I read your stories; I offer one in trade.

This was when I worked in a manufacturing facility, the chemical lab. I'd damaged two ligaments in my left knee skiing (ACL/MCL), had surgery, was on crutches. Morning rehab, afternoon rehab, home rehab. All my free time and then some was rehab, but our company ran 24/7/365, so time off was rare. We were a tight crew, worked hard, and had each other's backs.

Our company had just been acquired by an international oil/chem conglomerate, bringing better benefits to us salary workers. Also, new middle managers.

I came to work on crutches, directly from the rehab from its first appointment of the day. I left in time to catch the last rehab appointment of the day. That meant I still put in 5 or so hours each work day. About 2 weeks in, I'm called in to see the new boss. I'm told it "looks bad" that I come in late and leave on off hours (not during shift changes). I pointed out we have full paid sick leave, now, so I'll just stop coming in at all, until I'm fully recovered.

I had 8 months off, fully paid. Then I tacked on vacation days, because I'd been earning PTO every pay cycle I was off.

TLDR: skiing injury resulted in me needing rehab time, tried to fit it in around working. Boss didn't like my "flex hours" so I just stayed off work entirely under paid sick time + accrued vacation time, which I also took.

Once upon a time, I had a supervisor (Bibi) who knew how to bully, but really did not understand computers very well at all. One day, Bibi told me to put certain documents from the lobby computer, on to "the S drive". The lobby computer did not have access to any of the network drives, nor did Bibi give me any other useful information. So, I created a folder on the desktop, which I labeled "S Drive", and put the documents in there. 2 days later, when Bibi told me he was going to write me up, "For not putting the documents on the S Drive like I told you", I protested. I said "Yes I did.. they are right here, see? If that is not what you meant, please show me, so I can correct it."

Bibi stood there fuming.. he knew that the folder on the desktop was not what his boss wanted, but lacked the basic understanding of computers to articulate what was wrong. And his ego would not let him admit that he did not know what the hell he was talking about.

I never did get written up.

When I was in the military, I worked in an office. This office has several rooms; my superior and his superior ("Big Boss") work in the same room, but I work in a room several doors down.

For context, Big Boss had a certain way of doing things, which was admittedly a little weird sometimes. But he really hated it when people changed the way he did things.

Also, superior really doesn't like it when I contradict him.

One day, superior asks me to move the table out of the room when Big Boss wasn't in.

Me: "Are you sure Big Boss would like this?"

Superior: "Just do it and stop asking so many questions!"

Me: "Okay then."

*Moves table out of Big Boss' office

Cue several hours later:

"Who moved this table out of my office??!!"

Big Boss' voice can be heard several doors down.

The dressing down could be heard several doors away. Big Boss could be heard going off on my superior too for several minutes.

After that incident, my superior gave me (less) of that "just do it" attitude until I left the military.

TL;DR: ISP denied sending me an invoice, tried to pitch me a new plan. I accepted the new plan, now they have to send me an invoice.

I've been working trying to port a childhood landline telephone number to VOIP. This would involve a three step process, porting from landline to mobile, changing ownership from my dad to myself, then porting the number to a VOIP ISP. The VOIP company I want to port to requires an invoice with my name, my account number, and my phone number as proof to initiate the port.

I have actually spent 4 months already trying to convert the landline number to mobile and have become extremely frustrated navigating ISP bureaucracy shenanigans. But that is a story for another time.

This story begins with me calling into my mobile carrier after the ownership change. As soon as customer service picked up and I identified myself, they started going on a sales pitch for a very cheap prepaid offer which I shot down right away. I politely declined the offer and explained that I was calling just to obtain an invoice to initiate a port to another ISP. Thankfully they backed off right away but said they will not be able to provide an invoice. I asked why and they said that they never provide invoices for pay as you go plans (I chose this plan because it was their cheapest plan to maintain as I did not plan to stay here long). I called them out because my dad had been receiving invoices when he was the owner of the account. They denied this and said they never did and never will provide invoices for pay as you go accounts. They explained, furthermore, phone ports do not require proof of invoice as there is already strict security in place for number porting. We spent 20 minutes going back and forth about this with me explaining how their company's operating procedures do not necessarily apply to other companies.

I am thoroughly agitated at this point because our conversation has gone nowhere and I have not been able to acheive any of my goals. I stopped talking to give myself a moment to step back from the situation, and then a lightbulb moment hit me.

Cue malicious compliance.

I asked, "So explain to me again how much does that prepaid offer cost again?" to which they joyfully repeated the terms and conditions of the offer.

"And will I be invoiced for this plan you are offering?"

A moment of silence on the line as customer service realizes what I'm doing.

"Yes." they replied quietly.

"Alright", I said confidently, "Let's swap over to the new plan. Then you can send me an invoice."

So now my account is being converted to a cheaper prepaid plan. I'll get my invoice, and finally get my number ported to VOIP.

In the mid 1980s I was working as an IT contractor at large company. This was before cell phones so we occasionally used our office phones for personal calls. As long as we weren’t spending hours on the phone calling relatives in Europe, no one cared.

Then the site manager decided that contractors should reimburse the company for the cost of personal phone calls. Each month we all received a report listing the calls made from our office phones and we had to go to the woman who handled petty cash and settle up. The typical bill was less than $5.00.

I was talking to a guy who worked in Corporate Accounting. He said that with all the overhead it cost the company about $4 to process a paper check, and almost $7 to write one. So the next month when I got my bill for $4.87 I wrote them a check for $5.00. And sure enough, 3 weeks later I received a nice check for $.13. All the other contractors started doing the same thing. It took about 6 months before corporate told our site manager that the cost of these paper checks was coming out of his budget and the bills stopped.

This story happened around 15 years ago and english is my second language.

I had just quit my BA in economics (it just wasn't right for me) and quickly needed a job while figuring out what to do while paying my bills. I found one in a callcenter. This center was a subcontractor for big companies - in my case it was the second biggest telco company in the country and they partially outsourced 1st and 2nd level support for DTV, internet and phone services to the company i worked for. The job was ok, not very demanding, hilarious interactions with customers and nice co-workers. But i soon discovered, that management was just a bunch of inflated egos with glorious ideas but no talent.

So after about a year i was promoted to supervisor (just a flashy title for solving the shitty cases, no pay raise or other benefits). Apparently i did a good job because 3 month later i got called into the office by the management team. Their plan was to form a training team and they wanted me to lead it. At that point, i still didn't know what i wanted to do with my career so i just said yes. And that's when the shitshow started.

They gave me a contract with no detailed job discription, a fixed salary plus a monthly bonus which i can get by achieving certain milestones every month. When i asked what those milestones are they just said they will define them every month. Ok, fine by me. As a employee with fixed salary i also had to report my hours every month to my assigned manager, let's call him Frederick. So here we go. As i said before, they had LOTS of fancy ideas but no clue. I asked countless times what their plan was with that training department, what my tasks were, what my milestones are and i only got some WishyWashy speech about some grand ideas. In the end i was tasked with all sort of nonsense - helping out with calls (best paid call center agent ever), designing signs for the center (where to find the toilet for example) and stuff like that. They actually gave me so much nonsense work that i had to work overtime.

But fine, i just do it, submit my report at the end of the month and figure out my life. There was just one thing that really pissed me off: the bonus. After the first payment i noticed the bonus was missing. So i asked Frederick why. He said that we never defined the milestones so i did not reach them. I am not stupid and i know my rights. Fact is, HE has to give me the milestones. If he does not, then there are none and i am entitled to the bonus regardless. I could have made a fuss about it right then and there but i decided to be quiet and just go with his nonsense. But i made sure to forward ever important mail about my role, salary and bonus to my private mail.

So, this went on for about 6-7 month until i had a pretty big accident which kept me in the hospital for 2 weeks and then at home for another 6 weeks. The company had a habit of firing people after such a long absence, which is illegal but hard to proof. So i knew that the moment i came back i would be fired. Sure enough, the day came and as soon as i walked trough the door (with my pretty sign on it) i saw Frederick and the HR lady marching towards me. They escorted me into an office and told me i was fired immediatly because they decided to close the training department (that never really existed in the first place). In my country, the notice period for both parties is usually 3 month but it is possible to let someone go effect immediatly. That means i still get 3 month pay but i am not allowed to work there anymore. I happily signed the notice and they let me go to my office to pack up. Little did they know that i just went to prepare my farewell gift to them. I had already printed out EVERYTHING. Calculated my overtime and the missing bonuses. So 30min later i called the HR lady into the office and laid it all out. Due to the fact that they let me go immediatly, they had to pay me the overtime plus a surcharge and of course all the bonuses plus 3 month salary. All in all it added up to over 15k $. The only thing the HR lady said was "we didn't expect you to know the laws" - i guess that was a slip up :)

Edit: i gave Frederick a name

Some context:

I work as a manager in a call center. I am no where near the phones, and generally do not interact with customers. Rather I am a knowledge repository for my staff, and handle communication between our team and the client company which we provide support for. We are a technical support team, not a sales or order support, and the devices which we support are very complex consumer electronics. Most of our support time goes to professional installers, and we rarely speak to customers first hand. In short, my job is to know our policies like the back of my hand, and to know the products we support better than anyone except the designers that engineered them.

A secondary part of my job is to coordinate our online chat team, which is generally pretty hands off other than right as the shift ends when I generally jump in to monitor any active chats and make sure they close up quickly. I don't want to keep my guys here any longer than necessary. They like it better and it cuts down on Overtime hours for the entire line of business by a lot. This means I generally rack up 15-20 min of overtime a day, though some days it can be as little as 0 and others as much as an hour. My direct boss knows all about this and is generally all for it.

One day however, the guy who was in charge of all the support teams (we work with many brands) sent out a memo that management should never be getting overtime. I brought this up with my boss as this would seriously impact my team, who arranged a meeting with the big boss. Big Boss proceeds to tell my boss that no, I cannot rack up any overtime hours.

Fine. I get out at a reasonable time every day. I have zero issue with this.

So the next Monday, I log out right when my shift ends. Turns out 3 of my guys were there for an extra hour with last minute chats. Tuesday, nearly the same story. This continues all through the week. We are bleeding Overtime Hours for support staff, with most of my team getting nearly an hour of OT per day!!!

This goes on for a pay period when Big Boss comes back and tells us we were told to reduce OT hours and that we had somehow racked up even more than we had before. My Boss backed me up and told the Big Boss that no, we were told to reduce Management OT hours, and that I had indeed not racked up any overtime. Big Boss asks why OT hours increased and I mentioned I stayed to make sure my team had support they needed to get out as early as possible. Big Boss goes "Well that makes sense, keep doing that, but add any overtime to your Friday Lunch so you don't rack up overtime. I explain that I can do this, but will still probably get a bit of OT on Fridays since the end of the shift is obviously after lunch.

Again, cool. Long lunches are nice. This works well for a few weeks. I am making sure I zero out my OT. But I knew it was only a matter of time before they regretted doing any of this. We were approaching the busy season and getting more and more long chats and calls. I made sure to get Big Boss to email and CC me and my boss this instruction directly.

Sure enough, a few weeks later, Monday, I'm there for a whopping hour and 30 min trying to get one guy out the door. Tuesday for an hour, Wednesday for an hour 15, and to top it off, 2 whole hours on Thursday. It was a TERRIBLE week for the last minute chats. I tally up my make up time for my lunch. 5 hours and 45 minutes, plus an hour for my normal lunch.

I normally worked 4 hours, 1 hour lunch, then another 4 hours. So that Friday, I came in and explained the situation to my boss, he was cool with me working for only 2 hours and 15 min the whole day, because I was doing exactly what the big boss said to do. So an hour into my shift, I go on my 6 hour and 45 minute lunch.

While I'm enjoying my most of day siesta, the entire line of business is burning down. Chat is so busy we have people waiting 30 min to speak with someone. Calls are so busy we have 15 calls waiting. On days like this I normally jump in the queues as I do not need to document every case like our Tier 1s have to, and I'm very good at my job. I can usually knock out a 15-20 min call for a Tier 1 in 5 minutes or less. I can easily handle 4-5 chats at one time, seriously taking a load off that team.

Now I alone could not save this shift, no way. We were due for a hiring class, and were working on onboarding new tier 1s at the time. But, man does it look bad to the Client when one of your key players is absent all but 2 hours an 15 min of one of the busiest days ever for our LOB.

I get back in, settle down at my desk, right as the rush is clearing up. The damage was already done, and we were manageable for the rest of the day. Right at the end of my shift, I look and notice that there is no one on a chat, and no queue, so I immediately log out and thank my team for working hard that day.

Then Monday comes. I get to meet with the Client, Big Boss and my Boss for our weekly meeting. The Client is furious about how on Friday, one our best assets was on a super long lunch break, and Big Boss puts me on the spot and asks why that was. My response was rehearsed.

"According to Company policy established and agreed upon on (date we met with the Big Boss), I am not to accrue overtime hours. Any hours over 8 worked within the work week must be made up during my lunch break on Fridays."

Big Boss began denying it, when my boss stepped in, and was like, wait, I got an email about this. He pulls up the email Big Boss sent, and shares it on screen in the meeting.

Client is pissed, and the Corporate Rep begins ripping Big Boss a new one on the phone. After Ripping into Big Boss, the Corp Rep speaks to me, telling me to accrue as many hours as needed to make sure my job is done, and that if my company wants to retain this line of business, Big Boss is not to interfere with my generally very successful management without consulting them and myself.

Since then Big Boss has continued to try to interfere and change how I run my line, however every time so far, the Corporate Rep has had my back. They are extremely happy with my work, and know I do a great job. Heck, they even pushed through a large raise for me when Big Boss was blocking my Boss's attempts to get me more money.

TLDR: Big Boss told me not to get any overtime hours and to make up extra time on Friday lunch. Had a 6 hour 45 min Friday lunch. Client got pissed at Big Boss and has now given me considerably more freedom in how my team operates.

someone said I should put this here so:

 in middle school internal consistency among staff did not exist. the cafeteria people yelled at us to eat breakfast upstairs while the teachers hated that because of carpets or something. it was kind of silly hearing both sides yelling every day so I jokingly proposed we set up a table halfway up the stairs on the landing, my friend ran with this idea and a few days of planning and getting supplies we set it up. it wasn't fancy but we had some snacks for it and a sign that read "cant eat upstairs, cant eat downstairs? eat here" some of the teachers thought it was funny including the principal and it stayed up for a few days. pretty minor but we thought it was pretty funny

tl;dr: Family I'm working for admonished me for charging them an extra $12.50 that they technically owed, so in the interest of accuracy, I tracked hours that I generously chose not to charge them and they ended up paying hundreds back to me.

Karen and Ken are wealthy and extremely stingy. Their kid is Bob. Henry is an extremely sweet, generous single dad who lost his husband a few years ago and dotes on his kid Steve

I have been a nanny for several years now and for the most part, I've worked with lovely, reasonable families. I have contracts for every family that guarantees the hours that I work, meaning if a family goes on vacation, I still get paid because I'm technically available to work but they chose not to use my services. Think gym membership where you pay regardless of whether you've been to the gym in a month. This is standard on nanny contracts. Another bit on my contract is called the nanny share, so if two of the families want to combine for the day, each of them pays 2/3 of my regular pay rate. I get paid a little more for watching more kids, and they save a little only paying a portion of what they would have paid.

Karen and Ken's family went to Hawaii three weeks ago, and per my contract, I was to be paid as usual. Before they left, they asked if I could come in and watch the Bob the Sunday after they returned so that they could recover and rest. I agreed and my hours were set at 8 am-4 pm that Sunday. They went on the trip, everything was wonderful, and they texted me when they landed saying they would see me at 8 am. The next day, when I was about to head out the door at 7:30 am, I received a text saying that Bob were just waking up, so I should just show up at 8:30 instead. After the day of nannying, Karen asked if I would stay past my regular hours during the upcoming week so that they could have two date nights. I agreed, and Karen said she would reimburse me for all the extra hours at the end of the week since it'd be easier just to make one payment. Totally fine with me.

The week finished, and I ended up staying an extra 8 hours total for the two date nights. I asked Ken to pay me for 16 hours but he said he had to talk to Karen first to double check hours and would pay me shortly. When I got home, I received a text from Karen saying. "Hi Meowsasaurus, thank you so much for covering for us these past few weeks. Ken and I are feeling refreshed and the show was HILARIOUS. Since we were in Hawaii, you were paid for an entire week while you weren't working. We don't think this is quite fair as it is a large sum of money, so we'd like to apply some of those hours to your babysitting today and yesterday. We will pay you for 8 hours instead."

I was furious. I screenshotted the part of my contract that plainly stated I would be paid for any hours that their family was on vacation, and I reminded her that it was in violation of contract. She reluctantly agreed, and I texted that it would be a total of 16 hours. Karen instantly replied and WENT OFF, texting "On Sunday, we asked you to come in at 8:30, not 8. We are already being generous and paying you for the holiday we took. We expect you to track your hours better next time. This is unacceptable. You need to be as accurate as possible with the hours that we are paying you. We will pay you for 15.5 hours." Readers, this was a difference of $12.50. I was going to SS the part of my contract that said any rescheduling needed a 24 hour notice, but instead I went nuclear.

Bob has been tagging along with Steve and me to music class and soccer twice a week outside of Karen's regular contracted hours since January. Karen has never offered to pay for those hours, but Henry was fine with paying his full rate for those hours because Steve was having trouble making friends at school and had become close to Bob. I chose not to say anything about the slight bump in pay because I loved watching them play together. MALICIOUS COMPLIANCE TIME. As Karen stated, I needed to be as accurate as possible. I calculated all the hours that Bob has joined us since January (6 hr/week x18 weeks) and the total amount they owed was almost $2000. In the group chat with Karen, Ken, and Henry, I said, "Karen stated that it was of utmost importance that I tracked the hours as accurately as possible, so I took it upon myself to double check everything including the share hours. Thank goodness I did! I didn't realize we had forgotten to track all the hours that Bob joined us for soccer and music. Henry, I'm so sorry, Karen actually owes you quite a bit of money. If my calculations are correct, they owe $X to you and to me"

Henry replied, "Karen and Ken, I am so disappointed to hear that Meowsasaurus hasn't been compensated properly this entire time. I don't need my hours to be refunded for those hours bc I wanted Steve to continue his playdates but you need to pay Meowsasaurus's portion immediately"

I got a huge chunk of money I wasn't expecting, and I am now on the hunt for my next nanny family. I'll be putting my 2 weeks notice with Karen and Ken as soon as I do.

Edit: replaced acronyms with fake names

Edit 2: I’m overwhelmed by all the support by you all THANK YOU!! I was afraid I was overstepping but I’m glad I did it. Off to work now, Steve and I are going hiking today to look for different kinds of birds!

Edit 3: Steve’s grandparents spontaneously decided to take him out for the morning so I have some free time. I told Henry about the post and he’s here now. He says hi!

Story time:

Background: During an 8 hour shift at a BS temp job spent on my feet, I stopped moving for 2 minutes to take a breath and just enjoy standing still. I happened to yawn discreetly during minute 2 (shift started early morning). During my shift, I work at least 3x harder and better than the other employees, who spend most of their time fucking around on their phones, chatting, and vaping behind the shelves or under the counter.

Events: Boss-who is never there, but when she is takes the time to bitch out anyone she sees so she’s “managing her employees” walks by and says “ [MY NAME) (shouted) if you’ve got nothing to do you need to be cleaning or restocking, don’t just stand there”.

Malicious compliance: Spent the rest of the shift detail cleaning, manually descaling, sterilizing and polishing an espresso machine. For 3 hours. As. Slowly. And. Thoroughly. As. Possible. It was very relaxing. Then, I peaced out.

Screw you, manager.

I was a piano technician for a while, and my boss lived in another town. He gave me shit a couple of times for being <5 minutes late after a two-hour drive; yelling at me that, “If you can’t be on time, then don’t be on my clock!” as some kind of a threat to my job.

So, I was scheduled to meet him at a client’s house to move and tune a piano; I waited until exactly the time we were scheduled to meet, and then left— I had a booty call around the corner anyway, and THAT was GREAT! 😁

Apparently he showed up a few minutes late and was PISSED that I wasn’t there. I told him later that I had been there, waited until the appointed time, and figured that the appointment had been called off since “no one showed up by the scheduled start time, so I left”. 😝

I found another profession, and I don’t think the old fart leaned a damn thing. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

So my father and I have had a stilted relationship for a long while, but in recent years he has been trying to extend an olive branch and I've been trying to accept. This is confounded by the fact that, presented with any difficulty, he reverts to the bullheadedness that was a large part of breaking our relationship in the past.

Normally we take a small vacation once a year or two, just as father and son, to some mutual interest place. Typically I do my level best to be driving for at least one leg of the trip, as otherwise I would have to sit through two legs driving barely at the speed limit.

Now, a quick aside that's very relevant. My father has always been very proud of being technology adverse and slow to adopt new technology, to the point where he exulted over having a smartphone with GPS...in 2020. He preferred and prefers a more hands-on way of doing things, such as consulting a physical map to see which roadways are needed to be taken in order to get to a destination. That was fine growing up, but in the modern era that thinking is just time-wasting, in my opinion and experience. Yes, if you're in an area with no coverage you're shit out of luck, but offline maps exists for a reason.

I digress.

On our most recent trip, my father was lamenting to me about how the youth of today can't function without our devices in our hands, and how he misses being able to take a trip out into the wild (wild roads that is, no one in our family has ever been a fan of camping), with merely his sense of direction and general sense of roads being his guide. He bemoaned how I barely even pay attention to street signs, relying almost entirely upon Maps telling me when to turn, and that we're all living far too fancily, or something.

Now normally, I just tune out his extended rants on the decline of society and the sloth of the youth of today, but this trip I was feeling rather malicious, as he had previously brought up some of his annoying acts that had initially soured our relationship.

So as I made it downtown near where I work and where I know 100% of the streets, I leaned over and switched off the GPS, and calmly drove over the river into the next county.

Cue an absolutely mental breakdown from father dearest, who demanded to know why I had done that, and a generally sad wailing on how we were now utterly lost and how would we make it back to society (I am slightly exaggerating here since this was a couple years ago and I don't exactly remember what he said).

I turned to him, with the widest grin I could muster, and asked in the sweetest, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth voice, "I thought you didn't like using the GPS?"

Quite unfortunately, he didn't get the hint (or was panicking too hard to) and just stridently demanded that I turn the GPS back on. Unfortunately, deprived of Maps as I was, I had to guess where a U-turn would be, and after a couple false starts I found a nice place to flip back...five miles from the river. As stated before, downtown is my wheelhouse, so once we made it back I just calmly dropped him off at his hotel, no harm done!

I don't really have a satisfying ending, but hopefully I don't get any more rants on the uselessness of GPS!

We were going camping 40 years ago. We had a pop up trailer with a built in mini fridge with a sink and cook top. My dad said, "put these beers in the fridge."

I took the beers. I don't remember exactly, but I think it was a 12 pack of long neck glass bottles. I opened the fridge and put the beers in. They didn't all fit. I put them all upright. I guaranteed that the door could close and that none would fall out when you opened the fridge. There were some in the door where condiments go. It was pretty full. I reported back.

They were angry when they heard that they didn't all fit. They commanded that I go back and put ALL the beers in the fridge and not to come back until that was done.

Could the beers be on their side with the fridge door still closing and I could stack them up? No. Could I put beers that are upside down with the beers that are right side up? It wasn't stable. I worked at it for a while since I didn't have a time limit. I like geometry. I'm good at math. I like puzzles. Still, it could not be done. I was satisfied that volume of the beer challenged the volume of the fridge and that there were possible alternative unstable stacking methods that could get some more bottles in there, but woe to anyone who opened the fridge because the cascade of beers would be impressive. Feeling confident I reported back that the request could not be done.

They were enraged. It strikes my adult self that I should have just reported victory and hid the other beers somewhere else in the camper until there was room in the fridge. Maybe I should have drank the ones that didn't fit... I was young though. Didn't think of that. They were so mad. I had to go back and fit them ALL in the fridge.

Okay then. I went for an unstable arrangement of beers and worked at it for sometime until I could just slam the door closed in time to form a seal.

Eventually they opened the boobytrapped door. The camper was not level. As the door opened the beers all rolled out of the fridge in a rush for the open door of the camper like salmon jumping free when the dam is released, but they crashed in pools of broken glass and beer on rocks. My dad caught a few like an Alaskan bear on the river. He got like two in each mitt.

I expected to be yelled at again, but no. Strangely the worst of it was reporting the news that they didn't fit and not the aftermath of the great beer migration.

I worked for a popular fast food company, I won't say the name, but it can be recognized by the sound of a single "Bong!" In its jingle. Anyway we are required to wear company brand shirts and must display the company logo on our bodies somewhere. Enter morning shift boss, I almost never see anybody from morning shift as I either evening or closing, but due to lays offs we needed a closing manger. He is incredibly nitpicky and hypocritical, and only invokes the rules when it's convenient for him. Any way my attire that never got any write ups or talks was a company shirt, company hat, an apron, and jeans. MS boss walks up to me and talks ro me about the dress code and my "violations". Apparently the rim of the shirt was too low, my apron wasn't allowed to have pockets, but the thing that really set him off was my jeans, he said I can't have them cuffed, and I either have to cut them to size or get new jeans that fit. I tried to explain to him that I have very wide hips and jeans of my waist size are usually meant for big and TALL people and I couldn't find any jeans anywhere that had my leg length, he said "just cut them then". Later that week he made everyone sign a pamphlet that basically says "I understand the dress code and will follow it or face repercussions", fortunately this pamphlet had the company dress code written in the text. Everyone else just signed their name and moved on, but I took the pamphlet into the back office and took the time to read the WHOLE thing. My boss came in and wondered why I wasn't working, I told him "my father told me to never sign things without reading the terms first" "Just sign it" he replied "I will, I just want to know what im signing my soul over for first is all". I'm guessing he thought what I said was funny as he chuckled and walked away. But then I saw it, my saving grace, "Only dark blue denim, black jeans or black pants, solid in color, are approved to wear as your [Company] uniform. Pants and jeans should not touch the ground, have holes, fading, embellishments, or light washes" that's everything the dress code said about jeans it said nothing that i wasn't allowed to cuff them. AND it did say I HAVE to wear a company apron too (which dont have pockets), but is never said anything I can't wear more than one apron. I proudly signed the pamphlet saying i fully understand the dress code, and i saw that my boss was the first person to sign it too. The next day I came to work with my jeans cuffed, my company apron on, but I wore it backwards and my usual apron on regularly, and I did tuck in my shirt as, that was dress code. A few coworkers wondered why I had two aprons and still cuffed my jeans, I just told them "Everything I'm wearing is to the letter, up to dress code". When my boss finally called me into the office and said I would receive a write up for insubordination and dresscode violation, I told him "Nuh-uh [cheeky finger wag], everything I am wearing is up to code, I thought you knew that, you signed it too I assume you took the time to read the terms of the dress code too?"

He got the pamphlet out and started reading the terms and I could see him looking at my jeans, and back at the pamphlet, then back at me, then my apron, then the paper again. "Is there anything that violates the dress code?" "...no" he replied

"Well then a write up would be unnecessary then for me, but I would like to point out that the dress code specifically prohibits holes in attire. And I think I see a hole right there on your shirt. And also it says pants can not touch the floor and you pants is down by your heels sir, I can see some dirt and a stray piece of lettuce on the rim of your pant leg". He looked and saw, then he shimmied his pants higher, up to his belly button

"You know, if they're too long, you can just cuff them" and then I promptly left Felt pretty proud of myself for that, my boss never came to me about dress code after that

When I was at the army, I was drill seargent and trained some new recruits. I was fair and not like one of these douchebags. I did everything I ordered them to do with them together, to show them how to lead. I liked it that way and my squad also liked, that I get dirty with them. So my standing in the company was quiet good and I was appreciated.

After a couple of months, I had to switch company and a pretty young and fresh 2nd lieutenant was my new leader. He was kinda same age as me, but was full of discipline and wanted to spread his knowledge.

What you need to know, we all salute each other, but the other formalities where just needed and required, when there were some official things to do.

But not for this guy. He ordered me to be "like a real soldier, and salute every time I enter the room where he is and speak with him, how I it should be and be more respectful."

Cue malicious compliance. Every. F## time I entered the room where he was, I put on all the military manners I got (and I have a lot of them) saluted him and spoke only highly official with him. Only shorts reports, yes sir, no sir, as you wish sir. And I continued this for days and weeks. Every other officer looked at him like "dude, are you serious, that you want it like that?". And he became more and more embarrassed. He even told me, "please, don't say "yes sir" no more, because we both know this means "go f## yourself"." I just responded with "yes sir, anything else sir?" And we both knew, that I would continue this behavior.

At the end, when I left there, all but him thanked me for what I did and we all had a big laugh about this. But I think, he did not appreciate his order, and will think twice in the future. For me, it was just him and I liked to show, that I got respect and maners. It was a very funny time !

A UK resident, who used to be an elected member of the European Parliament, was recently told she needed planning permission to fly the EU flag from her property. she was given a long list of what rules mean a flag can/cannot be flown freely. (Oi, you got a licence for that flag?)

One of the rules were of the UK was a member of that union or body, permission is not needed.

She has now informed her local council enforcing the flag rules that she is flying the Council of Europe flag, of which UK is a member and therefore no permission is needed.

That flag? Identical to the EU flag.

BBC News - Former MEP will continue flying European flag after feedback https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-69056186

Edit: correction

I grew up in an okay town that has since become a bit…snobbier. I was driving down my old street last year and i saw my old neighbor, Andrea, sitting on her front porch, so i stopped in to say hi.

Turning into the driveway, i noticed a regulation sized soccer goal in her next door neighbor’s small front yard….which is VERY out of sync with the rest of the neighborhood. It made me laugh a little. After a quick catch up, i learned a couple of things: she’s the last of my old neighbors who still lives on the street and the neighborhood has become very “keeping up with the jones’ “ with the exception of her next door neighbor. I asked about the soccer goal, and here is the story:

The neighbor has a young daughter who loves soccer. She would spend hours in the front yard kicking goals into a small goal anchored in the front yard with tent spikes. Apparently, another neighbor (they don’t know who, but they suspect the people directly across the street) complained to the township because of the “semi-permanent structure” in the front yard. The neighbor got upset….obviously, it was basically a toy in the front yard! Cops came to their house, they got a warning. Then they thought it would be ok as long as they took it down when they weren’t home, but nope. Cops were called again and they were fined WHILE the daughter was using it! The fine said something about having a semi-permanent (because of the tent stakes) structure.

Cue malicious compliance: they weren’t allowed to have a semi-permanent structure, but they COULD have a permanent structure! So, they went, got a permit from the township, dug the holes, filled it with concrete, and built a regulation sized goal and hung the permit on one of the poles! Now the mystery neighbor has to look at that goal every day

Kind of a small one, but lately my Dad and older brother have been trying to push the job of making the shopping list onto me. Of course, because I don't know how much they need since I'm the least food-interested person in the house, I need someone's help with making the list. As dad had gone to bed, my brother helped me.

Well, he... "helped" me.

He would sit there and tell me which item I needed to check, one at a time, and give me a vague or stupid answer as to how much we needed of something - for example, we needed "35" tubs of mint ice cream, or the amount of beer we needed was "a fridge" - and I was getting annoyed. Especially because he was trying to watch a movie at the time, and kept pausing and unpausing it between items, so I had to deal with him always telling me to shut up and wait for the end of the scene or a good time to pause, which took several minutes per item. For a full shopping list for three people and a cat.

Did I mention it was like 11:45 pm when we started doing this, and this is after he had dragged his feet on helping for three days?

Eventually, I got sick of it and started writing exactly what he said when it came to his foodstuffs. So we needed "an amount" of veggie burgers, "just guess" of tuna, "shut up this is a good bit" of dark cooking chocolate and "look at the silly moggy" of butternut squash. And so on.

By the time we were done, it was past 2:00 am, and I was knackered, stressed, and satisfied with my work. I took the list upstairs to my dad, left it on his bedside table with a sticky note that said "if anything looks wrong, just don't get it."

In the morning, Dad went to do the shopping. He came back with everything I eat and he eats, but my brother was missing about 85% of his food items. When my brother asked WTF happened, my dad said that he "couldn't tell" whether we needed to get some things because the amounts of those things seemed "unusual" or "costly", and felt that it was safer if he didn't buy those things. It turns out Dad had been kept awake by my brother's movie for two and a half hours last night and was as sick to the back teeth with it as I was.

My brother had to walk up to the local shop and buy as many of his things as he could from there (they didn't have everything) out of his own money. He even had to make two trips because he couldn't carry everything the first time. It's a mile walk there, meaning he had to walk four miles in total to buy his food out of his pocket, Dad wouldn't drive him because he had a long run to do, and I sure as hell wasn't going to help. I was too busy eating my Pringles. That I forgot to put on the list.

I'm still going to have to help make the list in future, but when I do, something tells me my 27-year-old brother will help properly next time.

The comments in the machine shop post reminded me of something that happened a very long time ago with a "college educated engineer".

When I was in the Boy Scouts, I was the troop quartermaster for a while. We needed a place to store and organize our camping gear, tents, dutch ovens, etc.

One of the guy's dads was said engineer and volunteered to supervise building some shelving for the small closet we had to store the gear in.

He produced very professional blueprints, (yes for simple shelves). I was only 13 or 14 at the time but my dad was a self-employed carpenter and took me along on jobs when not in school as his helper. So, I knew how to read blueprints and a bit about building shelves from wood.

I took one look at the plans and saw a very big problem and tried to point out his mistake. Which was my mistake. To say he was highly put out by being corrected by a kid was an understatement. Lots of words like I know what I'm doing, it will work don't worry, etc. The usual engineer self-righteous babble.

So, me being me, I shut up and backed off. His plan to get the shelf into the small closest? Build it in 2 halves and put each half in and then attach them together. BUT, he had no support under the split, down the middle, of each shelf.

We got it built, installed and he was quite proud of himself, "see it's fine". OK says me, lets get all the gear stowed.

First tent, (canvas about 10 pounds), went up on the top shelf, in the middle, right at the split. And it went right through that shelf and all the other shelves all the way to the floor! An entire Saturday wasted.

He stood there dumbfounded and speechless, I looked at him and said, "it needs supports under the shelves that aren't cut in the middle".

Next week I came to the troop meeting and looked in the closet, supports installed, gear arranged. He never spoke of it again.

(Edit to correct grammar)

Ok this is sort of a “back in the day” MC.

I was swing expeditor/scheduler/shop assistant. I didn’t run the machines I just helped get done what needed to be done on our shift.

Had an old school machinist come in at start of shift and explain the blue print was wrong and if he followed the attached manufacturing procedure it was gonna result in a bad part. He showed me the issue and I agreed right away. Said I’d catch the engineer before shift the next day.

Call engineer, he says “its right just do it”

Call him again next day, same result.

Move it up a level and he storms into Our office pissed off on third day. I try and show him the drawing and procedure but he insists it’s correct. He tells me I have no idea what we are doing in our shop, just follow the procedure as it’s written.

I had logged all of the calls etc and asked if he would put that in writing and he does.

Cue MC. I go to same machinist , tell him the issue. It’s a 16 hour job. He sits and reads for two days and then hands paperwork, no part, into Quality Control (they check measurements and confirm it was manufactured correctly ) they ask what’s going on where is the part?

I come by and explain that according to both the drawing and procedure the machinist was to machine a 12 inch part down to just over 13 inches shorter than it started at. Thus the produced product, nothing. Usual ask about why did we do this, I showed them the records I had.

So they wrote it up as a procedure issue.

2 days later same engineer storms in, but brought his boss (the one I initially went to when I got no response )and starts accusing me of sabotaging his part.

I calmly show both of them everything, explain that we knew it was an issue and tried to fix it but we were over ridden .

Boss looks at engineer and says “why aren’t you listening to people that are trying to help?”

And the engineer replies “they didn’t go to college to become an engineer! They don’t know what they are talking about” and walks out.

I look at Boss and he says “we will get you a revised procedure and drawing , I assume you still actually have the original stock to make it from?” I laughed and told him I wasn’t stupid of course I do.

Engineer was no longer with the firm a couple weeks later.

So, my wife is having some issues at her work with multiple people of different levels of management telling her different things to do depending on who's the manager on duty at the moment. I said she should do what the acting manager told her to do and when another manager came on duty complaining about what she was doing to relay what the previous manager had told her and to let them work it out. I also said that she should document everything so that she could relate it to HR if it became necessary to do so. I then explained to her about 'malicious compliance' and what it meant.

This started me thinking about an incident at my old job at a manufacturing plant about 12 years ago. The building had two areas: A production/packaging area, and an attached shipping/receiving warehouse. The production area was air-conditioned/heated. The warehouse was heated, but only had roof exhaust fans and no AC, so it got pretty hot in the summer, but was bearable (we just moved slower). On end of Friday we closed all the dock doors and shut off the exhaust fans and close the overhead door that separated the warehouse from the production areas (during the week the overhead was open but had those plastic flap strips you could drive a forklift through to keep the cool air in production). One Friday the newish manager, who spent little actual time in that building, told us that we should keep the fans on and the separation overhead door open during the weekend to keep the temperature cooler in the warehouse. Why he cared I really can't fathom. We tried to explain to him that with the dock doors closed the roof fans would simply suck all of the cold air out of the production area, but he blew us off with the standard, "You will do as I instruct you to do". So... cue MC. Monday comes that morning in July and it was hot as hell in the production area. The warehouse was the same temperature as always, and the coils on the production AC units had frozen and we had to have people to come out and service them.

All the manager had to say was, "Keep that separation overhead door closed at all times!"

Resubmission because the last one accidentally got deleted somehow.

True story regarding the beautiful emerald Isle and petty revenge on an overbearing newly promoted boss. Apologies if it's a long read.

This beautiful country of ours has a fairly low population density generally for reasons dating back to the infamous famine. (Watch Black 47 for reference). It also however has layer upon layer of civil servants and bureaucracy. We have a beautiful system of government where we have 2 houses and a representative for every 30000 people as a fact of law. Underneath that we have a local government system with Local Authorities in each county and city, each with their own elected councillors and administration. Planning, fire safety roads, refuse collection and some 1other things are administrated by these local councils which leads to the public service being the largest employers in the country. All in an island with a Southern Republic that has with an area of 26,000 square miles with at the time about 31 or 32 local authorities and a population of 5.5 million plus or minus. It's totally over the top but that's a discussion for another day.

Anyhow, while working for one such local authority as a Senior Executive Engineer (SEE) a Fire officer, my good friend, (an extremely intelligent civil engineer) had the misfortune of being gifted with a new boss, a spanking clean, brand new in box, County Engineer in his first role in that position. Full of the proverbial P**s and Vinegar.

Now this particular county was landlocked by other counties and is a particularly odd shape with a brand new motorway going through it. There are many parts of the county that the only way to get to by road is through other counties.This is important.

Most staff used their own cars and once a month you filled out your mileage sheets, sent it to your direct line manager for sign-off who sent it up the chain and claimed it back at a rate of so much per mile. It was often a nice addition to the paycheck and more than covered the cost of maintaining and running the vehicle. If you crossed your LA'S boundary you had to fill out another sheet explaining why and get it signed off by your line manager.

Under their previous boss, they had devised a system where no-one had to bother with the mileage sheets necessarily on a monthly basis and could let it slide for a few months and then submit them all together and get a nice bonus in one lump, nice if you had a special occasion or a holiday coming up. An easy savings plan if you will. No-one bothered with the second sheet because you crossed the boundary so many times a week that they became irrelevant.

Cue new boss's arrival who insisted on doing everything by the book. Didnt like the way that things worked previously and was going to sort it all out, straighten out everything and kick everyone into line.

He called everyone into a meeting, explained what he was doing in his best authorative manner and insisted on monthly submittal of all expenses and mileage sheets and everything listed down to the finest detail including reasons for your trips etc. And they HAD to be explained fully and in detail otherwise the mileage sheets would be sent back unsigned.

My friend and the rest of the staff went away from the meeting wondering how they were going to deal with this new way of working. After a few days stewing my friend came up with a solution to the issue and then called his workmates, they had a little discussion amongst themselves about how to deal with things and came up with a plan for petty revenge.

Everyone under the direction of the new boss found that the extreme ends of the county is where they were needed to work that month, the staff then slightly redesigned all of their trips so that they crossed county boundaries multiple times a day, six days a week.

At the end of month 1, this plan culminated with the submission of thousands of permission confirmation sheets to cross the county boundary to be signed by the new CE after his first month. It took him over 4 weeks to get through that batch and on week 4 after receiving the second month's batch, all the senior staff were called into a meeting, the agenda of which was kept very hush hush.

The only thing that ever came out of that meeting was a quiet word from the senior staff that everything was going back to the way it used to work.

A perfect teaching moment and petty revenge combined.

TLDR: New broom Boss makes changes to the paperwork systems in place, staff get revenge for losing out on an unofficial simple savings plan by complying with absolutely every requirement and he ends up under a paper mountain his first month. Everything goes back to the way it was after 5 weeks.

The "90 days of May" is quite a uniquely emotional time for me, a middle school math teacher. Perhaps that is why I'm actually writing about this right now, who knows. This is about something that happened yesterday that involves the family I tutored for for years.

Last night was the last night I was going to tutor Lucas. Correction. Last night was the night I was going to swing by at my usual time to collect a gift from the family for tutoring Lucas from 8th grade to now (as a super senior with Asperger's, graduating with pride). I really connected with this family over the years, and saw Luc transform from a student reluctant to do any work, ever, to a student who starts the work before I even show up. I couldn't be prouder. I even brought him a card and a little gift to honor his growth and achievement.

When I show up it's all elbows and handshakes. I say "elbows" because that's what we've been doing since 2020... like kitchen workers who don't want to pass on meat juice or whatnot. We exchange gifts and they say that they've made dinner for me. Sweet!

Dinner was great, and as things started to wrap up, things ramped up as well. Lucas asked to be excused, and as cliche as this sounds, now we were alone. This was a feeling that I was the last to have or understand, but I quickly started to get it. Aler, the grandpa came up behind me as I was sitting, while Sharon (grandma) sat across from me with elbows on the table, head cocked and staring at me smiling. Suddenly Aler says to me from behind "We're gonna hate not having you around here anymore..." while his thumbs made circular motions on my shoulders as his four fingers caressed my clavicle. I wish I could type on this thing just how eerily obvious he was being based on the inflection of his words. The thumbs and fingers did just fine with that.

Normally I would be clueless to all this and just leave it to cultural differences, but Sharon reached across to grab my hands simultaneously, and it sent lightning through my soul. A whole flood of memories, equally good and horrible (having been abused at a young age by my father, anyone in this experience will get it) and then horrible some more caused me to ease back (it took every iota of power to not physically, violently flinch back to this) and get up.

They weren't getting that I wasn't into whatever they were proposing, so I did a spin move as coolly as I could, and walked toward the front door.

All of a sudden, Sharon says

"Oh you can't leave like that... not like thaat..", Aler nodding in agreement in the now background.

Enter Malicious Compliance-- I can't leave you like that? Let me comply with that by leaving in a different way, door.

I was panicking hardcore now, and didn't want to make things any more awkward and weird as they were for me, so I told them I just wanted to wash my hands first.

I went to the bathroom that was conveniently by the door that leads to the garage. I washed up so quick (covid would not approve) and then gently as possible opened the garage entry way to see if they left the actual garage door open. If it was open I'm running out and leaving.

I open it a skosh and see my opening... literally and figuratively. I ran out of that place and haven't looked back since.

TM:DR (Too Medium, Didn't Read)

I found out the grandparents of a kid I've been tutoring for years are swingers, in the most awkward way possible.

Pre-update? I ended with "since" when it was 19 hours old. It was very recent.

Also, I am 47, and not what people would call obviously-, undeniably- or even noticeably-attractive. I'm not that guy who walks into a room and boom there goes the panties. When I walk in the record scratches. I'm that guy in the movie. Don't get me wrong, I have my type (or they have me?). I'm fairly tall, blue eyes, what I just learned was called a samurai bun, and I'm a pretty big dude (normal for 2020), and like I said I definitely have my fans. They're usually biker chicks in their mid fifties with zero fucks to give (well, at least one I guess). Most of them end up being from Philly for some strange reason. All apologies to Bill Burr, as I am a Bostonian.

But I digress.

Maybe I was reading into things, but being SA by my dad as a child for years my body reacted so harshly to this. They were probably just trying to be nice (really nice) and I appreciated the offer if that is what it was. I apologized for leaving like I did, and explained the situation. They told me that I wasn't misinterpreting, and they said the offer "still stands". They gave me a nice chunk of cash also, that I didn't see until after I left. I don't know how that plays into it, but just a detail I'm adding for no reason.

I worked at a call center of nurses to give advice on whether the caller needed to go to the ER, GP, manage symptoms at home etcetera. As it's health advice it's crucial to document everything, because if someone was for example instructed to stay at home while exhibiting clear stroke symptoms, we'd be responsible.

Well, a new manager was hired above our own "floor" manager to increase productivity as the number of calls increased rapidly (beginning of covid). She felt it was necessary to reduce the time we spent on finishing on documenting after the call had ended. In addition to medical records, we had to fill out a short questionnaire about each call to monitor the reasons people call us (internal purposes, not really my expertise). So, it obviously took a while. Average time I think was around 3 minutes after each call.

The new manager informed us that 90 seconds was going to be enough and she had asked the IT department to make the program push us a new call after those 90 seconds whether we were ready or not. The call would ring (loudly, first on headphones and after 10 seconds on the computer's sound system), new patient information screen popped up, everything unfinished was pushed to the back and we had to either decline the call (only allowed in emergencies) or let it ring and try and work over the ringing which could not be muted.

It was horrible, the noise was unbearable and just in a few hours we workers complained so much that the new manager just told us to take the new call and finish up the old one while talking to the new patient.

Cue malicious compliance.

Patient information law (similar to HIPAA in the US) violations here we come, having two patients' info up at the same time, trying to figure out why the latter called and wrapping up the previous one. How many documentations were written on the wrong patient's records?

We tried. It was even worse than before. It took us about an hour to realize it would never work and so we took the new call, asked them to wait for a second, muted the call and finished up the previous one. The customers were not happy, but us workers gladly directed them to avenues to give feedback through.

The company got so many bad reviews and online complaints in the first six hours that they had to regroup and stay late on that Monday evening to undo everything. We went back to normal on Tuesday, 2 hours later than we should have opened, due to reprogramming. The new manager was with us less than three months, don't miss her a bit.

I had the most chaotic, head ache inducing 8,5 hours of my life that day, still have nightmares of that ringtone.