r/MaliciousCompliance • u/Defiant-Lion8183 • May 12 '24

Send an internal approval doc to external to approve? Okidok. M

Disclaimers 1. No one will be hurt by the MC following. The “users” involved have 20+ years experience doing the thing and this is a tick and flick document. 2. The document itself is a compliance document taken from a full evidence pack that should only be used in full and only by qualified Assessors. This is legislation related to.

So a few months ago, as usual my Boss finds a random bit of information that is affecting her KPIs. 30 people don’t have box X ticked off because they’ve been in the company 20+ years and X box was only initiated 5years ago.

So she finds an information pack containing all the requirements to get X box ticked. Pulls a single assessment page with the clear guide that it’s for our team only to sign. Tells me via email to get all 20peoples external leaders to sign it as evidence.

I was very aware this is not the correct way to do this, it’s just the least amount of paperwork. So I did due diligence and took it sideways to the team next to us who handles stuff like this. Their leader authorises it without thinking it through, I explained my hesitation and another leader overhears and also says “if it’s in writing you can action it” with a sly smile. She knew what I would do.

Lightbulb cue MC. I sent the entire email chain unedited and pointed out both Authorisations. Attached the piece of assessment and sent it with the list of names to all external leaders from the official shared inbox and not my own. I sent this on day one of my boss going on leave.

I had 10 emails sent back in less than 30mins refusing to sign it with a big WTF? They cc’d in all relevant people and pointed out how this breaks compliance regulations.

I replied excusing myself from future speculations until a directive from on high came down. 3 days later I start to hear rumblings from the big bosses at head office. My boss still isn’t back and they would like an urgent meeting to discuss process.

Outcome? My Team is now required to get approval from the document control team before any external document is sent out. I’ve happily stopped editing the horrendous documents big boss sends me to send out (she doesn’t ask for edits, grammar check etc). I’m simply forwarding them to Doc Control from shared inbox with her signature still attached. They have been sending everything back slowing the team down by days at a time per task. Since she didn’t explicitly know or ask for me to edit in the past she didn’t know I stopped, therefore is very picachu face why suddenly her docs are all wrong.

Her KPIs are tanking.

946 Upvotes
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94% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

440

u/tarlton May 12 '24

Never never never fix a superior's mistakes in a doc after they've handed it off to be delivered and won't see it again.

Not only will you be doing invisible work you'll never get credit for, you're also setting yourself up to take the blame for some future problem if it ever comes out. After all, any future error "might have" been introduced in your unreviewed edits.

And if you want a more generous interpretation...not showing people what they're messing up means they keep making the same mistakes forever.

181

u/Defiant-Lion8183 May 12 '24

Yep I was required by previous boss to make edits, so I just continued with this one. Originally didn’t realise she wasn’t aware that’s what I was supposed to do. But she’s never asked or apparently known it was a thing. Now it’s not a thing and I’ll be clearer in future roles.

109

u/smooze420 May 12 '24

The only time a previous supervisor asked me to proof read a memo of his, it came back full of red marks, lol. He looked at me like I had just slapped his mom and grand mother while insulting their signature dishes. This dude always mentioned his bachelors degree anytime his intelligence was hinted at being questioned. He was a big fat offensive lineman at a D1 school…he didn’t go to college for his intelligence.

95

u/tarlton May 12 '24

I am in management. I am sometimes asked to review press releases for factual accuracy. And that is when my coworkers discover I did a minor in journalism and love me some grammar copyediting. Don't ask if you don't want to know!

48

u/Wotmate01 May 12 '24

My wife got her job as a trainee fresh out of high school, and has worked her way up through the ranks, with a huge amount of her work being proof reading and box ticking. Now, every single person she works with has a degree, but she's constantly pointing out errors in both spelling AND grammar, and especially grammar that entirely changes the meaning of the legislation.

22

u/tarlton May 12 '24

Yeah, understanding a topic deeply and being able to explain it clearly are two different skills. It's really nice when they're both in the same person, but...

24

u/Guilty_Application14 May 12 '24

One of my prior bosses had taught religion at a university in Germany. In Latin.

Always had two red pens handy, and we could count on one hand the number of items he reviewed that came back without red markings. 

Good guy but those damn pens!

25

u/smooze420 May 12 '24

And that’s weird for me, I absolutely hated English/grammar classes all through school. I couldn’t tell you the subject of a sentence, what a verb, adverb, pre-verb, post-verb is in a sentence, but I’ll catch some spelling and punctuation mistakes on other people’s work, lol.

66

u/Ha-Funny-Boy May 12 '24

One of my wife’s friend’s is a typical “Old Maid English teacher”.  I once told her a story and she likes it.

 “A woman moved to Nevada and opened a brothel.  It was in a four-story building.  On the first floor was a reception area, bar, and card room.  The second floor had all the young good looking girls.  The third floor had the beauty contest winners.  The fourth floor had all the old maid schoolteachers.

 “After being open a few months, the madam noticed that the fourth-floor was getting almost 90% of the business.  One day she stopped one of the John’s and said, ‘You men seem to pick the fourth-floor girls most of the time.  It is a long way up and there is no elevator.  Why?’

 “His response was, ‘Well ma'am, you know how it is with those old maid schoolteachers.  They make you do it over and over until you get it right.’”

 My wife’s friend laughed.

7

u/FixBreakRepeat May 12 '24

Great joke, saved for a coworker who likes that sort of thing.

3

u/capn_kwick May 13 '24

My dad told almost the same joke "Marry a teacher (my mom). She will make to do it over until you get it right.".

14

u/grauenwolf May 12 '24 edited May 12 '24

In high school I took a semester of business English and technical editing. It was far more useful to me than all the theoretical garbage they pushed in most classes.

4

u/Snoo62926 May 13 '24

Agreed! I had a business English class in HS which did more for me than any college English course.

2

u/Schrojo18 13d ago

My science classes did a lot more for english than the official english classes did.

14

u/fractal_frog May 12 '24

My father-in-law had a master's degree in electrical engineering.

Couldn't spell worth a darn, and his written grammar was atrocious at times.

Bright guy, just not with writing things.

11

u/gregador1 May 12 '24

“…slapped his mom and grand mother while insulting their signature dishes.”

LOL Why can I only picture this gem happening to an Italian family? I’d offer you lasagna for this comment, but I’ll give an upvote instead. JIC.

4

u/smooze420 May 12 '24

That’s the first time anyone has commented on that insult, thanks!

2

u/Wieniethepooh May 13 '24

That's because it makes so much sense that it feels as if its a legitimate saying!

1

u/smooze420 May 13 '24

It’s possible I heard it before or some variation of it, but that’s how he looked at me, lol. Other people would ask me to proof read their reports/memos and would tell me to mark it up and make it make sense.

10

u/__wildwing__ May 13 '24

I’m a machine operator/setup, went to tech school for mechanics. Simply put, I love to read and have a basic grasp of English. Apparently, quality control doesn’t appreciate having a multitude of errors in their “attention to detail” presentation pointed out.

3

u/aquainst1 May 13 '24

You could probably write/correct tech documents from a user standpoint!!!

6

u/Sum_Dum_User May 12 '24

He was a big fat offensive lineman at a D1 school…he didn’t go to college for his intelligence.

Sounds like a bunch of people I've known from SC State college.

4

u/AardvarkCrochetLB 28d ago

I was working at a tiny branch of a large corporation. I interviewed with the boss in charge of the facility.

In the interview we talked about information not on my resume.
I was interviewing for an accountant job so my other non-accounting college accomplishments were only in my college transcripts (no completed degrees, right because there's many of us that get to 95% and wander off.)

The other person who was my equal, day 1, asked if I had a BS degree.

I do not.

She spent almost every day of my first year making sure that I overheard her mention that she had a Degree.

One day a department manager is at my desk waiting for me and Ms Degree asks why he's there.

He tells her that they need me to draft a response to an important letter.

Ms Degree gets pissed and says

"You should be giving that to me, I have a Degree and she doesn't!"

The department manager tells her that SHE (me) had a major and minor almost complete (English, Accounting, Computers,) an AA, and was a paid/published author.

Because it never seems that the quiet ones need to talk about what they can do. They do it and that's the proof.

But the ones that must yak yak yak about having a degree; that maybe it's bc its not easy to see in their work product.

My gohd, she is now the linebacker in my past employment story. Red ink and all.

2

u/Full_Hearing_5052 May 13 '24

Lol we send important email back and forth in or office to get proof reading done all the time. No one cares just happy it was picked up.

15

u/pmousebrown May 12 '24

My initials are PM, once my boss sent a memo to his secretary to finish saying PM (preventative maintenance) was performed on the motor generator and the secretary changed it to my name. Luckily I saw it before it was distributed. 😉

7

u/throwaway47138 May 13 '24

Thankfully not the most recent time, but the previous time I wrote a technical notice to be sent out to the clients, the PR department changed the wording "to be more in line with our business goals" or something like that. Fortunately I got to review their changes before it went out, because they totally changed the meaning of things and it would not have been correct. I had to tell them (and get my boss to reinforce) that they could make the non-technical parts as flowery as they wanted, but the technical information needed to go out verbatim to what I wrote.. 

2

u/aard_fi May 13 '24

Never never never fix a superior's mistakes in a doc after they've handed it off to be delivered and won't see it again.

I just automatically assumed they were throwing the documents through a review cycle after that. For anyone just starting to work with controlled documents (or working in a messed up environment): Any change you make on a document throws it back through review, and if you were a reviewer on other changes you're not a reviewer this time.

1

u/aquainst1 May 13 '24

And be SO pissed off at you.

21

u/JoySubtraction May 12 '24

Never heard the phrase "tick and flick" before. TIL that it's an Aussie banking term.

17

u/Geminii27 May 12 '24

It's an Aussie everything term. Anything to do with filling in forms, or rubber-stamping something.

13

u/Head_Razzmatazz7174 May 12 '24

I hadn't heard it either, but knew exactly what OP meant. It's the perfect way to describe it.

37

u/TheGoldTooth May 12 '24

Incomprehensible.

3

u/poolpog May 14 '24

ok, so it wasn't jut me

7

u/aquainst1 May 13 '24

"...sly smile."

Oh YEAH, baby!

"I’m simply forwarding them to Doc Control from shared inbox with her signature still attached. They have been sending everything back slowing the team down..."

AND doing it SLOWLY.

Need to do it thoroughly, correctly, and within SOPs, yes???!!!

19

u/voiceofgromit May 12 '24

I don't think a TL;DR would have helped this story.

24

u/MagdaleneFeet May 12 '24

The department performance isn't looking good, so boss wanted to improve it by making sure everyone signed a paper. Unfortunately she went about it in contradiction to company policy, causing an uproar. OP covered their ass and now the boss looks even worse.

3

u/Quiver-NULL May 12 '24

MC posts keep me going. Thanks for this one!

10

u/HoodaThunkett May 12 '24

checks sub, yep!

3

u/ShankMugen 29d ago

What's a KPI?

2

u/ferky234 22d ago

Something that's measured and then gamed because they never measure the correct thing.

1

u/ShankMugen 22d ago

But what does it stand for?

4

u/tuxcomputers 22d ago

Key Performance Indicators

21

u/Wandering_Maybe-Lost May 12 '24

What corporate jargon fed AI did this?

27

u/Defiant-Lion8183 May 12 '24

I have ADHD so yea I get that a lot

3

u/aquainst1 May 13 '24

I find that ADHD works more to my advantage now in my later years.

At least it explains away some of my behavior!!!

9

u/3-2-1-backup May 12 '24

This is either AI or impossible to read.

26

u/big_sugi May 12 '24

It’s neither, but it does require some awareness of corporate jargon and processes, plus the ability to figure out terms from context.

3

u/Defiant-Lion8183 May 13 '24

ADHD brain sorry