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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/RMaua on 2024-07-14 09:25:05+00:00.
About 10 years ago, I was working in a big organisation with lots of different departments. I was a subject matter expert working across different departments. I saw my job as making the people I worked withs lives as simple as possible. And my clients loved me for that. – Unfortunately, this came back to bite me because they started expecting me to perform miracles.
Before I started at this job, someone had decided to split up a department. Except they didn’t really do it properly. So, all the systems still saw them as a single department. The two department heads despised each other. – My solution: create a work around in the system I had control over so that they looked separate from each other and no one saw the other area’s data. But in every other system, one department looked like it fell under the bigger one. And if you looked closely at my reports, you could very clearly see the work around.
Department head of the smaller department was really sick of this and asked me to fix it. I explained that the issue was at the organisation level. She needed to write to the higher ups and get written authorisation to change the official org structure. Then once that was done, the rest of the systems would follow suit. If I changed it in my system, then something would break and she would have bigger problems than just having to ignore a header that I would hide or delete from her reports.
She insisted that if I changed the structure in my system, it would start a domino effect and everyone else – who was less helpful than I was – would have to listen to her when she said that she wanted their system changed to mimic mine.
I tried to make a joke of it explaining that I know I look like I’m all powerful because I can get stuff done for her, this was not going to work out that way. She actually needed to deal with the organisation bureaucracy BS. Trust me, I can’t help with this one. This response only frustrated her more.
We went around this for about a year and she finally lost it with me. She called me late one Friday afternoon and told me I had to make the change or else. I explained again that things would break but she wasn’t having it. She cut me off and told me to do as she asked ‘or else’.
Cue malicious compliance: I asked her to put her request in writing. (Always cover your arse.) She promptly sent me an email. I responded straight away saying doing this is going to break stuff. We have discussed it before but since you insist. I’ll get the changes sorted ASAP.
I organised for the change in my system. Stopped by my boss’s office on my way out to tell him what was happening and to prepare for the fallout. (Again, always cover your arse) He chuckled and wished me a good weekend. (The change was easily reversable. And the problems would be very frustrating but minor. No one was going to die so neither of us were too concerned.)
11am Monday. Department head calls me in a huff. Apparently, she wasn’t able to see any of her staff in the HR system. I said, that sounds about right. Now that my system and HR don’t agree…”computer says no”. Remember how I told you things would break… this is things breaking. I’m happy to switch my system back. She simply hung up on me.
Word is, she called the HR person who said the same thing and told her what I had to be done and she spent the rest of the day pulling favours to get the process I told her about months before fast tracked.
By our next meeting, things had been changed properly. The situation was never mentioned again. But from that day onwards, if I told her that I couldn’t do something, she took my word for it.