temps spent the day moving stock to the storage unit in the parking lot. At 4, the store manager ( my buddy R) asked the district manager about the new stuff and where to put it in the store for the night. District manager said that it's a small southern beach town and it'll be safe overnight. He plans to work everyone up to clock out on removal of stock. 5pm, and no overtime. So at 6:15 the looters got everything and I had the best seat for it! The district manager saw it on the camera but by the time he got back to the store, it was picked cleaner than a tweaker's mirror! My friend said "I hated that shit anyway"

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/GNU_PTerry on 2024-01-11 02:47:16.

A couple of years ago I was working with a really obnoxious co-worker. He was super lazy, always complaining, extremely unmotivated to do anything actually related to his job, very motivated to mess around at any given opportunity.

Anyway, this one night I was doing the big closing mop. At my store this meant filling a bucket full of water/floor cleaner, splashing it all over the store, scrubbing over with a hard brush and vacuuming everything with a wet vac. Clean, fast and effective.

So I get around to the front counter and there he is, just standing in the middle of my path with a shit-eating grin on his face.

I'm like "Bro, can you move?"

"Nah."

"Seriously. I need to get this done fast."

"Yeah, nah."

"Dude, you don't move, Imma dump water all over you."

"Go on then. I dare you!"

Okay. One thing about me is I never make a threat I won't follow through. I immediately pour what's left in my bucket directly into his sneakers. He shrieks and jumps out my way. He spends the next hour complaining that his socks are full of water.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ThePepsiDuck on 2024-01-10 19:59:58.

So, when I was young (around 11) me and my family went to the beach. My dad said that if we went to swim, I had to stay with my sister, since I could barely swim. When we went into the water, my sister swam into a really deep area that I couldn't go to, so I wasn't allowed in the water. When my sister came back, she was basically "Oh YoU cAn SwIm, It'S oKaY! JuSt GeT iN tHe WaTeR!" So, later on, I went into the water, specifically under the pier (The pier was significantly deeper than the rest of the water) my sister started noticing that I was literally drowning and trying to fight back against some fat waves (they weren't giant, but for an 11 year old, it was basically a fast way to die). So she swam over to try and help me and we both basically started drowning together. The only reason we didn't drown was because we had floaties that were tied to our wrists. We were basically just 2 kids crying, going under the water for like 30secs-1min at a time, then coming back up for two seconds. Eventually some guy that had a surf board (I think) came and helped us, by telling us to grab his board while pulling it back, but then I accidently let go and started drowning again, and they didn't notice until they were like 5 ft away, and had to go back to get me. When we got back to land, my sister got an earful from my dad. Even though I intentionally did that, I'm pretty sure that whole experiance is why I have to spend 10 mins convincing myself to get in the bath, before just draining the water and taking a shower instead.

(Sorry if my English/grammar is bad, I'm not good with English)

Edit: My sister wasn't pissed at me because she regularly chased me w/ a knife :)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/eveofmilady on 2024-01-10 19:55:39.

This happened several years ago back when i was part of a christian cult church and in leadership also im writing this on mobile so sorry if it looks funky. Anyways onto the story: back when i was 22 and a young, impressionable, young adult i was part of the media team for this church. we were responsible for creating videos and flyers as well as posting on social media and taking pictures etc . this was volunteer work but the pastor, we’ll call him pastor corruption, was an anal, cold hearted, dictator of the religious institution who would often give us last minute projects that would keep us up all night in order to make a video to play during service the next day. We averaged 3-5 hours of sleep per night, but this was while i was in school so during this time in order to stay on top of my homework and other projects i would average closer to 2-3 hours per night and tbh i’m not sure how i survived with only having occasional bouts of suicidal ideation and paranoia or delusions. pastor corruption loved money, he had a giant, six bedroom house for himself and his wife only complete with heated driveways and the latest model cadillac which sat atop of said driveway. the church building itself was overinflated which sat close to 1000 but maybe had a congregation of only 400 or so. more than pastor corruption loved money, he loved other people’s money. 70% of the sermons were regarding how you needed to give the shirt off your back to the church or else you didn’t love god and were going to hell, which is ironic considering that their accountant had been caught embezzling funds in the past. This went beyond ‘tithes’ which was 10% of what you make, and included pledges, fundraisers, giving for church events, and going to retreats that made a profit from the attendees. pastor corruption and his pack of goons (aka associate pastors), who also shamed you for not giving money and being poor, would openly brag about how god blessed them after these rounds of extortion.

Well, one day, it is near pastor corruption’s birthday and his pack of goons decided that the pastor’s car from last year’s model was too old and he needed a brand new car. they took a pledge from all the ministry departments to pay for said car. the minimum pledge you were allowed to make was $300 and the media team was no exception. me, being a broke college kid with a minimum wage part time job, decided that was impossible and i just wasn’t going to pledge anything. this led to several hour long lectures and shaming sessions about how i was seen as a leader (i wasn’t seen at all since i was always working behind the scenes LOL) and i needed to set an example. finally i got fed up and worn down to the point i confessed that i couldn’t pledge because that would be taking all my rent money. i lived with some other ‘leaders’ from the church at the time and shared a room with another girl. $300 doesn’t seem like a lot now but at the time for not even having my own space or a place for my bed this was highway robbery, especially for a broke college kid. A girl who lived with me, who also was lecturing me, told me just pledge the money anyway and i can pay rent later. welp i was coerced into giving the $300 for pastor corruption’s stupid car and now he had two brand new cadillacs sitting in his heated driveway.

Three days after rent was due, the girl who lectured me about pledging comes up and asks me for the rent money. the conversation basically goes like this:

“i don’t have it yet”

“what do you mean you don’t have it? i gave you three extra days to figure out something”

“what am i supposed to do? pull it out of thin air?”

“maybe you should be more responsible with your spending”

“i have spent $2.16 on myself in the last three weeks and it was to get a coffee so i don’t crash my car while driving because of a lack of sleep…”

“i’ll give you until the end of this week but you can’t expect us to cover you any longer than that, you are being extremely selfish”

now, on top of worrying about juggling projects between school and the church, i need to worry about not getting evicted. then i come up with a plan, ill just pawn my laptop. my laptop was brand new, since it had just come out recently and i decided to splurge and buy the latest model when my last 6 year old laptop took a dump on me a few months before. i used it for schoolwork but they had labs i could use on campus that would help me get by. however the other thing i used it for was media projects for the church. you know how pastor corruption likes money? well he didn’t like spending money, so the media team had a thirteen year old desktop that was overloaded with files which severely slowed down its already laggy performance and caused it to take several hours to render videos, if they didn’t fail or corrupt. when i had gotten my laptop, it was fairly decent at rendering large video files in under ten minutes and had amazing clarity and graphics, so they had convinced me to switch to using my laptop for all things media related rather than using the decade old desktop. i didn’t mind because it didn’t interfere with my schoolwork that much, but all the templates for social media and other video and files were on my laptop now, meaning every week i was responsible for getting everything updated and handing off the final version of the file to the head of the media team. the girls i lived with would help me edit these files when we were home and were the leaders of the media team. this means that all the recent files of projects they needed were on my laptop and no backups were made on the church owned desktop. I pawned my laptop, got the rent money, and paid the leader without saying anything about how i managed to get the money in a single day. Saturday night rolls around which is usually when we worked on the video files we needed for the next day, and they ask me where my laptop is so we can get started

“i don’t have it”

“where is it?”

“i pawned it”

“…what?”

“i pawned it”

“why?!”

“i needed to pay you rent, i had no other way to get you the money. i couldn’t afford the pledge, but you graciously gave me an extra three days to pay it and make up for my rent i used to pay for the pledge. this is one of the most valuable items i own so i figured it was the quickest way to repay you.”

at this point they start freaking out, they want to go get the laptop out right then, but the pawn shop was closed. so they rush to the church and fire up the dino desktop and desperately try to recreate the videos we needed from scratch, however they have no backups since mine was being exclusively used, and the programs and versions that i was using vs what the dino had was completely different (think adobe cc vs final cut pro). in the end, we didn’t have anything ready in time for service that sunday morning and the entire media team got yelled at by pastor corruption. i got double yelled at by the leaders on the media team but it was worth it to see them panic. several months later i ended up leaving the church altogether and was nice enough to give them all the files of stuff i had on my laptop. my only regret is being so amicable when i left because fuck that place and fuck pastor corruption. however last i heard most of the people i knew there have left and the church has downsized considerably and moved buildings. i assume they never got a new desktop for the media team after i left. this is one of the many outrageous aspects of this church but it made me never want to deal with organized religion again and now i’m mostly agnostic