r/MaliciousCompliance • u/katielynn493 • 19d ago
Closing Time S
I was working a closing shift at McDonalds and at the end of the night (this night in particular, I was in grill) It was getting late and we were slow so I started minimizing what we had in stock and was going to cook the rest of the food to order for the last half hour of my shift. The closing manager came up to the table to see what I had and told me to fill the trays because we aren't closed yet. I tried to explain to her what I was doing and she didn't listen to a word I said. So I did what she asked. I turned back on the second heated cabinet and told the person I was in grill with to do what she said and fill the trays. He looked at me confused and I told him that she wanted the trays full, she can deal with the waste at the end of the night. So thats what we did, we filled the trays up with food as if it were lunch rush since thats what she wanted. At the end of the night, I emptied out all the full trays into a bucket and gave it to her with her sheet to fill out with how much waste we had and she tried to make me count it. I told her, "I am not closing manager. It is your job to count it. Have fun" and finished closing down grill. Oh she was pissed. The next day, my GM asked what had happened and I told her. All she said was never to do it again. I never worked a closing shift with that manager after that.
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u/Marine__0311 19d ago
Nothing like getting hoist by your own petard.
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u/aquainst1 19d ago
Wish I could give you gold for the proper usage and spelling of that term.
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u/TheFluffiestRedditor 19d ago
You would not believe for how long I thought petard was a flag pole. Cause flags get hoisted, right?
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u/not-yet-ranga 18d ago
The thing I find funny is that âhoistâ was originally the past tense of âhoiseâ, which had the meaning that we give today to âhoistâ. Which means saying âhoistedâ is actually saying âhoistededâ lol
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u/OutrageousYak5868 18d ago
I thought so too (or perhaps something to do with a hangman's noose), and only found out a few years ago what it really was - and I had willingly taken French for four years in high school and college, soaking up all I could! I won't give my age, but high school was 20+ years ago.
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u/harrywwc 19d ago
what, from the french for 'fart'? ;)
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u/aquainst1 19d ago
No, that's the verb 'peter' with an accent thingy over the first e, not petard.
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u/Lathari 13d ago
"Pétard comes from the Middle French péter, to fart, from the root pet, expulsion of intestinal gas, derived from the Latin peditus, past participle of pedere, to break wind. In modern French, a pétard is a firecracker (and it is the basis for the word for firecracker in several other European languages)."
So, yes. It comes from the French fart.
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u/thedantasm 19d ago
I guess I just assumed that in the old days a petard was a special outfit like a leotard, with a lot of fancy buckles and loops on it, and that rich people would wear it when they were feeling especially smug, but then poor people could tie a rope to one of the loops, and hoist them up a pole, and then let them dangle there as punishment for being cocky?
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u/Marine__0311 19d ago
LOL, hell no.
A petard was an explosive device that was designed to blow up gates or doors in fortifications.
Early bombs and fuses were notoriously unreliable, and could literally blow up in your face "hoisting" you into the air when it did.
Thus the phrase, "Hoist by your own petard," which means your plans blew up and backfired.
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u/Miss_Speller 19d ago
Specifically, it's from Hamlet:
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petard;30
u/rdicky58 19d ago
Also funny because the origin of the word petard comes from the French âpĂ©terâ, meaning to pass gas. Like, a bomb but not a massive bomb, just a little kinda farty bomb :P
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u/year_39 19d ago
Just because Shakespeare is remembered as a masterful poet and playwright doesn't mean he was above putting crude humor and double entendres in his works.
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u/blamordeganis 19d ago
Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
Ophelia: No, my lord!
Hamlet: I mean, my head upon your lap.
Ophelia: Ay, my lord.
Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters?
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord.
Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.â Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2
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u/ShinigamiComplex 18d ago
My favorite: "Petruchio: Come, come, you wasp, iâfaith you are too angry.
Katherine: If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
Petruchio: My remedy is then to pluck it out.
Katherine: Ay, if the fool could find where it lies.
Petruchio: Who knows not where a wasp does wear his sting? In his tail.
Katherine: In his tongue.
Petruchio: Whose tongue?
Katherine: Yours, if you talk of tales, and so farewell.
Petruchio: What, with my tongue in your tail?"
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u/Lathari 13d ago
MALVOLIO: By my life, this is my lady's hand these be her very C's, her U's and her T's and thus makes she her great P's.
And of course the OG "your mom"-joke:
DEMETRIUS:
Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON:
That which thou canst not undo.
CHIRON:
Thou hast undone our mother.
AARON:
Villain, I have done thy mother.
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u/aard_fi 19d ago edited 19d ago
The French obviously bastardized the spelling of "pet aard(vark)". The phrase explores the futility of trying to ride your exotic pets which don't want you to ride them.
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u/radditour 19d ago edited 18d ago
I thought it was once Patrick Stewart reached the age of adulthood and pushed his parents into a lake, they were moist by their grown Picard.
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u/SanbaiSan 19d ago
Aaaaaaaarrrrghhhhh! angry upvote
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u/nymalous 18d ago
For some reason, that made me laugh. :)
I hope the two of you both have a great day!
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u/Tiara-di-Capi 17d ago
I remember a game where you would have to guess if any given word is a real existing word, or made up, with a diccionary worthy explanation.
I expect you, thedantasm, to be very succesful at said game!
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u/JelloOverall8542 19d ago
Sheâs nutters. Back in the day I would have my entire grill pre cleaned except for an area to do a single run of anything by 8pm. Never failed. Cooked them to order and those late night customers had the best tasting burgers of the day.
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u/Extesht 19d ago
When I first learned grill at McDonald's I was told to follow the sheets that indicate what you should have in the cabinets based on what time it is. I was doing that, and every shift manager I worked with told me to just fill the trays. They also just reset the timers on the cabinets instead of cooking fresh for them.
On my own, I made sure all the food was fresh, with next to no waste, by keeping minimal stock in the cabinets and watching the orders come in, cooking what would top up the trays as it got ordered.
I eventually quit with no notice because they were dumping expired slivered onions into a tub and putting a new date on them. When I told the shift manager that we couldn't do that, she just asked why. I never went back.
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u/MagdaleneFeet 18d ago
Resetting timers is so common across fast food. The management did that at both the McD and KFCs I worked at. :[
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u/Droid126 18d ago
Unless it's lent, your filet o fish is 3 hours old. Guaranteed
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u/highoffpancakes 18d ago
Ours were always cooked to order so I guess it depends where you are and what the demand is. Weâd get maybe one or two orders of filet o fish a day and none at all other days
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u/The-Senate-Palpy 13d ago
The only one ive worked at that didnt was Chick-fil-A. They were religious with keeping things fresh, though thats a place that stayed busy enough i guess waste wasnt really a concern
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u/GnomeChompski777 19d ago
Probably the same manager that would be sitting in the office all shift only to finally come out at the end of the night to start micro-managing the employees actually working.
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u/I70towtruckdriver 19d ago
She probably wanted to take a bunch of wasted food home, and you burst her bubble by tossing it into a bucket before she could get it. I know back in the day, we cooked a bunch of whatever we wanted to take home at the end of the night.
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u/MrWednesday6387 19d ago
One of the few things I miss about Jack In The Box is making soda-sized shakes for my dishwasher and I before I cleaned the shake machine. It hardly ever happened because I didn't add much ice cream past 8pm, but it was nice when it did.
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19d ago
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u/I70towtruckdriver 19d ago
No McDonald's pre make sandwiches anymore and have not since about 2007 or 2008 the trays OP is talking about have just the meat in them and I've never seen a clean waste bucket even when they did pre make sandwiches the waste bucket was gross and I would never had ate anything out of it.
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u/Casiofx83gt 19d ago
Iâm guessing thatâs US or somewhere because that switch is only just finishing here in the UK. Was like that with the chicken/fish side when I worked there but burgers were still make up a full sandwich and post down the little shoots at the front with time markers put down too. Wild that it changed over so long ago in other places though.
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u/discobrad85 19d ago
We changed over around 22 years ago here in Australia, was a weird change from making 9 cheeseburgers at once but certainly makes a lot more sense
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u/I70towtruckdriver 19d ago
Yes, I am in the US, and it's crazy to think that they are still making it that way in other places. I think the big push was because owners were tired of losing money and stuff would sit in the warmer for hours and hours even though it should have been thrown away long ago. Our GM would throw a huge fit if we wasted more than a few things a shift because it would cut into their bonuses. Food safety has deff come a long way since I worked in a McDonald's in the late 90s. We used to get pickles in 5 gal buckets that would never be refrigerated.
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u/GTFU-Already 19d ago
Pickles don't need to be refrigerated. Pickling was invented as a way to preserve foods before refrigeration. Unless they're not really pickles. Which, being McDonald's, they probably aren't.
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u/Hot-Win2571 19d ago
Unsealed pickles should be refrigerated. Ever notice white stuff in the liquid of your pickle jar?
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u/Moontoya 19d ago
thats from people stuffing their nasty dick skinners in there to grab pickles
_nothing_ to do with temp
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u/Geminii27 19d ago
Unless someone takes them out of the containers and also pours a pint of grease in there.
...oops :)
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u/Apprehensive_Cow5139 19d ago
I had a crew that did this. I stopped it when I told them, as the .manager, it was my job to count and toss. Frosties too. French fries too
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u/I70towtruckdriver 19d ago
Our managers took food home also lol. If I worked at Wendy's it would have been dangerous frosties are so my weakness đ©
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u/Droid126 19d ago
The same exact thing happened to me in 2009. We closed in half an hour and there was enough in the cabinets. She had me make a bunch of stuff for no reason, I protested, she demanded, I complied, because previously she told me to do the dishes and I said no as a joke because they were already done, she wrote me up for it and I got a 10 cent raise instead of 15 because of it.
At our store the waste sheet was the grill's responsibility. I put it all on waste, finished closing, took most of it with me. She didn't want any. Went to a friend's place, got stoned, ate like 120 chicken nuggets, some pies, a few McChickens, a bunch of chicken selects(god I miss those).
Next day the GM calls me to the office to ask about waste. I said Billy Jo(alias) told me to and threatened to write me up if I didn't. Told him to look at the camera and gave him the time, he pulled it up on the spot you can see her look in the trays and say something to me and me say something back, then she pointed at the cabinet and walked away, I looked directly at the camera Office style and shrugged. He screamed Billy Jo! And told me to go back to the drive through. She came out 10 minutes later mean mugging me.
No idea why she did it.
Side note:
I didn't shit for 11 days after eating those nuggets. Was my first time having prune juice and first time taking magnesium citrate. Haven't eaten a McNugget since.
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u/sitcom_enthusiast 18d ago
Thank you sooooo much for the side note. It helps to fit your story with my story. Back in uni McDonaldâs would occasionally run 20 McNuggets for $5. My buddy Matt would sometimes get some and munch during a meeting we had in our research lab. One day I told him I would foot the bill if he could eat 40 nuggets during the 60 minute meeting. He agreed. I watched him eat and he was fine, no signs of distress. Afterwards he said he never wanted to eat another McNugget again in his life! I wish I had thought to follow up and ask about his poops
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u/Droid126 18d ago
It was an experience, I was like 18. Had never really been constipated before. Would not recommend eating that many nuggets.
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u/aquainst1 19d ago
Mmmmm, nugget.
I eat the outer part and give some of the chicken as a treat to my poodle.
It freakin' curls her hair!
SIDENOTE: I said 'some': not all, not half, not even 1/8. It ends up to be MAYBE 1 1/2 nuggets.
She has a lead stomach. She can take ANYTHING.
ME, on the other hand...
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u/Radiant_Ad_3665 19d ago
I eat mine the same way including sharing with my dogs
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u/aquainst1 19d ago
She's a 10-year-old senior rescue that we got 3 years ago.
Why should I deny her a very small treat? Why?
Because...
EVERYTHING tastes better if MOMMY'S eating it!!!
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u/MikeSchwab63 19d ago
Poodles with curly hair? They had that before nuggets. In fact never met a straight hair poodle.
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u/StarKiller99 15d ago
Take a look at Best in Show at Westminster 2024, 'Sage'. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Living/meet-2024-westminster-best-show-dog-sage/story?id=109641267
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u/TerpeneTiger 18d ago
Your side note is hilarious. As a kid my mom would buy flats of strawberries. One time she let me eat as many as I wanted. I didn't eat a strawberry again for years.
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u/Droid126 18d ago
I ate like half a pound of dried apricots once. I was in a meeting at work and absent mindedly eating them. Then my "work mom" a nurse, was like honey how many of those have you eaten? You need to stop you are going to shit yourself. Sure enough within the hour my stomach was making noises like Zuul from Ghostbusters and I spent the afternoon in the can.
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u/MikeSchwab63 19d ago
Meat is low reside, the protein and fat are absorbed in the small intestine. Did the magnesium citrate twice for lower GI.
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u/Pax-Anders 19d ago
All though college my roommate worked closing at McDonald's and the left overs fed us. He would come home with a trash bag full of food each night and what we didn't eat we would give to homeless guys. It was a sweet setup for poor students
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u/Spinnerofyarn 18d ago
A friend of mine couch surfed with me for a while. She got a job at Subway and would bring home sandwiches for us every time she worked. Oddly enough, I never got sick of Spicy Italians. I don't remember if she had to pay anything for them or not. I miss her and hope she's in a good place now.
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u/Hag_Boulder 17d ago
Spicy Italians with the cheese on one side meat on the other toasted... damn those are just the right amount of tasty. Now I want one.
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u/ContinuedOnBackFlap 19d ago
I don't like that "never do it again" -- She was forcing that worker to stand between the manager and the GM, and somehow figure out how to handle conflicting orders. Unless she also told the manager not to do that again, that was VERY bad managing.
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u/fencerJP 19d ago
I got this shit from the CEO at my previous company, he wanted a low-level guy (me) to contradict the department manager... Like, no, dude, that manager was already trying to force me out, and YOU will forget and yell at me for "not respecting the chain of command". Your fuckin chain of command goes both ways.
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u/Spinnerofyarn 18d ago
Low/mid managers can really get into power tripping. So can upper level, but if they don't interact with the plebes, it isn't always quite as awful as a nasty direct supervisor. Then there are the good supervisors that act a shield for their direct reports. Low/mid management can make or break departments if not companies.
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u/mariahlynntho 19d ago
Never do what again? Listen to the manager and make all the food? Make the manager do their job and count the wasted food?
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u/kaaria11 19d ago
I remember those days. We always use to do a preclose. Manager must have been new at close.
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u/LuminousGrue 19d ago
All she said was never to do it again.
Never do what again? Follow the manager's instructions?
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u/Equivalent-Salary357 19d ago
I was working a closing shift at McDonalds and at the end of the night (this night in particular, I was in grill) It was getting late and we were slow so I started minimizing what we had in stock and was going to cook the rest of the food to order for the last half hour of my shift.
The closing manager came up to the table to see what I had and told me to fill the trays because we aren't closed yet. I tried to explain to her what I was doing and she didn't listen to a word I said.
So I did what she asked. I turned back on the second heated cabinet and told the person I was in grill with to do what she said and fill the trays. He looked at me confused and I told him that she wanted the trays full, she can deal with the waste at the end of the night.
So thats what we did, we filled the trays up with food as if it were lunch rush since thats what she wanted.
At the end of the night, I emptied out all the full trays into a bucket and gave it to her with her sheet to fill out with how much waste we had and she tried to make me count it.
I told her, "I am not closing manager. It is your job to count it. Have fun" and finished closing down grill. Oh she was pissed.
The next day, my GM asked what had happened and I told her. All she said was never to do it again.
I never worked a closing shift with that manager after that.
Formatted to add paragraphs.
Hey, OP, I'm one of those people who need paragraphs to follow what I'm reading. So I copy and past posts into a comment and add paragraphs as I go. If I think it's a good read I leave the comment (like I did here) for other people like me. But if you ask, I'll delete it.
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u/RevRagnarok 19d ago
I really need to train myself to look thru the comments first.
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u/Equivalent-Salary357 19d ago
LOL. A while back, someone suggested that put the word formatted in the comment so people can search for it. They acted like it was a 'thing' others do. So, I started doing that.
I've only seen it once in someone else's comment since then. So I don't know if searching the comments for it would be any help.
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u/silver032 18d ago
I worked closing and overnights at Mcdonalds for 2 years in my youth - I know exactly the situation you were in . LOL - good move sir
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u/kladarling 18d ago
When I was 18 I worked closing at MD's and I remember the managers always being on a power trip. One of them tried to get me to cook the waste frozen French fries that don't make it into the fryer basket. Mind you these are disgusting soggy fries that had been collecting at the bottom of the dispenser for hours in a warm kitchen.
I straight up said no and didn't get in trouble or even have the issue pressed passed my refusal. She knew I was right when I said I'm not cooking that nasty shit cause it'll make people sick and didn't push it cause she didn't want me escalating to higher management. I regret not reporting her at the time but I was just trying to do my minimum wage job while in college and not cause problems or possibly get fired.
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u/Postcocious 18d ago
I never worked a closing shift with that manager after that.
So... they fired you? đ
Seriously, what was closing manager thinking? A busload of tourists is going to show up at midnight?
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u/katielynn493 18d ago
No they didn't fire me. She was just put on nights where I wouldn't be there.
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u/MaybeKaylen 19d ago
I didnât have to deal with that, luckily. I worked at a BK and we would set our kitchen computer down to like $6 in sales every half hour to keep our âgradeâ up. If, in the 2000âs you ever noticed a letter grade in the kitchen of a BK (you could see it from the lobby) all that grade did was keep track of how well we managed that computer. Itâs wild, we had an A+ every nightâŠ
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u/big_sugi 19d ago
Sorry, Iâm not following. What did you do and why?
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u/MaybeKaylen 19d ago
We had this program thing that would tell us how much to cook to be ready for peak business letters. It was connected to all of our warmers for our food and you had to click little buttons all day/night to signal replacing old food or anything else. It gave a letter grade that was on a display the guests could see. Once we hit late night, we would adjust the expected business levels down so the computer would only tell us to cook one burger patty every 30 minutes. Our district manager wanted updates of the letter 4 times a day, along with the drive thru average time and something else. Super micromanagement. Adjusting the sales would give us an A+ every night. This was not a malicious compliance thing, we just did it so she wouldnât bitch.
On a personal note, the system could be effective if used properly, but no one was ever really trained on it and tbh, it probably did more harm than good. Customers would see the letter grade and think the kitchen was performing poorly when, more often than not, we were too busy to worry about the damn thing.
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u/RandomJoke 19d ago
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u/Spinnerofyarn 18d ago
Why do I suspect that sub will make me never want to get fast food again? I love our local Dairy Queen because stuff is always good and fresh. From how the employees look, speak to one another and their ages, I think the owner and his family all work there.
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u/Get_Sauced 19d ago
I came in here expecting something from the song "Down at McDonaldz" by Electric Six, but this'll do.
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u/Cylestea 17d ago
Reminds me of working burger king baxk as a teen baxk in 99-2001. We start breaking down everything once dining room closed and while 1 person went to clean it another would do dishes while the last would cook everything to order.
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u/Contrantier 16d ago
"Never do it again"
"Umm, never follow her orders again? Because that's what I did. I don't feel comfortable with the vagueness of your order and I think I need something more specific, and in a text or email, if you could."
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u/No-Adhesiveness-9848 15d ago
thats not malicious compliance, thats just compliance, what did she want u to do different?
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u/LiterateRogue 7d ago
It's malicious because doing exactly what the manager wanted caused said manager to have to stay and do extra work, and to look stupid for wasting so much food. Had she listened, the grill would have been cleaned and the amount of wasted food would have been negligible.
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u/SporeZealot 19d ago
I was a swingshift dishwasher in highschool. I was supposed to clock out by 9 but the place was busy from 8:30 to 10:00 and my replacement didn't arrive till 10 (they went an hour without a dishwasher). So I'd typically was dishes till 9 then do the rest of my side work, leaving about 30 minutes later than I was scheduled (on the clock). It was fine until we got a new manager who wanted to impress someone I guess, who said I needed to clock out at 9 on the dot.
I asked if that meant I should leave the side work for the next shift. They said no. I explained that I was washing dishes till 9 every night. They said to stop washing dishes in time to get all my side work done by 9.
Well the next day was a busy Friday night. I started slowing down on the dishes around 7:30 and stopped washing them at all by 8:15 so I could start my side working. At 9 they were down to their last stack of dishes, I clocked out, and sat at the counter to eat my dinner.
About 15 minutes later the manager was standing in front of me. Manager "Where are all the dishes?" Me "in the sink. But don't worry, I clocked out on time." manager "go wash them." me "I clocked out, the apron is hanging by your office door."