This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/NoButterscotch1824 on 2025-05-20 18:44:21+00:00.
Few years ago i worked as IT Consultant in Ministry of Justice (DOJ for USAers).
So in my fck up (excuse my french) country, you get a job for one position and you find yourself working 4-5 positions simultaneously.
So besides doing IT Consulting services for govermental archive project as my primary task i was also task with all kind of madness, from plugging in computers to outlet (yes there are a lot of public servants that still can't understand concept of electricity), through fixing printers to managing whole freakin network and servers...
Besides all that, because i had not political presence in any type of form (i was just IT guy) and my contract being in grey zone (contract of temp jobs that was extended every couple of months) i became errand boy for Secretary of ministry /we will call her JAss) ( if i didn't complied I would get terminated same moment).
So a lot of stupid things happened but i will describe two situations where Malicious Compliance peaked. So JAss is surgically removed from digital age but she has an iPhone and knows how to use Viber (btw government in my country strictly forbids Apple products and/or chat applications to be used for internal purposes).
So she was sending me orders via Viber to my private phone all the time, couple of times she would send me some pictures to be printed in colour (i was only one in whole building who knew how to "operate" color printer). We came to first case of MC.
She sent me a video long about 2 minutes running at 24 frames per second and ordered me to print it, yes to print it. I tried explaining but to no awail, JAss was like you have till end of shift or you are gone.
So i complied. Made a script that extracted every single frame from video as separate image ( that was total of 2880 images) and sent it to printer.
Of course mid way toners got empty so i changed them with last ones we had (and next procurement is planed in like 6 months from that time).
It finished printing just before shift and i brought it to her. I still can remeber that dumb face telling me that i am idiot for wasting governmental property, but i had proof on Viber of order she gave me so JAss shut up quickly.
Second situation happened like this: I was called in server room by inteligence personel to check out what is happening because they smell like copper is burning (worst thing that u can smell in server room), so i ran there and i had sight for my eyes, server that we used for all comunication between us and Ministry of Finance (Treasury) catched fire (no we don't have backup or redundancy) so if it dies we are in country wide problem, and what happened, i am in middle of putting fire down with fire extinguisher when got a call from JAss to help her out with something.
I tried again to explain situation but she wouldn't listen, and gave me same ultimatum as every time before. So i got a bit of thinking, i have two solutions, to not comply and get terminated (not get paid) or to comply, let server burn down (can't get paid).
So i complied, gone up and can you guess what was task so urgent that needed me? You won't believe, she didn't know how to put brush on a stick (you know those two part brushes that have little tongue you need to click in) that ahe brought for her secretary to do something in free time.
So i helped and gave my resignation immediately because in meantime server burned out and i won't get paid either way.