Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/MountainTwo3845 on 2025-09-01 14:05:56+00:00.

I used to work in the oilfield and safety is actually enforced a lot. But sometimes people are too zealous. We were working in south Texas near the border. In the summer it's 100°+ with raging humidity. Heat index can hit 110°+. You had to wear flame resistant gear, pants and long sleeve shirt that are really thick, if you were near a well. We were working on a location before they drilled, before they even brought the rig in. Nothing is out there. That means regular clothes. We have the company we're working for safety manager pull up on us and demand we put on our frs (flame resistant clothing from earlier). Mind you were in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around us, just land. I explained that, but he wasn't having it. So due to safety concerns we take a 15 minute break every 5 minutes of work. What was a couple hours job took a couple days. I made sure and got the safety guys signature, but after the second day he got real nervous and asked what was taking so long. I told him we couldn't be too safe. I then asked him to monitor our urine to make sure we were hydrated, didn't want to get dehydrated. He balked at that lol. When the company man got the bill for setup he lost his shit. I got to see the safety guy get berated and they explained how dumb he was. The rules were then changed to include frs only around well sites. I have another run in with the same guy demanding a tyvek suit when refueling equipment. That's a painter's overall suit that doesn't breathe at all. Mind you diesel won't catch fire without a lot of help. It's flashpoint is super high. We agreed that safety must come first, so in the same heat we charged $500 an hour and took the same breaks bc that was really hot as shit. I paid the guy doing it $85 an hour for his troubles. We got about 45 minutes in before that rule got changed as well. Guy that worked for me was pissed he didn't get more hours doing that. Point to these is you have to use your brain when thinking about safety.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/CommercialAlarming13 on 2025-09-01 10:03:50+00:00.

I used to work retail for a manager who thought “customer service” meant chaining me to the register. One day he tells me I’ve been leaving the till too often. By “too often” he meant: grabbing change from the safe, getting a roll of bags, even walking five feet to throw out trash.

His new rule: *“If you step away from the register, even for a second, you must clock out.”*Alright then. Next shift, I took him literally.

At 9:10 AM, a customer drops a jar that smashes near the counter. I clock out, grab the paper towels, clean it, clock back in at 9:16.

9:40, receipt printer jams. Clock out, walk three feet to maintenance, get the roll, clock back in at 9:47.

10:05, customer wants coins for the parking meter. Clock out, walk to the safe, get change, clock back in at 10:13.

10:42, I need to grab a bag of quarters for the till. Clock out, 20 steps to the office, clock back in at 10:50.

11:15, someone asks me to check if we have larger bags. Clock out, grab them from literally the shelf behind me, clock back in at 11:18.

By the end of the day my timecard showed I’d left work thirteen times. It added up to nearly two hours of unpaid breaks all for basic stuff I was supposed to do. Payroll flagged it, HR called me in, and I showed them the email from my boss laying out the rule in black and white. Next thing I know, he’s the one being chewed out. The rule vanished overnight, and magically we were trusted to use common sense again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Primary-Ladder8310 on 2025-08-31 17:34:16+00:00.

It seems that you people love my malicious compliance truck stories. All of which are true. And this one will be no different.

In this episode I am driving the twin stick R model Mack boom truck. The largest in our fleet. This truck was big, heavy, and it had an usually wide turning radius. At that time I delivered construction materials. While we had residential and commercial materials. I often focused on new construction and commercial sites due to the truck being so large. Every once in a while, I would get a residential delivery. Mostly these deliveries I could make from the street without having to pull on the property. This is not one of those stories.

So, this one day I am told I am doing a residential roofing delivery to the roof of the house. My radar is now on because I am familiar with the roads in that area and they are narrow Delivery to the roof means I have to enter the property and get right up to the house. I get loaded and get to the job,

As I approach the jobsite the road is narrow, barely 20 ft wide. The house is on my left and facing the property the driveway is on the left. Important in a second. I stop and go find the person in charge. He says "Your right on time. I need you in the driveway and boom across the roof" I say, that's great but there are several issues. 1 all the vehicles parked on the street need moved down past the neighbors house for me to fit down this road. 2. I cannot make the turn from the street onto the driveway without driving across the lawn, backing up 2 or 3 times. 3, I cannot guarantee that driveway can support the weight. He shouts," I'll move the trucks and you just get your truck in here"! In a very demeaning tone. I say ok I will. As I back down the street to the intersection, turn around, and back up the road, he gets all the trucks moved.

I get into position to pull on the property and stop. I grab my clipboard and jump out. I walk up to him and say, "I need you to sign this" We carry legal forms in the trucks that when signed makes the signee or their company responsible for any damage to the property, truck, load, or towing fees to get the truck off site. He signs and all but throws the clipboard at me.

Well, ok then. Game on! I turn into the yard and pull across the driveway and back up 4 times to get the truck completely on asphalt. Once in the best position I could get, I got out and looked at my handywork. 8-inch ruts all across the front 29 feet of yard from the street. Each edge where the tires went from grass to asphalt or asphalt to grass the driveway collapsed and the and broke away. The rest of the driveway had several 6-inch ruts that were at least a foot wide on most of the driveway. But I am not done yet. I have to put down my outriggers to stablize the boom. Because the driveway was as wide as the truck meant that when I put them down, they would be in the lawn. I carried large blocks to enlarge the footprint of the outriggers to get stability on soft ground. This left 2 more 10-inch holes in the yard about 3-foot by 4-foot square.

I delivered the entire load with no issue. Then the homeowner came home as I was climbing off the boom and started screaming at me for the state of his driveway and yard. I calmly turned and pointed to the job foreman, and said." you need to talk to him". Then turned back around and finish wrapping up the truck. I could hear them as they were screaming at each other but could not understand what they were saying.

The final insult, I had to ask them both to move their vehicles so I could back out. And yes, more ruts were made leaving. I paused on the street for a minute to check out my handywork. It was bad!

I got back to the warehouse and the bosses cornered me before I could get into the office. The contractor's boss gad blown up my boss's phone with threats and complaints. I quickly explained and pulled out the signed affidavit. Boss said "Well ok then, we're covered, and I heard nothing more about it.

That affidavit has saved my ass a lot over the years, and has afforded me some great, and funny malicious compliance over the years.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/FrankCobretti on 2025-08-30 20:19:33+00:00.

I work for an airline. Its policy is that it’ll pay for parking at one airport of the employee’s choice, so the employee can commute to work. My nearest airport is usually convenient, but sometimes it’s easier to make the long drive to my base airport when I have a trip that makes air commuting difficult. My company owns a parking lot at my base airport, so they don’t pay for individual parking privileges there.

I wrote an email explaining my situation, and asking for parking privileges at both my base airport and the airport nearest me. This would have resulted in my company paying less, per month, for my parking than if I were to park solely at the airport nearest my home. The response came back with a simple, “No. Your contract states that you can park at one location. Period.”

Fast forward a couple of years. My company signs a letter of understanding (regarding a scheduling issue) with my union. When I attempt to exercise the rights granted in this letter, my manager calls and tells me, “Corporate says we aren’t following that any more.”

Well, if the company isn’t willing to work with me on parking, I’m not willing to work with it on this letter. I demand that they follow the contract, including the letter of understanding. When they refuse, I file a grievance with my union. This results in the company having to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to other employees on whom it had pulled its shenanigans: employees who weren’t annoyed enough to file a grievance.

If they want me to strictly follow the contract, I’m going to make sure they do, too.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/grauenwolf on 2025-08-30 16:52:26+00:00.

Like so many others, my company bought heavily into the whole AI First thing. We’re so committed to it that we’re under bidding projects with the hope that AI will save so much on labor that we’ll still turn a profit.

Needless to say, this means pushing everyone into using AI as heavily as possible, even to the point where we’re supposed to use AI instead of web searches. And as a programmer, I do a lot of web searching. You’d be forgiven if you thought I regularly do the same kinds of things day in and day out. But if I have to do something more than once, I stick it in a code library and just reuse that. So most of the real work involves a lot of research. It’s a rare day that I spend more time typing than reading.

For programmers, AI is built into our tools. The idea is that you want the AI to have as much context as possible. And by including it in the tools, it will automatically upload all of my open tabs into the AI engine along with my question.

But here’s the thing I didn’t realize at first. One of those tabs is an 82 MB code file containing all of the instructions to build a database from scratch. So with each question it is uploading that whole file to Microsoft’s AI servers. And those servers have to crunch through the file before even starting on my question. Which explains why I have to wait 6 minutes before the AI gives me to the wrong answer instead of 1 second for Google to give me a different wrong answer.

I’d love to tell you about the fallout. About how the company freaked out when they learned how many AI tokens I was burning through. But this is just increasing my “engagement” so the only immediate effect is that I stop getting “you aren’t using AI enough” emails.

Oh, and don’t worry about my project being late because of this. The bottleneck is, as always, waiting on the customer to decide what they want. So I’m still spending most of my day reading books and wasting time on Reddit.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/PaybackbyMikey on 2025-08-30 14:41:25+00:00.

Like many homeowners, my SO and I keep a hidden set of spare keys outside the house. She likes to use them so she doesn't have to carry her set of keys while bicycling or running, and when, coming back from shopping loaded down with grocery bags, she doesn't have to dig into her purse.

The other day I noticed that she had left those keys on the kitchen table, instead of returning them to their hiding place outside. When she returned home, I was in the kitchen. She knocked on the kitchen's sliding glass doors to get my attention, and gestured that she needed me to open the door.

I picked up the spare/hidden keys from the kitchen table, opened the door, gave her the keys, and when she turned to put the keys in their designated place, I locked the door.

After all, she wanted entry, and now she had the keys.

She said "I'll get even".

Maybe more of a prank than malicious, but I was allowed only an IMAGE in r/pranks.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Aggravating-Ice5575 on 2025-08-30 12:48:20+00:00.

Good morning,

Inspired by another post of removed admin privileges, here is one of my tales of internal concepts not meeting external realities.

I was working(remotely) for a European based manufacturer of (at least my division) high end broadcast processing equipment. They also made other pro equipment, but this area was the highest-end and by far the most technically demanding. Very nichey, very configuration dependent, etc. Great technical staff and developers in Europe, we had great relationship being a bunch of tech nerds who could talk about IP ranges and capacitor values for hours. The US office just took orders from HQ over there. Had some good basic techs, but not set up to do any high end troubleshooting(which is exactly why I existed)

There was an acquisition coming up, and auditors started to be involved. We had to send in inventory of all of our computers and test gear, etc. Fine, whatever.

Well remember that "setup dependent" part: I was right in the middle of a huge project with one of the largest US broadcasters, (which had already resulted in one of the largest upgrade sales this division had ever made) and was testing some "fresh from the sandbox" SNMP features. This is pretty old tech that is still being used, so I enlisted an older Supermicro server I had been barely using for remotely accessing some kit in my workshop, to do some basic SNMP functions to make sure these new features didn't bung anything up before I literally put them in air on 50+ stations.

Things were working fine with tests, I'd get a new revision first thing in the morning, bang on it a bit, send it off to my tech contact by my EOD at the network(which was his morning) Not terribly difficult, but pretty nichey, and also one reason I worked for this company, no one knew at all what any of this was in North America.

So, auditors are involved, and the North American office that just takes orders sees this Supermicro server on the inventory list, and it's just the end of the world. Why is there a server out in the field? Why do you need so much test equipment? Who approved this? Etc. My first couple replies were just disregarded because no one knew what I was talking about. A decision was made that this server HAD to go back. A third insistence from me that this was actively used, and who else would take this over? fell on deaf ears.

It was the most important thing in the entire world that they get this server back. It's a junky old Supermicro 1RU utility beast that cost maybe 1k at most.

For whatever reason I was feeling extra snarky the day I should have boxed the server up, so I wrote an extra friendly note to all the techs, the decision makers at the US office and to my tech contact and his boss at the network introducing everyone thanking them for taking over this critical project, and thanking HQ for helping take on this time sensitive test phase that would really help me get to other critical projects

About 25 minutes later I sent tracking information for all the kit (still didn't box up the server) I was supposed to send back.

About an hour later I get a really odd email from one the the decision makers in the US office. He doesn't want to admit that no one at HQ doesn't know what the hell I was talking about technically, and simultaneously realized this is a huge account that would totally affect their bonuses if another nice sale came through.

They were trying to save face and cover for their techs by suggesting maybe I get them up to speed on the project before we do anything drastic. I just replied to his email with the tracking information again and mentioned I had suggested this 3x now.

25 minutes later I get a freaked out phone call from the head tech at the US HQ. Him and his superior (the decision maker) have ust got a very nice call from my contacts boss at the network. They were so happy with the service so far (I had a great relationship at this point) and excited that having someone else checking these updates would allow me to be onsite more, big future plans, etc. He is wondering who is going to do this work now? NOW this comes up?

I just repeated that 3x this was brought up now so clearly this decision was educated, they know best.

So now there's full blown panic at US HQ. Knowing this, I send a note to the developers in Europe to make sure the new updated code goes to the catch-all address for the US HQ tech team and not me because they will be doing the testing going forward.

This has the desired effect because now the head of development in Europe is on the horn with the decision maker in US wondering about who they recently hired (without approval) to be able to have these in-house resources now?

By the time that UPS pick up was supposed to have happened,, somehow having this old server back was no longer the highest priority. In fact, I never heard about the server again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Illuminatus-Prime on 2025-08-30 08:44:54+00:00.

(I was gonna post this as a comment to Stemcella's "Access Removed" post; but changed my mind.)

The Setup

Maybe 90% of our activities were routine, and most everybody could handle them; but that last 10% involved critical subsystems that were complex and difficult to work on.  Those were my responsibility.

Co-workers would work themselves into corners before calling on me to get them out.  They would get credit for the call, and I would get bupkis.  "You were not the on-call guy, so you get nothing."  Fine. 

Cue the MalComp

It got to the point that if I was not on-call, I would log my status as "Out of the Area" and switch off my phone.  When I stopped covering for co-workers, productivity dropped.

The ungrateful and selfish on-call guys would either take an entire shift to solve a problem, or pass it along to the next on-call guy.  This happened from one late Friday night to the following early Monday morning, so when I walked in the door while switching my phone back on, I could smell the panic.

They sent me out on-site right away, and even though it took a few more hours to solve the problem, I got the credit for it.

The Fallout

A coupla years later, a lay-off removed the slackers from employment, and I was left to train the remainder.  From then on, we were a tight crew that handled most problems without having to call in for support, even from IT.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/stemcella on 2025-08-30 07:23:27+00:00.

I work in a role where I ‘own’ a portion of the software. I don’t work in IT but I do system configuration for the portion I manage. I had admin access until one day IT removed it without warning and without notice. They claimed ‘risk’ and ‘board decisions’

Of course I could rampage and get my access back because it saves the company a significant amount of money each year as we don’t need to use external contractors. There’s also no one else in the company that knows my part of the system or how to create business rules, scripting and coding for this particular system. While people know JavaScript they would need to become familiar with the system which will take time.

Instead- fine; sends a list of alllll the things they now need to take over so the work still gets done. Noted there can be no delays in turnaround time despite there being an extra step. Noted that I will still need to approve every change and configuration. The list totalled to approximately 30 hours per week. It also requires 6am starts at points through the month. I made sure to also confirm they would also be required to come with me for all meetings regarding the system or data because I won’t be repeating myself or duplicating my effort.

Within 30 minutes the decision was reversed and I had my access back.

I don’t think that’ll be changing back any time soon. Not when we work under separate budgets and their team always cry time and cost poor

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/spinly_jaye on 2025-08-30 02:00:30+00:00.

I read a tale today about a person who worked in a toy store back in the day and it struck a memory.

I used to work at a video store. That is a very old sentence. Back in the day if you wanted to see a movie in your home before it became available to buy you had to go to a video rental store. So from 2001-2005 I managed a place. Legit the best job I’ve ever had, mmmmaybe a tie with when I was a night manager at a movie theatre. Basically if you had the keys and codes to either of these places the movie watching potential was endless. Anyway, this story takes place at the end of my video place journey. At this point VHS was starting to die out and DVD was becoming king. My store was a sister store to one in the next town over, the manager there was an awesome guy, J, who had been there forever, really knew his shit. Every Thursday at the slowest part of our day we’d spend about an hour going over the movies we needed to order for a release date a month away.

I remember this one time J was SUPER pumped about this movie he had read reviews for. I remember it was a French language flick. I cannot remember what it was called because it’s been 20 years. I can’t remember what it was about because I had no interest whatsoever to see it. Which is why I didn’t want to order any copies. Zero, none. We are in Canada, which is an English/French speaking country, but we’re in the middle of Canada and no one cares about French here, tbh. So I said no, but J said yes, insisted on it saying I should get at least 5 copies. Because he wouldn’t leave me alone about it (and because it wasn’t my money) I said ‘fine. I’ll get 1.’ He over ruled me and ordered 3 for my store, I think 8 for his store. I made a point of stating it was not my call and saying I was not responsible, J laughed it off.

A few months later…..

As I said before the end of the video store was on the horizon. With the invention of the DVD there was no longer a delay from movie theatre to being able to buy stuff at any store. Before this a movie would do a theatrical run, then some months later it would be available on VHS. What maybe some people didn’t realize that VHS’ were INSANELY EXPENSIVE in the period before they were available for purchase by the public. I remember the average cost for a single VHS was anywhere between $100 and $400. If I remember correctly the VHS copy of The Fellowship of The Ring was $240-ish. DVD’s were always cheaper and better quality, their introduction was the beginning of the end. My boss recognized it was coming so he did not renew the lease for our building for the last year. Eventually a pharmacy chain came by and bought the building and we had a month to get out. QUEUE MOVIE SALE EXTRAVAGANZA!!

Quick blurb about my boss: he was a great dude. Great sense of humour, often giggling about something BUT!! He could be the most intimidating person if he needed to. He’s 7ft tall and an ex-hockey player. In the early days of his store if people didn’t return the movies he’d show up at their houses and make them :p so if he was grumpy, look out.

We started liquidating the stock and all the good stuff went relatively quickly, leaving the movies no one wanted after about a week and a half. Boss was there everyday, grumpy the whole time, questioning every little thing, reorganizing shit I already did…..it was annoying. Eventually he did a walk around to see what was left and settled on 3 copies of a particular French movie. He was not happy, the conversation went something like this:

*note: his tone was grumpy as shit, but as soon as he held up the movie I was in a very chipper mood :)

Boss- what the F is this movie? Me- oh! some awards darling J liked B- …….. is it only in French?? M- you bet! B- why the hell did you get 3 copies? M- J ordered them, I didn’t want any. B- have they rented at all? M- (checks the computer) not even once! B- why the hell did you order them?? M- I didn’t, J made the call. B- and if I call him right now what will he say? M- go for it! :)

So Boss called J and I got to listen to my Boss give him shit for wasting his money because as it turns out J’s store’s stock of 8 copies had rented out twice. Of course I never got a sorry, but that ‘I told you so!’ Was a delightful little cherry on top of a crappy couple of weeks :)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Ericpburt on 2025-08-27 18:22:35+00:00.

The college I went to had some religious affiliations. I went for something non religion related though. I went into the library and noticed a table setup with several religious pamphlets, and a small plastic sign (similar in size to a nametag on a cubicle”, that read “FREE TAKE ONE” in all caps. So,I took the sign.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ContributionShort562 on 2025-08-29 14:08:32+00:00.

I worked in a factory job making display boxes for items that were being assembled on a conveyor belt. After a couple days, I got to where I could make a box pretty darn fast and I was always done sooner than the ladies working the conveyor belt, so I would step in and give them breaks. It was really hot in the factory, one lady was pregnant and passed out a couple of times, and we had a few older people faint as well. I was young and strong and wanted to help them out by giving them a break.

I asked the line boss how many of the items we'd make in a run, so I could do the simple division in my head and figure out how many boxes I needed to make before I could step in to help on the line. She was a petty person who liked to wield the little power she held over the rest of us, so she refused to tell me, saying that it wasn't my job to know and that my job was just to make boxes.

Ok then. That's my job, you say? My only job? Guess I'll just make boxes then. And I did. I made boxes. I made as many as I could, as fast as I could. And I didn't stop until the run was over. We had hundreds of boxes that the whole team had to break down and stack for reuse later. And the floor manager came over and asked the line boss what the heck was going on.

After that, the line boss always grudgingly told me how many items were in the run, and when I finished my work, I would step in and help out on the line to give someone a break. Suck it, line boss.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/i_dont_wanna_sign_in on 2025-08-28 21:40:07+00:00.

I've worked in computer security for a very long time. A security policy that I'm sure most of the audience here is familiar with is that you always lock your computer when you walk away. Even if you're an accountant or receptionist, you just can't leave your machine unlocked ever.

About 10 years ago my team would have fun with this. If you ran to the bathroom or even had a conversation with your back turned someone would sneak up to your computer and jump on the chat client or even email and say something silly or stupid like "Does anyone know the meaning of life" or some other random thing. A lot of the teams would do this and it was mostly harmless but also was supposed to "shame" you into remembering to lock your computer before you walk away, without reporting you to security for your formal reprimand (retraining -> write-ups -> disciplinary action -> job hunt). Everyone knew it was good-natured and when the messages went out everyone had a good laugh.

One day a new guy shows up and he leaves his computer unattended. I introduce myself, shake his hand, chat him up a bit and finally tell him he needs to lock his computer when he walks away, it's company policy, he probably ignored that in the training but it's a big deal. Sent him the documentation, because he thinks it's stupid (again, we're in the security umbrella). He says "whatever". I shrug walk away, and he and walks away making a show of not locking his computer.

He got multiple warnings over his first few weeks from his team and other, but was a complete butt about it. After a while the team decides he's had enough warnings (and started being granted access to sensitive stuff) and so he was fair game.

Not long after I walked by him on his way to the elevator atrium, so I know he's going to be gone for a while. I sit down, find his email client and type out a silly message to his team's DL and hit send. As I'm standing up he's walking back. He finds me and demands to know what I was doing. I shrug, say "whatever" and walk away. Later that day his manager walks up and tells me that he explained the situation to his new employee, and that the new guy "didn't want to play that game" and was considering reporting me to security for impersonating him.

Really? Okay. No problem, Mr Manager (we were on very good terms), we will not play "the game" with your newbie. I will follow standard procedures.

I got my team and a few others on chat to tell them that under no circumstances should anybody fire a message from him when they saw his computer unlocked. No "shame" reminders for newbie. Just follow the standard procedure.

Almost 50 security violation tickets were logged in the next two days. [his desk happened to be closer to the elevator atrium, break room, and bathrooms so a lot of normal traffic] He was in security retraining the following Monday. We were in an open floor plan and I could see how mad he was talking to his manager and gesturing in my direction quite a bit. Not my fault, I had only opened two tickets.

His manager asked me to let up. Sorry, just following standard procedure, if I don't report these violations I'm liable.

Dude's computer was locked for the rest of that Monday only. The following day as I walked by, there was his email, for all eyes to see and newbie nowhere to be found... He happened to be getting coffee, which was my destination as well, and I told I noticed he forgot to lock his computer. He cussed me out and speed-walked back.

The damage was done. He'd already had a dozen tickets opened by others. And the security policy had changed at some point. Now it was a quick retraining then straight to disciplinary action (no write-up). He had to attend a meeting with his boss, director, and some security folks (I would find out much later that he got put on a security related PIP). He was gone in a week.

No one was out to ruin anyone's career here, but if you want to work in security and flagrantly violate policy because... I don't know why, well, you don't belong there.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/desmosn on 2025-08-28 18:28:25+00:00.

So a few years back when I was working for my previous company as a commissioning engineer (about 60% of the year of field service, 40% office), I had accrued about 10 days of not yet planned overtime by beginnig of october. We were allowed to use that overtime as vacation days, which made sense for me because I'd have pay a hefty amount of taxes on that money otherwise, and i didn't particularly need that money. So at some point my then boss calls me to his office to tell me I should plan when I'd take those days, with the requirement to not take them all at once and not on fridays for the rest of the year. Since I had already planned 3 weeks of vacation from vacation days during christmas, he probably had some things in mind. His intention about the "not everything at once"-part probably was to not have me missing for 5 weeks at once. The intention about the "not on fridays"-part probably was to not have me going home from any possible field trips every tuesday evening. So I sat at my desk and started thinking about if I should use those days in a way of 2 times a full week of vacation or some extended weekends beginnig after wednesdays. Looking through my calendar which wednesdays I would be best to use, I had a brilliant idea. Wednesdays. 10 weeks in a row. Adding to that 3 weeks during christmas. So starting the next week, I didn't go on any field trips for 3 months. Safe to say, my boss wasn't particularly happy, but did not say a word since his requirements were fully met.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Tock4Real on 2025-08-25 11:59:05+00:00.

EDIT: OH MY GOD Literally everyone who saw this post throught I was talking about Alcohol because I used "cocktail" instead of "smoothie". I didn't even know they were different 😂 So just know. Ain't no alcohol here, just fruits and a shit lot of sugar.

I recently started a new job at a buffet. So far, it's great. We're divided into two groups, I'll call them the preparation and mixing groups. I'm in the preparation group where we prepare ingredients and proportions and give it to the mixing group who actually make the drink, pour it, and overall deal with customers. Sometimes, the very bottom of the mixer is no longer in proportion to the business standards (an ingredient or two is less or missing) so they give us the mixer with that extra bit that we're allowed to pour in a cup and drink for ourselves while working. It's really cool.

But, turns out, when my coworkers told me about it, they apparently had to "fight" for such a privilege?

FYI: this story doesn't have anything to do with me personally. It happened months if not years ago, and my co's told me about it and I'm now sharing it.

So, they used to do exactly like we do today. Having the extras etc. But then, one day the manager found out and he was OUTRAGED. He started yapping about employee responsibilities and how drinking smoothies while working is wasting time (somehow drinking water for the exact same amount of time is allowed, but smoothies aren't?) and told them all to dump all the extras in the sink regardless of what's happening. Of course, nobody listened. And they still drank. But one day, he saw someone drink AGAIN and had him fired??!! He was fired for drinking a leftover cup of fruit juice? And then he said this exact quote: "Dump all the leftovers. I don't care the amount, dump it all".

After a while, the mixing group heard of the incident and they were righteously furious. After a careful read of their contracts - they're the only ones to have contracts, most the preparation group is underaged including me, so no contract - they found the lines about proportion policy, and saw that it was a lot more strict than what the manager was enforcing. And they devised a plan: the mixing group would intentionally have most the ingredients on top of the mixer, so that after the mixing group is done with the pouring, more or less HALF the mixer is no longer in proportion and is considered "leftover". And as per instructions, it gets dumped.

It was a LOT. One mixer usually adds up to 4 or 5 cups, now it was 2, hardly 3. Nobody would drink the rest, rather it's all going to the sink. And considering the smoothies we'd make feature ingredients that are pretty frickin expensive, upoer management started noticing that something is up with the calculations.

This "dumping" continued for months apparently, and when upper management ran the calculations, they found that it doesn't add up in the SLIGHTEST. The amount of avocado, dates, figs etc. Was about half that amount in sales, which was expected on our end. One day, they stormed the store questioning everyone, because the losses over time were estimatedly in the thousands if not tens of thousands. They asked around, and they were told the story. Manager didn't know shit and couldn't respond to them, but the preparation group said that the manager told them to dump everything, and so they did. Let's just say, there's a reason I couldn't recognise the manager they were talking about 😂

Also, weirdly, the old manager (in the time it took for UM to fire him) couldn't fire the mixing group? Something about probable reason or contract expiration or whatever. I'm not in touch with it legally, but turns out he just couldn't. Idk why, and I'm not one to question it.

Ig the moral is: don't piss off your workers when they're being massively overworked (over 70 hrs a week) and being paid about two thirds minimum wage.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Theory_Large on 2025-08-27 17:07:38+00:00.

Long, sorry. TL;DR at the bottom. This was about twenty years ago, so some of the dialogue won't be exact, but some of it is burned into my memory.

At the time I was working in a toy shop, and it was coming up to Christmas, so you can imagine how busy we were. No, busier than that. Each worker was given a specific section of the store to keep tidy and stocked - mine at the time was what we called Boys' Toys, all the action figures and so on. However, I was also the only person other than managers who could process refunds, exchanges and so on, and because Boys' Toys was right beside the tills and the managers could be anywhere (no radios), the cashiers got into the habit of calling me for help. And it being nearly Christmas, there were a *lot* of exchanges, refunds and other things needing my intervention.

Our store was franchised, and we had a district manager (D, because he was kind of a D and also his name starts with D) who had never worked the floor a day in his life, he had some kind of business degree. He visited a few weeks before Christmas, came into Boys' Toys an hour or so before closing and got mad because it was messy and there were some gaps in the shelves. He refused to listen to my attempted explanations and stormed off.

Next morning, he was right there at opening time. When we had our pre-start meeting where sections were assigned, he interrupted our manager to say "I'm putting myself with OP today, she clearly doesn't know how to handle the section so I'm going to show her what's what." There was an awkward silence for a moment before Manager went on with assignments. I kept perfectly silent.

D trailed me to Boys' Toys and looked around. "Well, what's first? Or don't you have a plan?"

"Well, first I usually - oh, sorry, that's the tills calling for help, I'll be back in a minute." Dealt with the tills, returned, got halfway through explaining the first job and was called away again. By the time I got back it was fifteen minutes into shift and he hadn't done any work yet.

I have to give it to him, he stuck with it all day - I finally managed to show him what we were doing, and he schlepped up to the stockroom and down to the shelves half a dozen times, tidied the same set of shelves because kids loved throwing things all over the floor, watched as I was called away an average of five times an hour. (I didn't usually keep track, but you bet your ass I did that day.) He took his lunch when I did, ten minutes late because of a refund.

He didn't apologise, of course. I was too lowly for that. But the next morning, at the opening meeting, my manager announced that from now on, Boys Toys would have two staff as a matter of course, and that the managers would make an effort to be more available to the tills.

Tl;dr: District Manager thinks I'm being lazy, arranges to 'show me what to do', realises it's because I'm doing too much of the managers' jobs and not enough of my own.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Far_Rhubarb7177 on 2025-08-24 07:29:42+00:00.

So my job is delivering packages for Amazon Flex. One recent day, I had a package to deliver to a business, and unlike many business deliveries, this one had a “no recipient required” in the delivery instructions. This meant that I wouldn’t have to get a signature for the delivery. BUT, the delivery notes from the business itself very emphatically said that they didn’t want the package left unattended. Well, this delivery was at 7:00 AM, and it turned out that the business didn’t open until 11:00 that day, long after my delivery block was over.

So I returned the package to the Amazon station at the end of my delivery block. I was annoyed that I had to make this extra trip, but I also felt kind of good about it because it meant that the business wasn’t going to get their package that day, so it was a kind of revenge to them for making such delivery demands!

Hey…make stupid rules, get stupid results! 🤣

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/CasyD on 2025-08-21 14:34:59+00:00.

Recently, I posted a story here about my mother and how she had taken down a shop owner who was selling weapons to children by going to the news, complete with video evidence. It was so wonderful being able to see all the support coming out for my mom. Being able to share just a little part of her, especially after so long and with so many people. It was an amazing experience. You can check that out here if you missed it:  https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/1mca8le/if_i_dont_like_it_tell_it_to_the_news_i_guess/

There is another story of hers to tell. Almost a prequel, if you will, about how she made her bones years before. My mom never showed that tape without lowering her voice afterward and saying, “There was also that other time, when I got that woman put in jail.” It is equally true and way more salacious. It is very long, but I hope very worth it.

Texas PTAs in the 90s played for keeps. The Frito Pies flowed thick and cheesy, the colors were bright enough to blind you, and everything was done bigger in Texas. There were events to plan, bake sales, fundraisers, and decorations to paint. All back when everyone was still carefree. My mom thrived in that environment. She used to say she had “Attention Surplus Disorder” because she loved to throw herself wholeheartedly into everything she did, and the PTA always needed more, so it was a match made in heaven. 

This particular school PTA was run with an iron fist by a woman we’ll call Rosa. Nothing went through the PTA without her say-so, and her default answer was always no. She was even known to turn down free donations if she didn’t like where they were coming from. There was a board of people in this PTA who were the elite. To get on the board, you’d volunteer and explain why you thought you’d be a good fit. There would be a vote to allow you in, and the board would vote on what position you’d receive from there. Rosa made it clear she didn’t care for my Mom very early on. She’d gone so far as discouraging her from even applying, saying they didn’t need the help and not to bother.

The board decided, at Rosa’s suggestion, that my mom should be the treasurer. The position had been open for years; everyone who had tried to take it on had quit shortly after. Rosa would joke that they just weren’t as dedicated as the rest of them, and they’d move on. In choosing this position, Rosa had tried to bury my Mom out of the way. Rosa didn’t realize that my Mom was a seed and had now been planted. 

Mom shows up for her first board meeting, excited about getting into the numbers. She was promptly told that she couldn’t see the books; only Rosa was allowed to see the books. Turned out people had been quitting this position because they were never allowed to do anything, and didn’t want to deal with the fight. Rosa would buy all of the things; she was responsible for putting in all the numbers into the books, and she would dictate what money was left or how much was owed. Rosa said she felt it would be inconvenient for anyone else to look at it. Mom didn’t want to rock the boat on the very first day, so she just kept her mouth shut while she learned the lay of the land.

The first order of business is to have a small bake sale, so they asked what she thought. Since my mom was always so extra, she suggested, instead of just a bake sale, why not have a whole carnival day event to bring the families together? Rosa was against it; she felt like it would be impossible on their budget. Which, of course it would be impossible, but that never stopped my mom. After some back and forth, Rosa was outvoted.

The impossible carnival day not only happened, but I think it was way bigger than even my mom was expecting. It was a whole spectacle and just sort of took on a life of its own. This was by far the largest event the school had ever seen. They were making money hand over fist. The principal got dunked in a legit dunk tank. She contacted the carnival, and they agreed to help out. It took up the whole front and sides of the school and filled the gym, and lasted for hours. They even suspended classes for the day, so all the students got to go. Just a truly fantastic day.

By the time the next PTA meeting rolled around, Mom was ready to begin working on the next thing because now she had tasted blood and liked it. She had come up with a bunch of ways to use the money as a jumping-off point to help the kids at the school. Rosa immediately put her foot down. “We don’t have the money for any of that.“ Mom was pretty taken aback. Money being the issue seemed weird after such a large fundraising event, especially compared to what they originally planned to do. “Oh, how much money do we have?” Rosa laughed condescendingly, “Just because one event did well doesn’t make the money work for the whole year. Some of us have to think on longer timelines.” This is a PTA. There’s not really a way to go into debt. Mom dug in a little further, “I’d be happy to look at the books. Maybe I can help,” Rosa put up her hand to stop her talking. With the most insincere smile she could manage, Rosa said, “Bless your heart, Melissa, you don’t need to worry about that. I already said no.” 

For those of you not from the South, “Bless your heart” is basically fighting words. You only really pull it out when you want to bring someone down a peg in the nicest way possible. Rosa changed the subject, but the switch had flipped. There was a skunk in the woodshed, and Mom could smell it now. It wasn’t about being insulted or pride in her achievements; she had thicker skin than that. There was just no way the money was already gone, unless someone was taking it.

My mom starts asking around to people who had been on the board for longer about whether or not anyone had seen the books… Never once. Rosa’s kids were pretty far apart in age, and she had been doing this for a very long time. By the time her oldest graduated from the school, her youngest would be starting pre-k, so she wasn’t going anywhere for a while either. Other members told her there would regularly be meetings where things would be suggested, but Rosa would say that they didn’t have the money. Regardless of recent fundraising. Most of these parents assumed everyone was acting in good faith and dropped it. 

Mom scheduled a vote to force Rosa to release the books to her, which passed. Rosa fought hard, way too hard. It took weeks for her to obtain them. Rosa kept complaining that having the treasurer look at the books was too inconvenient for her and that she had always handled it this way. She tried multiple times to call a vote to keep the books that were shot down. Several times she “forgot them at home.” It took a long time, but she eventually gave up the ghost.

At this point, a few parents were eagerly awaiting these records because the whole thing seemed off. They figured now that they had the books, they must have her dead to rights. They took them from her, and I remember they rushed home, sat down at our kitchen table, and started flipping through pages. Then reality sets in. My mom expected to find a smoking gun or money missing in mass quantities, but it was mostly just itemized amounts for things she remembered seeing used. Everything looked… normal. The other parents looked at it for a long time, then they started to just shrug their shoulders and leave.

Rosa even acted weird about it for a few weeks after my mom got them, but when nothing happened, things settled back to normal. My mom kept saying, if it was all above board, why go to these lengths to stop anyone seeing it? She couldn’t let it go. It took a while but the closer mom looked, the worse it seemed. Everything was accounted for but the price of things just didn’t add up. The PTA used the same vendors a lot. I think the major one was Sam’s Club, where they got wholesale prices tax-free because it was a PTA. In some instances, they were paying more than we paid at home without any of those benefits. Rosa would write down the numbers, but she never kept receipts. They just had the line items to match it up with from the accounts. 

There were enough of these pretty suspect numbers and instances of odd behavior that she approached the police about it. She couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong, but it wasn’t right either. She was directed to the financial crimes unit, which at the time was like 3-4 people in a room at the police station. They just didn’t have the resources for this level of scrutiny. They agreed it seemed weird, but they didn’t have the time to go through so many transactions spanning years of time to establish a pattern. My mom, however, definitely had the time. 

She starts calling every store in the book and asking about their prices. If she couldn’t get a receipt, she’d document the steps she took to get to that conclusion. She’d get them to fax over the current prices as well as any information they had on sales or price fluctuations around that time period. She and another member of the PTA would do the regular meetings at the school with everyone, then go to our kitchen table and work in secret. Working in the shadows and building a case against Rosa every night. It was months and months worth of effort. 

Turns out the scam that Rosa was running was to basically buy 3-4 items; her kids would get 2, and the school would receive 1-2 for whatever the money was going towards. She’d mix them in with normal transactions so that it didn’t look...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/1mwcnwq/the_pta_incident/

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/nutlesscats on 2025-08-27 01:06:25+00:00.

I had my real-estate agent (Western Australia) rock up at my house and ask me questions about an unregistered car on the property, two hours later a council ranger turned up saying they had complaints about the car and was going to issue a removal notice. I said my real estate was the complaint source and he just stated that they had complaints and couldn't say who to which I had a laugh and explained she had randomly turned up asking about the car just two hours ago, to which he got this funny look and stared at the car and then at the other car in the driveway and asked if driveway car was registered which it was and just said

"swap the cars around so it's the registered car on the verge and it can legally sit there for two years before they can do anything about it" He then said have a good day and left

Second it is an offence to turn up at a tenants house unannounced where I live (which is what property manager did to ask about car) and led to us breaching the agency and them getting a 10k fine for breaching peace and privacy 🥳

Has anyone else had an authority help you screw over someone being a nuisance like this?

Edit, real estate agent is managing the rental property Also can be called a property manager

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ScientistOtherwise34 on 2025-08-26 22:38:48+00:00.

In the 70's(yes I am old) I worked for a small fabrication shop. I filled several roles. One was billing and one was accounts receivables. We had a machine shop as well. One of our clients was a rather large maker of a specialty truck product. They would order certain parts from us to use on the trucks. This required the machine shop to make the dies and then we would make the parts. They would constantly make changes. Our contract said they would pay for any increase in cost. Now the change orders might add 2 to 5 cents per part. They would say alright and we would produce the new part. We would send the invoice for the new part. which would get rejected because the contract said the part was 35 cents each, not 38 cents each. I would have to explain that they had changed the order so they had to pay the new price. They would refuse and would only pay the original price. Finally I stopped the plant from making the parts that they were not paying the proper price for. They used a JIT (just in time) inventory system so they had no backstock in inventory when we stopped shipping. They called in a panic. Where were the parts. We told they refused to pay so we refused to ship. We went back and forth for a few days, then we had a check and all change orders were approved. The week they were down cost them several hundreds of thousands of dollars. The total of the difference between the original price and the new price on the parts was around $250 total. After the contracts were up, they found another machine shop. And they wanted the tools and dies we made. Cost them a pretty penny for those and they balked, so we would not ship them out. More downtime. You would think they would learn but they started doing the other shop the same.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/CrazyEhHole on 2025-08-26 08:30:31+00:00.

Years ago I worked in a meat packing plant as a supervisor. It had its ups and downs, but overall it's was good. Until a new production manager was hired. We'll call him Bob.

Bob didn't come from the floor, or even leadership. He had an engineering background. Whatever, I'll try to keep an open mind. Well my mind was only open for about four and a half mins.

First day, first time meeting, he declares he's going to "right the ship" Sure thing boss, right that ship that is already sailing in the right direction.

He declares that going forward there will be no more OT. He states we are pissing away money with the amount of OT we pay. I asked for clarification "what about vacation coverage? Sick calls? Etc.). He replies "No OT! No exceptions!". Sure thing boss man.

Now I should point out, the department is work in is massive. My direct team at that time was 70 people. There were other rooms that other supervisors looked after for a total of 220ish employees.

Now I'm assuming all of you reading this are infinitely smarter than Bob and have figured out that with a team that size, we dont just get one sick call, we averaged seven per day. Vacations? 10% of the workforce was our cut off. Usually we hovered at 12 people a day. Not to mention leaves of absence, people leaving early etc.

So, on Friday I went to Bob one last time. I let him know that we are going to be short 19 people next week and ask once more for him to approve OT. I got a flat no in response. I considered going above him, but i figured letting the guy drown would be better.

I didn't ask for OT. Employees were coming up to me "boss, are you sure there's no OT next week?" Yes I'm sure Bob wants it that way.

Come next week. Two production lines aren't running. Bob comes to me upset demanding to know why two of the lines aren't running? Is is mechanical downtime? No bob, i have no one to run the line.

He stammers something about staffing appropriately and having better planning. "I asked you multiple times to approve OT, you said no each time. I was just following your direction". Cue the angry storm off. with him yelling "get some fucking people in here!"

Anyways, I then have to call people at home and schedule OT for the rest of the week because Bob sunk our ship instead of righting it.

I couldn't staff those two lines that day. For those wondering, not running those two lines that day lost the company $120,000 dollars (no I'm not exaggerating).

Bob gets a strip torn off him by his boss a guy I've known at that time for 10 years. He came and spoke to me about it outside (we both smoke) "what the fuck was he thinking? I thought engineers were supposed to be smart?" I choked on my cigarette laughing.

Bob lasted about three months.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Mohr_Khowbell on 2025-08-26 03:58:04+00:00.

I used to work on the loading dock of a fruit packing plant. The plant would get orders of a certain amount of heavy boxes of kinds and sizes of fruit, usually apples, and we’d use forklifts to bring our pallet-fulls of boxes from cold storage, reload those boxes by hand onto different pallets to fit the order, and then load the order into semi trucks to be shipped.

The apples were clean…ish, but the boxes and pallets were not, so it was dusty, physical labor for sometimes more than 8 hours a day, but we all pulled our weight.

One co-worker was not always that bright, but had somehow convinced himself he was smarter than the rest of us. Think of constant “Assistant to the Regional Manager” vibes, but without the funny.

We were in the middle of loading an order, and it happened to fall to him to do most of the hand-stacking—as it sometimes does—while the rest of us were finishing other, necessary jobs. The previous order I had done most of the hand-stacking, which was fine, while he had been somehow nowhere to be found till the very end. It’s okay, stuff happens… but it was a pattern with him, and the supervisor never seemed to hound him about it.

So now he’s doing the heavy lifting, and I have the option to immediately join him and help, or let my own muscles “rest” for a minute by doing a different, necessary job of tying off the tops of fully loaded pallets before jumping in.

I chose the latter—still physical, but not as. By the time I was done, he was still stacking. I knew there was only room for two to stack at a time, and I looked to the other guys to see if they might help instead, but they were still finishing up their own jobs. Since I was earliest done, I figured I should just help him and get it over with.

I walk over, grab a box, break the “glue” that holds it to the other boxes so the entire stack doesn’t fall apart, and get ready to lift. That’s when he said it.

“You might as well let me finish it myself!”

For whatever reason, this had been a thing my supervisor had been saying the last few days when coworkers had been slow—kind of teasing them, but also trying to light a fire too.

So here’s him, borrowing my supervisor’s line, directing it at me. I could see he was angry and felt justified. I froze, box in hand, glue half-broken, and looked up at him.

“Okay.”

I let the box fall, and walked across the dock to where I now see the rest of my coworkers, and my supervisor, watching us. Their work was done, and they were all standing there, waiting for Shane to finally be done with his. I just realized they’d seen and heard everything, and I expected my supe to chew me out because he’d always been adamant about not letting stupid arguments get in the way of work.

He didn’t say a word. None of them did. I maintained my calm pace until I joined them. Then I turned and watched—we’ll call him Shane because it’s actually his name—finish his job.

It was just a couple more minutes, but it was glorious. It was like we were all just taking a second before our next job, but no one else joined him. We just watched, and I could almost see his brain actively try to figure out what had just happened—like gears spinning, but not engaging.

I’ve worked a lot of crappy jobs with not always the best of people, but this is a moment that always makes me smile.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/alicewills0n on 2025-08-26 00:06:53+00:00.

I (18F) work part-time at a small retail store. On busy days I usually help unpack boxes and restock without being told, just to keep things moving.

But one shift, my manager snapped at me: “Don’t touch anything unless I specifically tell you. Got it?”

Alright then.

So I stood behind the counter while boxes piled up in the back. Customers asked where items were, and I smiled and said, “I’ll have to ask my manager - I wasn’t told I could move stock.”

After about an hour of chaos, my manager stormed over and said, “Why isn’t anything getting done?” I just said, “I was waiting for you to tell me what to touch.”

The rule disappeared after that shift.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/xtab8 on 2025-08-25 16:41:03+00:00.

(Not in the US btw)

I used to be an operations engineer on a 1-year contract in a small department. There were only 4 of us and the seniors absolutely hated doing additional work, so when there was additional networking stuff required as part of a new project, it was dumped unto me. I didn't mind doing it as I was learning new stuff, but the lack of appreciation from the rest of the team and being underpaid made me look for other jobs when my 1 year contract was almost up.

Fortunately I was able to get a much better offer from one of my ex employers with about a month to go for my current contract. My current company never reached out to me to talk about renewing my contract, so I thought i'd just give them a heads up that I'm resigning and not renewing my contract.

My manager at the time used to be an engineer like us but was promoted 6 months prior and was incredibly cocky because of that. I went into his room and handed him my resignation letter, told him I was resigning and would be happy to hand over my stuff and train the others before leaving. He takes a look at the letter, gets really pissed, and tells me he isn't going to sign and acknowledge the letter until he decides what date I'm allowed to leave. He said this will happen after he's found someone to replace me and when he's in a better mood, essentially trying to hold me hostage. "But, my contract only has 1 month...", before I could say 2 words he says NO MORE TALKING, DID U NOT HEAR ME SAY I WON'T APPROVE IT UNTIL I'M HAPPY! I DON'T WANT TO HEAR A WORD ABOUT THIS FROM YOU UNTIL I'M READY!!! (Note this was very long ago where resignations via email weren't as common)

I thought about explaining to him when he had calmed down, but decided fuck it, if that's what he wants then I'll comply. So I continued working for the rest of the month, with absolutely no handover done until the last day.

On the last day of my contract, I head into his room and hand him my laptop, badge etc.

"What's this?"

"My stuff, today's my last day"

"Stop fucking joking around, I told you that I haven't acknowledged your resignation letter yet. Which by the way, I've just decided your last day will be 2 months from now because we need to look for a replacement, train him up and get a proper handover before you can leave. So keep your stuff and get back to work" He gives me this incredibly cocky look like he got me.

"Nope, my contract runs out after today. I'm not paid to work beyond that"

"You...what?"

"Yup, I've been trying to tell you from the start, my resignation letter was a courtesy since my contract runs out anyway, but u didn't allow me to talk"

"You're fucking bullshitting me!!!!"

"Nah go call HR and check, seeya!"

I watch his face turn from anger and cockiness to shock as I walk away from his room.

A few months later I find out that he got a stern lecture by the director even though he tried to put the blame on me, ended up hiring a network engineer that cost triple what they paid me, and breached multiple SLAs for the period before the new hire joined.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Lurking_Moose on 2025-08-25 12:42:53+00:00.

Years ago I worked mostly retail, with a scattering of retail food service. I worked at a QuickChek for a few months, which is similar to a Wawa or Sheetz. Gas, subs, snacks, basically mid-range. I did a bunch of different jobs there, including making food, which I kind of hated. Everything was just reheated slop or low-grade pseudo-food, which is standard, but some regulars got very picky about their food. Some I get - I mean, you want to be sure you’re putting something at least ok into your body - but some people were just complainers for the sake of it.

One dude came in just about every morning to sit in and eat a poppy seed bagel, buttered, with multiple bacon rounds stacked thick, and extra black pepper. My one coworker who normally made it showed me how she made it for him and he was always happy with her. I followed what she did to the letter each time. But each time, he’d come back and complain. “My bacon isn’t crisp enough,” “There isn’t enough bacon,” “This isn’t toasted enough,” “This is toasted too dark,” and his personal favorite, “There isn’t enough black pepper on this.” Every. Single. Time. No matter how much I put on, it was never enough. I followed what my coworker did, she’d even tell me it looked good, and still, he’d complain. I vented to my coworkers and they said they stopped making his sandwiches because of it, since he did the same to them. Jerk.

So one day he comes up, and preemptively complains about the black pepper. “Make sure you put enough this time!” Ok, fine. I smothered that frigging thing like nobody’s business. The inside of that bagel looked as dark as the poppy outside. “Here you go!”

He came back a few minutes later and quietly said, “That’s about as much black pepper as one could tolerate.”

“Was it not enough still?”

“It was too much,” he grumbled.

He still kept coming in almost every day for that disgusting sandwich, but at least it seemed like he was timing his approach for when I wasn’t there at the deli section.