Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Icy-Computer-Poop on 2025-06-08 11:35:47+00:00.

Back in the 90s I was in college, struggling to pay my bills and attend classes. McDonald's had a promotion at the time, buy a Big Mac for only 25 cents! I thought this was a great way to extend my grocery money, I'd buy 25 Big Macs, freeze them, and eat them once a day for lunch.

I pulled up to the drive through and ordered 25 Big Macs. There was a pause, then a concerned tone saying "Hold on a second" and then a brief delay. The window jockey came back and said "Sorry, there's a max of 5 Big Macs per order".

"Well then," I replied, "You can ring it in as 5 separate orders, or you can just sell me 5 and I can drive around the drive-thru 4 more times. Your call."

Another brief pause.

"That'll be 7 dollars and 19 cents, please drive thru".

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/I_IdentifyAsAstartes on 2025-06-08 04:36:01+00:00.

A little over a decade ago, I worked up in the oil patch in Northern Canada on different IT contracts.

The current contract I was on was maintaining virtual meeting rooms. The oil company had decided that if you didn't need to be on site, they would move your job south and pay you 25 to 50 % less. When you needed to meet with people on site, you'd book a meeting and all is golden.

The IT company I was with was amazing, but they lost the contract to an international IT company "A", servicing oil company "B".

I was one of the fortunate few that got a job with IT company A; which was so unbelievably stupid. Most of the rest of the talent that had been working IT under contracting companies for 10 plus years took a walk.

I think the management literally sat down and said "What's the absolute worst way we can mess things up", and then they did that. They hired a bunch of fresh out of college or unqualified people and within a few months our ticket count had gone from averaging around 50 at any given time to well over 600 and growing with no end in site.

This is all well and good, and we got chewed out for the ticket count being high, we got chewed out for bringing it down low, because our ticket closure rates weren't similar, it didn't really matter; good, bad, we got chewed out. Company A was hemorrhaging money to Company B. Like every ticket outside of the allowed failures that was a failure and not resolved was a fine, and there were multiple sites.

Basically IT company A ended up paying Oil company B to do IT for them. Most salaried oil company employee who had computer problems took weeks or months to get problems solved, but they were salaried and it didn't affect oil coming out of the ground, so it didn't matter.

Except for the meeting rooms.

Managers couldn't have virtual meetings with staff, things were getting delayed, and it was going to affect oil coming out of the ground, so it was a problem.

The 12 of us working there were given full time work and 6 vehicles. The supervisor took one for himself for driving too and from town and wouldn't let anyone use it during the day, so that left 5 vehicles.

It used to be that we were dedicated to a specific type of work, but now everyone did everything, and we were expected to just "Check the meeting rooms" as we drove by, or "if we had a ticket in that building". So all the meeting room maintainance was just not being done and the new guys that would get a ticket to facilitate a virtual meeting of the vice presidents, directors, etc... of the oil company would just not show up and the meeting would fail.

During this time I had been loudly and constantly complaining about our inability to "check meeting rooms in buildings that we don't have tickets for when we don't have a vehicle to get there anyways", a coworker told me that one of IT company A's managers had come North to review the situation, was at lunch, saw one of my emails, said "I'm not reading that", tossed down his phone and ate his lunch. So I just gave up, gave in, and did what I was told.

I had been busting my ass to keep everything working for all the execs of oil company B for months, and it was time to "cue malicious compliance".

There was a building in town with meeting rooms, our building on site was around 45 minutes North. Every morning, rather than being on site and working at 7, I would be at the town building at 8, checking a meeting room, stocking it with supplies, and fxing problems; except I wasn't because it was in use and I couldn't get in. So I would drive North and get to our building around 9 and start my day, do a few tickets, be one of the only ones that the oil execs saw that could actually make meetings run successfully, and then leave at 2 to go check a meeting room I couldn't get into, and then go home.

This lasted about a month before the oil execs called in my supervisor, manager, and manager's manager and said something along the lines of "Put I_IdentifyAsAstartes on doing just meeting rooms and meetings".

I got called into a meeting with my supervisor, most of my other work was taken away, I was given my own vehicle, and I was told to check all the meeting rooms every week (a 4 person job) and to take care of all of the exec meetings. I told my supervisor that it wasn't physically possible for me to be in 3 or 4 places at once to check all the meeting rooms, he didn't care, he didn't care how I did it, just get it done.

So I got it done.

Every time we checked a meeting room, we had to scan a QR code with a company phone that we would then export into Exel and submit as the rooms we checked. Every minute of every day I clicked the scan button and scanned nothing. At the end of the week I would export to Exel, then get the list of all the room codes, randomise them, paste them in, save, and submit.

Click I'm in town checking a room. 1 minute later Click I'm 30 kilometers North. 1 minute later Click I'm 70 kilometers across the river etc...

I breezed through rest of my stay there, attending exec meetings and keeping them happy, starting late and ending early, with my own dedicate vehicle. I applied for a new job, was approved, and just had to wait on the background check; my start date was given at about 6 months out and I was set.

I planned a 3 week vacation at IT company A, months in advance, and then on my last day before vacation, I handed in my three weeks notice and left.

I had made some good friends there, I kept getting invited to the social events for some time, and my understanding from the new people is that they ended up hiring more people, had put 4 people on meeting rooms, and still couldn't get the work done (because no one ever bothered to learn it). Eventually the IT company lost the contract.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Hittokiri_Battousai on 2025-06-08 03:41:27+00:00.

Went to asian grocery store on the weekend to buy a grocery and i got $70 cash which i want to spend before using my credit card because i got 2% off for using cash. so went to the grocery store did some shopping and when i brought my item to the cashier and told her i would like to pay cash and the rest with credit card. Basically mixed payment

My shopping came back at $84 and i was told mixed billing is not available on weekend, confuse didnt ask why so, i told her sure, cancel some item and ill put it back. My total became $67 including 2% discount.

I took the rest of the item, instead of putting them back, i walk 1 turn around the shelf back to the cashier again and said “Hi there, how you doing? Thats all for today” she looked at me speechless.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Maleficent_Froyo7336 on 2025-06-07 18:08:46+00:00.

This happened ages ago in high school. I was talking about it recently with someone and thought you all might get a chuckle.

When I was 16 we moved across the country from the North to the South. New school, new culture, new friends. The friend group I ended up fitting into had a girl who allowed others to treat her badly because she wanted attention. An actual example was she allowed a boy to draw a target on her forehead and spit spitballs at it. Wild.

We'll call this girl Lana.

I was always nice to Lana and sympathetic when she'd get angry with people for going whatever she considered too far. I'd try to tell her that she needed to establish boundaries, but she'd go right back to letting people walk all over her.

One day, I was on my way to the trashcan when I noticed Lana had a balled up piece of paper on her desk. I said, "Want me to throw that away for you?" She said yes and it was no skin off my nose, I was already on my way to the trash. I like being helpful, but that doesn't mean I'm a pushover. I'm the youngest sibling and only girl of four kids.

That moment must have made her think she could climb up the social totem pole by stepping on me, because later during study time while the teacher was out, Lana looked at my best friend (we'll call her Amanda) and said, "Hey, Amanda. Watch this. Maleficent Froyo is my bitch."

She looked me dead in the eye, dropped her binder on the floor and said, "Pick it up." I was flabbergasted.

Amanda looked at me and said, "Froyo, you don't have to pick it up."

I'm not ignoring this. I've been openly disrespected in front of the whole class. Lana, like me was really short. I had maybe an inch on her and it gave me a beautiful idea.

I told Amanda, "No, it's fine. I'll pick it up."

Lana looked so cocky when I said this, but that was cool. She wouldn't be feeling cocky for long. At the back of the classroom along the side wall were two tall school library style bookcases. I picked up the binder, walked right past Lana's out stretched hand, snagged a chair, climbed it and with the tips of my fingers barely managed to push it on top of the bookshelf. Which meant she wasn't getting that down without help.

Amanda was laughing her ass off when I climbed down and I said to Lana, "There. I picked it UP."

Lana immediately turned to a boy in our class, we'll name him Chris, and whined to him to get it for her. Bonus point, she needed it for our next class lol

I looked at Chris and said, "Chris. I've always been nice to you. This is between me and Lana. She disrespected me and all I ask is that you stay out of it." He apologized to Lana and stayed in his seat.

I let her whine for a bit and when she finally apologized, I said, "I'm more than willing to help you if you need help, but that doesn't make me your bitch. It makes me a good friend. So be a good friend back and treat me nicely." Then I told Chris if he wanted to help her get it down, I was cool with it.

She never tried that on me again lol

TLDR: friend called me her bitch in front of everyone and told me to pick up her dropped binder. So I did and put it way out of her reach on top of a bookshelf.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/OkMarzipan3163 on 2025-06-07 15:54:58+00:00.

I accumulate annual leave at a certain number of hours/week, and after one has accumulated 480hrs, you lose any leave until you bring the balance under 480.

I'd take 3hrs of leave a week to keep just under 480, and it would just bug my boss that someone would need/want to do that.

So, he heads over to HR to explain the situation. They tell him the official policy is that leave is to be taken in full day increments. They also tell him that we shouldn't be changing our timesheets to reflect the hours worked (since we're all salary), so just go ahead and approve them as is, unless we have holiday to put down. He says the idea behind this is that since we're salary, the company knows well have heavy weeks and lighter weeeks, and it'll be a wash in the end.

Ok, so I've been losing my 3hrs of leave a week, but I haven't worked a full week in months. At most I've put in 30hrs. I just try to be efficient with my time to make it work. Oftentimes, I'll work 1hr and call it a day.

Took a 5 minute work call while on holiday? Thanks for keeping me from burning a full day of leave!

I thought the other way was more honest to the company, but they schooled me on how real business works.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/judashpeters on 2025-06-07 12:02:08+00:00.

I remembered this event from my childhood recently. I was like... 6 maybe?

I did something "bad" and my mom punoshed me by making me sit on a chair in the kitchen as some cool down time or something.

I remember feeling like I was wronged somehow and Ill make her feel sorry she punished me.

So I tried really hard and eventually peed my pants because she told me to "not move!"

I guess it worked. She let me get up and was apologizing a lot. I finally told her about it last night but she didnt rememeber. I was crying laughing because it seems like such a shitty thing for a kid to do. Sorry mom!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Secure-Corner-2096 on 2025-06-07 08:16:22+00:00.

Many years ago, after decades of saving, my husband and I were doing well enough to finally build our dream home. After we moved in, we still had to have our yard leveled and sodded and arranged it early the next spring. That night, I was out watering the backyard sod when I saw my neighbours wife, Chris, using a measuring tape between our homes. I asked her if everything was okay and she said that we had sodded a section of their yard. I told her we had followed the sticks that the builder had left. She said the builders must have screwed up and rudely insisted that we had stolen part of their yard.

Not wanting to have an ongoing beef with her and her husband, Keith, we agreed to have our property re-surveyed. When we did, we got one hell of a surprise. The actual property line wasn’t halfway between our two houses as we believed, it was about a foot and a half away from the side of their house. They owned a construction company and had built their house too close to the property line. This was an insane mistake for a professional!

Still wanting to be good neighbours, we offered to split the cost and labour of a “good neighbour” fence using one of the 4 accepted fence styles allowed. My husband kept asking Keith when he wanted to start but he always had one excuse after another. Then Keith rudely told Dan to stop bothering him. Dan was furious. He bought all the materials and built the fence himself. He had been planning to put the fence halfway between our houses but our neighbour was so rude that Dan built the fence just inside our property line making the neighbours house look terrible.

The neighbours husband came over pissed as hell but Dan reminded him that HE and his wife wanted a new property survey and HE had put off the fence for months. Our fence was magnificent, because Dan was a carpenter and I’m a great painter. The neighbours husband built a fence next to ours but it was ugly, badly built and not one of the approved designs. He was forced to tear it down later.

Edit: Changed names for privacy

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/BikerJedi on 2025-06-07 01:34:50+00:00.

I first wrote this four years ago for this sub, when a lot of you enjoyed it. I've re-written and updated/expanded it and corrected some mistakes. Enjoy. This took place around December 1992-January 1993.

I got a job as a security guard after leaving the Army, because I wasn't qualified to do much else, and I hadn't decided if I was going to college yet or not. The company refused to pay very much so they had high turnover. Because of the turnover, they had small raises built in at 90 days, six months and a year as an incentive to stay on.

I needed a job, and until I had my shit together, this would do. So I showed up and worked. My one year anniversary rolls around and I don't see my 50 cents an hour raise in my paycheck, but something more like 35 cents. So I called the boss. My three and sixth month raises had been delivered with no issues, so I was surprised my one year anniversary hadn't shown up.

Supposedly they wanted to give all employees a raise, so they did. And yes, I got a small raise, along with all the other guards - a few hundred of us. It was something like 35 cents an hour for each of us. Ok, fine, but what about my promised 50 cents an hour? As far as I was concerned, this 35 cents an hour was something you initiated, after promising me more, so this is bonus.

When I called the manager, I was told I wasn't going to get a raise for my one year raise because, "You just got a raise. No one gets two raises at once. If your pay raise isn't enough, quit." In other words, they were trying to claim a 35 cent an hour raise for every employee somehow was over-riding the fact that I was owed an additional 50 cent an hour longevity raise. I'm sure there were others caught up like that.

Fine. They want to give me 35 cents an hour of a raise and tell me that is equal to the 85 cents an hour? I'll find something better.

I spent the next week calling in sick and showing up late while job hunting. Called the office at the end of my last day, and told them I was done and they could find someone else, giving them no notice at all. Panic mode ensued. Everyone else was at 40 hours for the week and they hated paying overtime. One of the salaried managers had to cover for me.

They told me to quit, so I did.

I'm a teacher now, near retirement. My raises are still shit. But at least I can (barely) live off of it and I have a (shitty) union for now, which is more than I had then. A few more cents an hour and they could have kept me as a wage slave. Crazy that I would even consider it now, looking back on it.

At least I enjoy my job today, as crazy as the kids are.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/RelativeJellyfish679 on 2025-06-07 01:16:21+00:00.

I was working at an organization where part of my job was organizing thousands of high quality photos of students’ artworks from the main computer I worked on, and transfer them to a network server. The goal was to make high quality images accessible to other staff remotely.

To do it correctly, the process was time consuming. It involved making medium resolution JPGs from hi-res Photoshop files (that part was easy to do via batch processing).

The time consuming part was each image needed to be individually labeled with specific details about the artwork and its creator, dimensions etc. My department manager had emphasized the importance of this task, as these labeled images were important for various organizational needs for other staff.

But my new (ish) supervisor Karen (not her real name) was a major micromanager and said, “Why are you spending so much time on this project? I only want you to work on this task in the last 30 minutes of your shift.”

I tried to convince her it wasn't an efficient use of my time, arguing that flexibility in my workflow was necessary. I explained that on many days, this task would be an ideal "fill-in" activity, allowing me to stay productive during otherwise slow periods.

“Nope, just do it in the last 30 minutes of your shift.”

“Ok you got it.”

Cue malicious compliance.

On some days there were literally no other productive tasks to carry on with. I could have made great progress on that task, but nope, I would sit there trying to look busy or would walk around the campus with a few sheets of paper in hand.

I would try to invent ways to be/look productive, but sadly, in actual fact, I was doing very little at all. This went on for months, when one day I had a call from the Dept Manager asking "Why hasn’t this project been completed yet?"

“I’ve been specifically instructed by Karen not to spend any time on this task – except for the last 30 minutes of my shift."

Karen didn’t stay with the organization for much longer after that.

edit: punctuation, grammar, spelling

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/FrequentSubstance353 on 2025-06-06 23:02:06+00:00.

Our building has a community pool (we just signed a lease a few months ago), and they just opened it up for the season a couple weeks ago they. With our toddler around I thought it would be perfect free activity to enjoy the sun. Well after looking for our pool passes and asking our landlord, we realized they gave us 2 visitor parking passes and 0 pool passes. (Supposed to have 1 visitor parking passes and 4 pool passes). We told our landlord the 2 items we got given, and asked for the pool passes fee to get waived. Instead they sent a picture of the lease, with our signature, saying 4 pool passes($25) x 1 visitor parking pass($150). I sent them a message saying “No worries! We will pay the $25. Per our lease, we only have 1 visitor parking pass then. Let me know when we can pick up our pool passes. Have a good rest of your day”

Them trying to save $25 and being petty resulted in them throwing away $150 lol.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ChargePlane563 on 2025-06-06 21:18:21+00:00.

I work in health care so if someone call sick, it is almost mandatory that they have to be replaced.

I work the night shift and I don't live far from work. It happened two time that when I woke up to get to work, I just don't feel well and that I won't be able to do my job properly. I didn't do it on purpose, I just don't know I will call sick until I wake up, which is about 1h before the night shift start.

We have a policy that if someone call sick less than 2h before their shift starts, they get the code "unauthorized absence". It doesn't mean anything but we can get in trouble for it and it leaves a bad note in the employee files.

Well, one day I did show up to work to not get another unauthorized absence and also I really thought I could get through my shift. Less than one hour in my shift, a colleague says to me that I don't look well and that I should go back home. My temperature was 39°C. So we called my superiors saying I'm too sick and can't work, so they don't have a choice, they let me go home.

FYI, If you get sick during a shift, the code on the schedule is "sick" from the time you leave work.

Now, TRY to find a replacement for me at 1 am, when the evening shift already left and most people sleeps at that time. The floor where I work has priority for staffing, so they NEED to replace me. So after I left, the superior had to move an employee from another department and the floor they moved her from stayed understaffed for the night.

My colleague knew I didn't call sick before because I didn't want to get an "unauthorized absence" so she told the superior how stupid that rule of calling sick 2h before the shift start, that doesn't make any sense, as if we know in advance that we are sick while we're sleeping. Also, what if an accident happens while we're on the way to work?

I guess they got a meeting or something because in the following weeks, I noticed in my schedule that the two "unauthorized absence" code from the last few months were replaced with "sick". What a coincidence.

I guess that it's better calling off last minute before a shift than in the beggining if it. Especially for the graveyard shift where finding a replacement is harder.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Diss1dent on 2025-06-06 20:51:14+00:00.

A slight note: This occurred some years ago. I had a beer today with an old colleague who reminded me about this story.

**

At the time, I was already looking for another position, working for a smaller consulting firm. The workplace had gotten increasingly toxic, mostly thanks to a manager who thought condescension was a leadership style. So I wasn’t exactly invested in going above and beyond anymore — just doing my job, keeping receipts, and planning my exit.

There was this one process that had always bugged me — manually entering identical data into two different internal systems that don’t talk to each other. This only occurred when working on one specific type of client work. Completely redundant. Easily automatable. In any normal setting, I would’ve raised it immediately and pushed for a fix.

But here? I knew better. I waited a few weeks, made sure it was a repeat pattern, and then casually brought it up in a team meeting:

“Hey, just noticing that I’m spending 10–15 minutes per entry copying the same data between platforms. Hour per week. Feels like a time sink — should we look at streamlining it?”

Her answer? “That’s your job. If you can’t handle it, maybe this role isn’t a good fit.”

Got it. Loud and clear.

So I kept doing it. No automation. No shortcuts. Just religiously entered everything by hand, tracked my time, and stayed quiet.

End of the month rolls around, and leadership gets the usual KPI report — one of which is “Time Spent on Non-Value Tasks.” Most team members clock maybe 4–5 hours.

Me? 20 hours.

Suddenly it’s a fire drill. Execs are asking why one person is tanking the report. My manager tries to throw shade, saying I “didn’t flag the inefficiency.” So I politely forward the Slack thread with her quote and timestamp.

Didn’t get an apology. But funny enough, the process was quietly changed apparently two days later.

Also funny? I accepted a job offer the next month.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Otherwise-Pirate6839 on 2025-06-06 20:28:50+00:00.

Many years ago when I lived with my parents, my mom decided to task my sister and me with additional chores around the house. Understandable. We were entering the pre-teen and teenage years so helping around the house is expected.

I got tasked with trash duty. Essentially empty out all the small trashbins into a larger one, and then take out that trashbag. All was well until one Saturday when my mom complained about why I hadn’t emptied the trashbins. I said I had, and she pointed to the one in her bathroom where a single bath tissue was in the bag. She demanded that the bags had to be empty and that next time it happened she would have me empty all the trashbags again. I asked “even if I’ve already done it and the bags are empty?” She said “yes, even if the bags are empty”. Duly noted.

A few weeks later, after I had emptied the bags, looks like my sister decided to use the bathroom and left some Qtips in the trashbin bag. Again, my mom burst out asking why I hadn’t emptied the bins and pointed to hers. So I got up and grabbed every single bin and took the bag.

She asked “why are you throwing away empty bags?” I replied: “because apparently I haven’t done my job well enough and per your instructions, I have to do it all over again even if the bags are empty”.

Needless to say, she loosened up afterward and bins were emptied as needed rather than at a set time; most of all, a single sheet or a Qtip wasn’t grounds for needing to take out the trash again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/mossybeard on 2025-06-06 18:20:58+00:00.

https://imgur.com/UkrS0j0

The above image is the front page of this sub right now, which is just a bunch of bot generated bullshit that y'all keep upvoting. Or maybe bots do that too! but it's getting ridiculous. Coworker/boss wanted me to do something differently. I did that for a while, something bad happened, everyone clapped. This will probably get taken down.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Independentvoter40 on 2025-06-06 16:55:23+00:00.

This happened last year. I work for a small startup company, a good company with good leadership. However, like any startup, we are full of ideas but low on process. As we grew our client base, we needed to give small credits (typically rounding errors less than $10). At this time, I was the Customer Service Manager. I had filled out feature change requests in our homegrown system to give our team the ability to process these credits within our system. Those had been ignored due to the mountain of other things our internal software team was behind on.

I was told that this wasn't a pressing concern and that, unless the client requested it, I should use a spreadsheet so they could do them all at once. I knew if done this way that it would take a good year for us to tackle this, furthermore, our clients would be upset. Somehow :), all the clients requested every single credit right away. Que in our team putting in a ticket for every single credit request the day of to get processed ASAP. We only had one billing software guy who could handle it (nice guy BTW). Due to his title and my knowing the industry, this guy makes 200k+ annually, so daily he would have to process $2-$5 credits manually. Remember that he and his team had nothing in the system to do this, so when I say manually, this involves him coding each one. It didn't take long for a process/button that we could click to credit on our side.

Some of the people I still hired work there (I've moved teams since I have been promoted a couple of times) and we were just joking about it earlier this week. Brings a smile to my face every time I think about. Not only due to "Malicious Compliance" but more importantly, I do like the company, and I figured this was the most effective way of forcing a spotlight on something that needed to change.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Big-Resident-2616 on 2025-06-06 16:53:40+00:00.

I used to cover for my supervisor all the time last minute callouts, staying late, sometimes full double shifts, just tried to be helpful. one morning I clocked in at 9:01 instead of 9:00 she wrote me up, no heads up, just straight to HR like i was some kind of problem.

So next time she didn’t show for her closing shift (which happened a lot), I just…let at 5 told the manager that was my schedule time and went home. The place was chaos, phone rings, costumers waiting, no one to close she called later asking why I didn’t stay, I said “figured you’d want me to be on time”

funny thing, she hasn’t asked me to cover since.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/AshleeAurora on 2025-06-06 16:30:57+00:00.

You ever work with someone who takes their job way too seriously? Yeah. I do. Her name is Angela. And last week, she nearly sent the entire office to jail.

It started when our manager told her, half-joking, “If it’s in the policy manual, just do it.” Angela took that as a sacred vow.

Next thing we know, she’s combing through the ancient compliance binder like it’s the Constitution. Finds a dusty rule that says we need a licensed export officer to ship international packages.

Mind you, we haven’t had one since four years ago

So what does Angela do? Does she ask someone? Nope. Does she use common sense? Not a chance. Instead, she reports the shipment to U.S. Customs ,because “technically, we’re in violation.”

The shipment? Batteries. To Dubai. Worth six figures. By noon, federal agents are at our office asking questions like we’re in an episode of Narcos.

Our boss looked like he aged ten years. I started mentally prepping for orange jumpsuits. Angela? Just sipping coffee like, “I was following protocol.”

So now I’ve got trust issues, chest pain, and a newfound fear of office manuals.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/-AlternativeRings- on 2025-06-06 15:15:59+00:00.

I handle purchasing at a mid-size company. nothing fancy, we used to grab stuff local. Way cheaper, way faster. Then the new director comes in and tells everyone, “from now on, only use the approved vendor list.” Alright, not my hill to die on. so next time someone needs a simple cable, I ordered it from the list. cost us $160 instead of $40. took 9 days to show up.

Projects got delayed, budgets got thrown off, people started complaining. someone asked me what changed and i just said “I don’t know, just following the approved list like he said” couple weeks later, we quietly went back to buying local. He still cc’s me on emails…but hasn’t really talked to me since.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/IntelligentKitchen77 on 2025-06-06 15:01:46+00:00.

I work in internal IT support for a midsize firm. Our new Director of Compliance is extremely paranoid about cybersecurity. One morning, she issued a blanket policy: “All internal emails must be in plain text only. No HTML, no links, no formatting, no embedded images.”

I warned her this would make our automated reports unreadable, our internal ticketing system buggy, and would break calendar invites. She snapped: “Security takes precedence. Make it work.”

You got it.

I reconfigured our team’s email to use only plain text. The next day, her daily system reports came in looking like this:

yaml CopyEdit

Ticket #2932 User: jsmith Issue: cannot login Resolution: password reset

Status: closed

Ticket #2933 User: [REDACTED] Issue: [REDACTED] Status: [REDACTED]

Why redacted? Because she blocked all formatting and image links — including our redaction tool which used inline images. She also missed a compliance deadline because her calendar invite came through as:

makefile CopyEdit

BEGIN:VCALENDAR BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY: Quarterly Audit DTSTART;TZID=EST:20240503T130000 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR

Two days later, she reversed the policy. Quietly. I never said a word.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Ill-Statistician-965 on 2025-06-06 14:54:50+00:00.

I work in graphic design, mostly for finicky corporate clients. One of them, a mid-sized real estate firm, would always ghost me on approvals, then complain about delays.

I used to send reminders every 2–3 days. Then the client’s project lead sent a snarky email to my boss: “Can your designer stop pestering us for updates? We’ll reply when we’re ready.”

Okay then.

I flagged the email, stopped following up, and moved the project to “on hold.”

Three weeks later, they call panicking, their billboard design hadn’t gone to print and the ad buy window closed. They blamed me, but I attached their email with a cheery note: “As per your request, I did not follow up further on pending approvals.”

Silence for a day.

Then a new project manager emailed to say the other guy had “moved on” and to please feel free to resume reminders as needed.

I send those reminders now, cc’ing the new manager and legal.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Few-Temperature-2721 on 2025-06-06 14:46:58+00:00.

I work in a warehouse and have forklift certification. We’re short-staffed, so I often hop on the forklift to move heavy pallets. One guy, Rick, who hates doing manual labor, said I was “hogging” the forklift and told the supervisor I was “gatekeeping.”

Supervisor says, “Let others do it. You don’t need to do everything.”

Alright. I parked the forklift, logged off the system, and left it with the keys in the designated lockbox.

Rick’s moment had arrived… except, surprise, he never actually got certified. He just assumed someone would look the other way. When he tried driving it anyway, he knocked over a pallet of cleaning supplies. OSHA got involved, and he got suspended.

Supervisor apologized to me and reinstated me as the only person allowed on the forklift until they trained someone else.

You wanted a turn, Rick. Hope the paperwork was worth it.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Maximum-Employee6711 on 2025-06-06 14:34:42+00:00.

I worked for a tech company that prided itself on going “paperless.” We used cloud-based tools for everything. That is, until we got a new department head who insisted she wanted a hard copy of every weekly performance report on her desk “for accountability.”

Mind you, these reports were dynamic, full of hyperlinks, pivot tables, and live dashboards. I told her a printout wouldn’t reflect real-time data. She said, “I don’t care. Print it.”

Okay.

So every Monday, I printed the full 30-page report, plus all the linked tabs and graphs as separate documents. I printed at 100% scale, single-sided (she didn’t specify duplex), used premium color toner, and manually labeled each section. I even hole-punched and bound them in a shiny new folder each time.

This added two hours to my Monday morning routine and cost the company nearly $40 a week in materials. After three weeks, she asked why the supply budget had exploded and why I was “falling behind.”

I just smiled and said, “I’m spending Monday mornings preparing the hard copy reports, per your request.”

Now she’s back to digital.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Oldmanchubs on 2025-06-06 13:18:55+00:00.

Years ago I worked for a suburban police department, fairly small but average size for my state. Many people suspect that these smaller towns generate revenue off tickets/citations and that is generally true. My boss, the chief, was in his heyday a “go getter”..loved writing tickets and therefore expected us to follow suit. I was a patrol supervisor-a sergeant-so I was expected to set the standard for the others to follow.

One month I’d been called in and counseled about my low “stats”..in other words, I wasn’t writing enough tickets. Legally, they cannot tell a police officer to write tickets and quotas are illegal but..your overall “contacts”, which includes citations, written warnings, and arrests, can be used as a metric to judge performance. Mine were low..typically 20ish tickets and warnings in an agency where most were writing 70-150 tickets a month. I didn’t sign up to be a revenue generator though and it didn’t sit well with me to have to make someone decide between paying a stupid ticket for a broken headlight or feeding their family.

Anyway, I was told that I needed to improve my contacts. Yes sir was my response, knowing that he meant write more tickets but couldn’t tell me to write more tickets. So..my contacts improved. Every single person I stopped that month, which if memory serves was around 40, got a written warning. No tickets. No revenue generated.

The following month after our stats had been compiled-and posted on the wall of shame for all to see-I was called back into his office. You wrote 40 warnings last month and no tickets, he said. Yes sir, that sounds about right, I replied. And none of those deserved a ticket? Well, I used officer discretion, and in my opinion, none of them did. He was angry by this point and told me he knew the game I was playing. I’m not playing a game, I told him. You said my contacts needed to improve, so are they or are they not improved over the previous month? Oh yeah, they improved alright you smartass, he said..

That was the last time I was hounded about stupid stats or contacts.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ZacInStl on 2025-06-06 12:25:40+00:00.

So I served 20 years in the Air Force, and this story is from 1996. We were an atypical unit, where our mission was always deployed. Not airframe related at all, but rather, like the Army. We all trained with multiple weapons, we trained in convoy protocols, we set up our equipment and covered it all with camouflage netting, we dug our own foxholes, we pulled out own security, etc., (you get the idea). All of this was as a self supporting unit, all designed to be operated outside any base if need be. We had about 250 people at any given time, and like any unit, not everyone took it seriously. This story happened on the first three days of a deployment to Denmark for a NATO Partnership For Peace Exercise when meant a 2-day convoys from our base. I didn’t participate directly, but I heard firsthand from those who did as it was happening and heard and saw the fallout (which wasn’t severe but it was very satisfying) for myself.

I worked Radar Maintenance, and after all hands went on deck for our equipment setup on a cliff overlooking the North Sea, we split into two 12-hour shifts for the rest of the deployment. I had known A, a Senior Airman, who outranked me, since we were both in Technical School three years prior, and this assignment was our second assignment, and it was nice to have a friend in the new unit, especially since it was my first deployment. We were both on night shift, as was A”s girlfriend (and future wife), K. K wasn’t in our workcenter, but whenever A and K had free time, they were together. We came off shift and hit breakfast, and K was complaining about getting reamed at shift change. Now K’s supervisor was a somewhat crusty Master Sergeant, V., and apparently he expected coffee to be ready by the time he arrived.

Now most of us in the service love coffee… we NEED coffee! The 6 of us working nights in our workcenter went through 1 & 1/2 30 cup percolators a night. Like, if ever read a Jack Reacher book, his coffee preferences was exactly what it was like. The problem was K and the one coworker she had on nights didn’t drink coffee. So they didn’t think of making it, and they also didn’t think they should have to make coffee for someone else when they got zero benefit. So that first breakfast after our night shifts began, they decided they would maliciously comply with MSgt V’s “order” to have coffee ready when he came on shift.

The next night, they intentionally used the amount of coffee for a standard drip pot you’d use at home, despite every workcenter having the same 30-cup percolators. So when shift change happened, the first thing MSgt V said was “You batter have coffee ready!”, and they both nodded and gave a “Yes sir!” and walked out the door, knowing they made the weakest brown water tea that would be considered undrinkable, and it would take another fifteen minutes of anger-induced waiting by MSgt V to have a decent cup of joe, that he’d still have to make himself. Both A and myself were laughing when they relayed this to us at breakfast.

That afternoon at shift change, MSgt V tore into K and her coworker, and she came over to vent to A as soon as V was off shift. Apparently he raged about half of his 12-hour shift, because a couple different people on day shift told K how angry and grumpy V was. Well K told us he yelled loud enough that others came to see if there was a fight once she told V they weren’t coffee drinkers so they didn’t know how to use a percolator. He ended his second reaming with “FIGURE IT OUT!” and stomped off. After venting, and a hug & kiss from A, K said she’d make him “a stronger pot of coffee” with a much different smile than her normal one. It didn’t look sarcastic, but it was twice as big as normal and I realized she was going to enjoy what she was going to do. So she went and filled the percolator basket to the brim with coffee, and turned it on. THIS WAS THE BEGINNING OF A 12 HOUR SHIFT! And as soon as it finished, she unplugged it and took it outside, and took the top off to cool in the chilly North Sea nighttime air. Once it was room temperature, she refilled the basket to the brim, put the lid on, and took it inside to restart the percolator using the coffee that was already in it. She got four cycles in that night, in between her duties (which were minimal, as her system was rather new and much less labor intensive than ours, and we were using our night shift to train us new guys, so we had much less free time).

A and I found ourselves outside at shift change, on purpose. We found a way to make ourselves busy and let the others do the shift briefing. About a minute or two after MSgt V arrived, you could hear the faint shouting from across the dirt road and patch of field that separated our workcenter from the rest of the squadron. Two minutes later K and her coworker walked out with their heads down, and after about 20 paces turned to see if anyone was still watching, then they started laughing hard enough to notice from just their silhouettes in the morning sun rising behind them. k came running to us and I stepped back and let her tell A the story, which her coworker again relayed to me at breakfast. Here it is, still etched in my mind nearly 30 years later.

MSgt V practically kicked in the door to the 580 shelter that functioned as their mobile workcenter. He immediately went to the coffee pot and scowled “This better be stronger than yesterday”. K just replied “It should be” and turned to walk about before being angrily told “Wait!”. She was actually happy that he was already mad. He took a styrofoam cup and poured a dark black cup of coffee that looked like motor oil pouring out of an engine block that was several thousand miles past due for its change. It even had a faint burnt smell. V let out a “What’s this?” and took a sip and turned and sputtered it out of his mouth, out the still open door of the shelter. Well, most of it went out the door, but some dribbled out and hit his uniform shirt and pants. Good thing brown is one of the woodland camouflage colors. He raged for half a minute and stomped back and opened to coffee percolator to see the grounds practically overflowing basket. He raged some more about wasting resources, to ordered them out of his sight before he could do something he’d regret. After they walked out the door he took his cup to toss out the undrinkable coffee, and raged again and the amount of grounds at the bottom. And he still had to wait another fifteen minutes to get a drinkable cup of joe. We were well outside the exercise wire before he could enjoy it.

Well, A and I were back outside as soon the shift briefing ended that afternoon, waiting for K to come share the full fallout. Apparently MSgt V dropped the coffee percolator trying to empty it, and was so made he didn’t speak the rest of his shift until the afternoon shaft change briefing. But he told K and her coworker not to bother making coffee. She said good thing, because she had a fiber laxative she was going to put in the pot if she had to make it one more time. She said it with that same smile she had the first morning that made me decide I didn’t want to get on her bad side. They all made up about it later, and MSgt V even laughed about it during the post-deployment BBQ the night before we packed up to convoy home. K made sure she kept his beer stein full all night though, so it probably helped his mood.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Scenarioing on 2025-06-06 12:12:35+00:00.

I forgot about this simple quick MC from the past. Our rural wooded town had a lake and people could park and walk a short trail to where there was a rope swing on the edge of the lake. A popular swimming and hang around spot for teens and mostly younger adults in the hot summer.

One day a few guys from the city showed up having been told about the place. One of them was very obnoxious, loud and conceited. He openly hit on the girls there and was bringing all sorts of attention to himself. We were less than impressed but no one started up with him. His buddies were well behaved.

In due course, he decided it was time to have his go on the swing and made sure the gals there knew and told them to watch to see how it is done. We repeatedly tried to tell him what we told everyone that was a new visitor there. To make absolutely sure to jump as soon the swing finished it's outward arc and stopped for a second before it swung back. That the water was shallow near the shore an a late or early jump risked injury. He kep interrupting anyomne that was giving him the explanation.

His ego kept at it and he told us not to tell him what to do and he knew what he was doing. That he saw everyone else and didn't need us to act like he didn't know what he was doing. So we said, OK. Do it your way. He said "Good.".He also amazingly said to the girls, now curious to see Romeo in action, "Now watch this"...

He swung out fine, but when the rope stopped at its outermost point, he failed to jump and hung on as the rope swung back. He couldn't see where he was going since is back was facing the shore which was a bunch of tree roots, dirt and large rocks. He panicked and let go just as he got near the edge of the water crashing in to the less than soft roots and rocks. Bouncing and falling in to two feet of water crumpled up and mostly submerged.

He managed to get out and crawled up on shore. He got up but was limping and bleeding from his legs. As the entire crowd that gathered for this spectacle looked on in utter silence. He and his freinds were also in complete silence as they propped him up and escorted him back to the car. The trail wasn't exactly smooth to it so it was going to be a very difficult walk.

Everyone spared him from ridicule until after they left the scene. It was like we all knew Romeo was totally humiliated and taunting him was overkill. The staring of a crowd of about two dozen in all his defeat was more than enough punishment.