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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/vikingzx on 2025-10-30 22:56:57+00:00.
So this happened while I was working at a convention center that was ... not a good place to work. They sucked. Manglement was absolutely poster-boy MBA idiocy 99% of time, and that other 1% was trying to figure out how to make it 100%. For example, they hired a security guy to keep homeless folks from crashing on our couches ... then tried to fire him when the "homeless problem" just "went away."
Yeah, this type of genius. The type that thinks everyone not in an office with an MBA is below them. Something they made clear abundantly. Even as they constantly failed to figure things out like "You can't stick 12 ten-foot tables in a row that's 100-feet long. Yes, the application let you make the room larger, but we lack that space-time bending technology."
Anyway, they were the type of people who believed that the menial peons of lesser departments should NEVER be relaxing. Work for the purpose of pointless work! Getting a job done better or faster just mean getting penalized. So one day, about six months before COVID, they hand down this new rule.
Our job was setting up and taking down sets, as well as cleaning, both for events and in general (they let the janitorial staff go and folded those jobs into our department to save cash). Well, they decide that there are two new rules we need to follow.
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Always be cleaning. We are to clean on a loop, endlessly, even on floors that aren't in use that day, so that the customers can see how busy we are keeping things nice. We did the loop, and no one's come in? Do it again. Top to bottom. You should never be off your feet, you lazy peons! So lazy!
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We were no longer allowed to leave cleaning materials, carts, vacuums, etc, anywhere but their assigned location, which was now a back room on a bottom floor. If anyone asks you to do anything, you have to go put all that back. NO EXCEPTIONS. We pointed out this was stupid ... but we're just laughable idiots who couldn't get a business degree. What do WE KNOW about work? HAH!
So ... we complied. And suddenly, everything was late. Get a call to get some chairs? Well, I was cleaning unused tables on another floor. I have to pack everything up, put it away on the slow elevator, then I can go do that. Even if a customer asked me. Suddenly we're getting complaints that everything takes too long. Manglement even protested a few times "What were you doing on that floor?"
"Cleaning. Like you told us to."
Did they learn? No. In fact, a few months later they took away the break room. We could still have "breaks" (it was the law). It just wasn't supposed to be in the building. To prevent "laziness." Meanwhile, we were still endlessly looping on cleaning, then taking five or so minutes to pack up every time we had to do something, then another five minutes to unpack and get back ... sometimes several times in a few minutes, making three quick errands for an event take a half hour.
They didn't learn, but we complied, much to the complaint of everyone.
Then COVID hit, they took the PPP loan, and fired everyone.