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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