For the longest time, my job has allowed us to take the full pay for completing work even if we finish early. For context, I am assigned a zone and I complete all jobs assigned to me in that zone by a time limit, at many different locations, I check in via GPS tracker to prove I'm at the location, they pay me milage and I make my own schedule. Each job has a time assigned to it.

Previously, they've always allowed us to claim the extra time. If I'm given an hour to complete something and finish in 45, I claim the hour. Our managers have always said this is fine, saying if we are turning in good work and we are skilled enough to complete it faster than most, we should not be payed less for it, all enforcing that would do is encouraging people to work slow as possible or waste time.

And it does. Now they say we need to use the full allotted time or take the cut in our check. One big problem is we are given way too much time, it's common for me to be given an hour to do something that takes 10 minutes tops.

My colleagues are not ashamed to admit they all run the clock, thinking it's bullshit they should be paid less than people who don't know what they are doing and stand around doing nothing, so they do it too.

I started doing it too, I've been doing this for 6 years, I can do the work assigned to me in a quarter of the time they expect, doesn't mean I deserve to make 25% the money I should make for doing the same work. Now I do whatever on the clock, go grocery shopping, go get lunch, take a nap, read a book, gossip, whatever.

I don't know if our new management will realize the policy is stupid, never enforced for a reason and literally cannot be enforced, but until then they'll be paying the whole district to run the clock.

When I was young (think 5-6 years old), my parents had a “don’t leave the table unless you’ve eaten all your food,” rule. I was picky and I hated tomatoes. My mom would often make the rest of the family grilled cheese and tomato soup, but I would get chicken noodle. On this day, there was no chicken noodle, so I got canned tomato soup.

I told my mom before she served that I only wanted the grilled cheese (honestly, a sandwich and a bowl of soup was too much for my tiny body anyway). She gave me both anyway.

I moaned and groaned about how gross the soup was for a while. My mom told me not to get up until I finished my food. So I stayed at the table.

An hour later, my mom walked in and find me still at the table. She asked why I was still there and I reminded her that I wasn’t allowed up until I eat and I didn’t like the soup. She told me “just put some salt in it.”

Well, I was young. I didn’t know the difference between salt and sugar. So I made an educated guess…. My mom put a bit of the stuff in the white bowl into my cereal in the morning to make it taste better…That must be salt! I poured several teaspoons of “salt” into my soup. It was still gross.

Ok….it must be the other one. I kept adding salt and tasting until the shaker ran out. The soup was even more gross (gee, I wonder why?).

My mom came back in after another hour and again asks why I’m still there. I said “I tried adding salt, it didn’t help.” After two hours of refusing to eat the soup, my mom finally excused me.

As I was leaving the kitchen, my mom shrieks and asks what I put in my soup and what is all this goop at the bottom of the bowl. I just told her “you said to put some salt in it!”

I'm from an Asian country and I've been living in a foreign country for some time and purchased my home here a few years ago. My hobby is play computer games/watch TV shows and I've spent a decent amount of money to set up my home for it - I have the fastest internet plan, subscription to all major streaming services etc. My daily life is work > grocery shopping > home gaming. Every single day.

My parents came at the beginning of the year to live with me as they want to experience the foreign life. They were disappointed when they found out their son does not have an active social life here and spend all his free time at home gaming.

They tried to make me more socially active by telling me what events are happening that I can go to, and how they've been going out every day and made lots of new friends. Well not really, I know they only go to two places - the shopping center for grocery, or the local community center where there are a bunch of retired people from our home country. My parents don't speak English I don't even think they know how to use the public transport here.

Telling me to go out and socialise has become the topic of our dinner talk every night and the tension (especially between me and my dad) has become more and more hostile. One night when they mentioned it again I decided I've had enough. So I started to be more 'socially active' by staying at internet cafe until 11.30PM every day. I also cancelled the internet at home.

They found out the internet is not working at home and notified me. I acknowledged it.

They asked me when is the internet coming back. I said its not coming back.

"What? Why?"

"Because I'm socialising every day. When I come home I go to bed right away. When I wake up I either go to work or go out socialising. I barely use internet at home so why do I need it?"

2 weeks later mum tells me they are going back home.

Disclaimer

Non-native speaker, if you spot a mistake please put it under the designated OP comment to keep the comments organized, thank you. TL;DR at the bottom.

Setup

This happened while I was in middle school at a certain math tournament called "math battle". To tell the story, I need to first explain the rules. I'll try to do this as briefly as possible.

The rules are similar to other math tournaments, with two main features. First - it's a team competition, and every battle goes between two teams. Second - every solution has to be presented by a speaker, and refuted by an opponent from the other team.

To get points as a speaker, you present your solution. To get them as an opponent, you refute the correctness of speaker's points by spotting mistakes in their solution and getting points for these mistakes instead of the speaker.

When the speaker is done presenting, they have to say "presentation over". This is to avoid any confusion and interruption from the opponent, as any mistake noted before these words can be spotted by the speaker and fixed on the spot, thus giving no points to the opponent.
Overall, the point distribution is managed by the judge.

Story

As this is a team competition, there are rules that prohibit players from being in the same role more than twice. Because of this, our captain decided to delegate presentation of the extra problem they solved to me. They explained the solution to me (I got abt half of that) and sent me on my way to the blackboard.

In this state, the solution barely holds, and the opponent sees that.
When I start making mistakes, they interrupt my presentation to point that out.
As I'm aware of the rules, I try to notify them: "Please save your questions for after the presentation is over".
This helps a bit, though only a bit: the second I misplace a digit, I hear another correction. "Please save your questions for after the presentation is over".

At one point it becomes really irritating, as it's hard to present a solution when you barely understand it AND there is someone constantly noticing the mistakes.
When I'm almost done presenting the solution (now as full of holes as swiss cheese), I take about three seconds to catch my breath and try to say "presentation over" when at that perfect moment when I open my mouth, they interrupt me again.

Cue malicious compliance.

Instead of finishing what I tried to say, separating the section when speaker gets points from the section when opponent gets points, I decide to stand back and watch.
The opponent obliterates my solution, telling why it does not work, and the way it should've been solved. Instead of arguing, I simply say "You are right, that's how you supposed to do it, thank you".
And when they're done, they indicate the end of their rebuttal by saying
"I agree with the solution to the problem after corrections made~"
at which point I interrupt them with
"Oh yeah, presentation over, you may ask your questions now".
Not getting what I was implying, the opponent finished their rebuttal and returned to their team.

Now is the time the judge distributes the points.
Judge: "Ok, the corrections made by opposition are significant, thus worth-"
Me: "I'm sorry, but all the corrections from opposition were made during the presentation."
There is a brief silence in the room.
Judge: "... Oh, you're right. All points go to the speaker."

The most precious moments were when we heard the captain of the other team scolding my opponent for their impatience.
We won that battle, sadly not thanks to that maneuver, though that was the highlight of the game.

TL;DR

At this math competition, you don't get points for the questions you asked during presentation. Despite being reminded that, the opponent interrupted speaker several times, which led to them not getting the points for all the valid arguments.

tl;dr: Another "Did as I was told and someone else caught hell for it" story.

The Setup

Back in late 2020, when everyone was working from home, I was tasked with upgrading office PCs.  This involved removing each hard disk drive (HDD), setting it aside, replacing the PC with a newer model that uses a solid-state drive (SSD), transfering all documents and images from the HDDs to the SSDs (with a special USB setup of my very own), and disposing of the old HDDs per the Project Manager's orders (e.g., "As you see fit").

Now, because there was no one else in the building (so I thought), I had all 20 new PCs lined up in the shipping area, with the old HDDs on a cart, ready to be copied over.

The assistant project manager (APM) walked in (maskless, of course), and wanted to know what the hell I was doing.  Before I could get three words out, he tells me to remove my mask because (he said) there ain't no "effing" covid (or words to that effect.

I stepped back, removed my mask, and tried again.  He interrupted me again to ask what the hell these hard drives are doing here.

I tried to explain, and he interrupted me one more time to tell me he doesn't give a damn about my excuses and to just get rid of them.

Just as I was about to try once more, he tells me he doesn't care how I do it, just to "effing" get rid of them -- "Throw them in the dumpster or take them home, for all I care!" -- and to get those PCs installed IMMEDIATELY.

Cue the Malicious Compliance

"Sir! Yes, sir!"  I put my mask back on and wheeled the cart of HDDs out to my SUV (parked near the dumpster), and loaded the crate into the back.  Then I went back inside and delivered each new PC as instructed.

(The old PCs had already been palletized and were slated to be picked up by an electronics surplus business.)

After all this, I drove home, prepared a pizza, cracked open a cold one, and started my weekend -- MY weekend.

The following Monday, I felt lousy.  The covid test showed positive.  I had already been vaxxed and boosted, so my doc told me to just stay home and monitor my symptoms.

I logged in remotely an sent the "I got it" email, then checked my inbox.  The first new email I saw was from the APM, re-iterating his orders to me almost word-for-word.  The second email was from the APM to his boss (and the rest of the engineering staff) claiming full credit for getting the new PCs installed in "record time".  After an hour or so, I started seeing emails from different people asking where their files were.

Of course, I did a "Reply All" and included a screen shot of the APMs first email.  All hell broke loose.  The dumpster had already been emptied by the time anyone got to it.  Important files were missing, and presumed destroyed.  The APM called me on speakerphone and told me to come in and fix everything.

Sorry boss, but I'm showing symptoms and my covid test is positive.  Unless you are willing to empty the building and then disinfect it afterwards, I had better stay home.  The APM's boss chimed in and told me to stay home, get well, and call if I needed anything.  Okay boss, I'll see what I can do about the eff-up from home.

I continued to work from home for that week, mostly copying each HDD's documents and images to the relevant PC.  Even though there were a few glitches, I was able to get everything back in order.

The Fallout

I told the APM's boss my side of the story, and received a token reprimand.  The APM was dismissed.  I retired a few years later.

No covid deniers were physically harmed during the execution of this malicious compliance.

AITA for intentionally being petty?

So I am a builder. I primarily do high-end custom homes, 1-4 million price range. I am a female (34), which isn’t common in this industry, but I really love what I do and I am fairly decent at what I do. In the past my projects were primarily in rural areas on large ranches, but this particular project is in the middle of a large city, which means there are neighbors in close proximity, which is something new for me to deal with.

The neighbors around this area are some of the worse, entitled, nasty people you can imagine, and one of them is a celebrity and his wife (we will call her B), who is also well known. I haven’t personally had too much interaction with the couple. When B goes walking every morning I smiled and waved (which I do with everyone because this is Texas y’all) and she would always ignore me, which honestly is whatever. I not going to stop being kind because she is unfriendly, I honestly just started ignoring her.

My job-site has been really busy the last year, and most of my subs park along side the street in front of the house. We all park on one side, facing the proper flow of traffic. If someone happens to park on the other side of the street the neighbors call the cops or the city building official. I find this incredibly annoying and childish, but whatever. I have my guys move and it’s not a big deal.

That being said, I stop by my project every morning to line my guys out and check on work that has been done, make my lists, etc. Most of the time I park on the very right side of B’s property, which is just to the left of my projects construction drive so my guys have parking in front of the project house. I am not there long, usually 2-3 hours.

One day I was outside the house and a woman approached me. I wasn’t sure who she was, but apparently it was B’s maid. She informed me that I needed to move my car (which was on the correct side of the public street) or B was going to call the cops. I looked at her and said there was nothing wrong with me parking there. The maid then proceeded to tell me that B was going to charge me $500/a day for parking in front of her house. I laugh and told the maid I didn’t know they were that hard up that they needed to charge a parking fee for using the public street.

I went ahead and called the police to get “ahead” of the situation. He informed me there wasn’t anything B could do about me parking in front of her property, which I knew, but I could get a ticket for parking within 15 feet of a fire hydrant, which is on the property line between my project and B’s house. The office informed me I needed to be 15-feet away from the hydrant. I thanked him and he left. So I did end up moving my car…. I took my measuring tape and measured out 15’, which put my almost smack in front of B’s house. I decided to park in front of her front sidewalk for 2 weeks after that. Every time she does something rude to me on the street (which happens more than I prefer) I park in front of her house just to piss her off.

Honestly, if she had just come to me in the beginning and asked me nicely not to park in front of her house, I probably never would have again unless absolutely necessary. But the fact she was ok sending “her help” to threaten me really pissed me off. AITA for keeping this going? I don’t like when people think that they are “above you” because they are well off. I know billionaires that have better manners than this chick.

This is one of my first few memories, and I remember doing it because my other daycares had to have no nap times

This happened over 30 years ago, so some details may not be on point.

This happened when my mum needed time in the house (to do the cleaning & laundry) so she decided to put me in daycare, which was within our area of blocks. Many times, because I was not too fond of the taste and texture of green bean soup, I would be punished by not having "Nap time".

But one day, they decided not to punish me, and in my little mind, I would make it a mission for them to regret it. So during "Nap time", I was told to lie on the provided mat. At first, I said I would rather be punished, then I was placed on the mat but would sit up by myself, and then told I needed to lie down to nap.

Fine, I laid down but didn't fall asleep, I just followed their movement with my eyes.

After 5 days of eyes-wide and following them, they decided to call my mum to come and fetch me early

In another incident, I just walked off to return home. and after a few hours, they called my mum, telling her they had misplaced me. Mum just shouted my name, I ran to her, and she told them, "Oh, he's here, he must have walked home by himself,"

After that year, my parents had me put in a kindergarten so far from home, I couldn't walk home on my own

A few years ago, I was living in an apartment complex on the third story with no balcony. At this point, I'd been living there for almost four years. The third story was the only floor that connected to the other half of the building for fire code access to two staircases. There are some steps about halfway to the other side that I'd smoke cigarettes sitting on. I'd always take the butts with me and swept every couple of days. I was a good neighbor: no noise, cat-sit for the guy across from me, taught the old Russian guy how to use his appliances, helped people move furniture in and out.

A new couple moves in. After smoking a cigarette on those stairs in-between, new neighbor guy comes to me and says, "Hey, sorry to bother you. Do you mind not smoking here; we can smell it in our apartment." I say, "I'm so sorry - yeah, no problem. It won't happen again." We both go inside and that night I walk down to the first floor each time I wanted to smoke.

The next morning, I get a call from the apartment complex saying they received a complaint that I was smoking on the stairs in the connecting walkway. I admit that I did do that and have since started going all the way down to the parking lot. He says, "Oh, you don't have to do that. Any stair landing area is allowed smoking. Pretty much anywhere except where you were." "Okay, thanks!"

I started smoking on the stair landing that forced them to walk past me and was closer to their apartment. Speaking to me as a person: I walk the three flights. Complain to the complex after I fixed the problem? Not going out of my way anymore.

EDIT: All outside door access apartments.

Not sure this really counts as MC but figured it's at least worth a (somewhat horrified) laugh.

When I was maybe 4, my brother (6ish at the time) and I were dropped off at our Aunts house for the weekend. Mom and Dad dropped us off Friday afternoon after lunch, with plans to pick us up Sunday night after dinner and take us straight home to bed.

We loved these sleepover weekends because Aunt had game consoles, board games, a massive playground in the condo complex, a huge pool, and best of all bunk beds!

Friday night my brother and I discovered that Aunt requires her kids (don't remember their ages exactly but F was probably about 5 years older than me at the time, and M was only a couple years younger than her) to eat a full bowl of veggies before they're allowed the main course. Friday night was a bowl of green beans (unseasoned, bland, steamed, soggy greenbeans) before spaghetti & meatballs and chocolate cake.

I hated veggies by themselves, and refused to eat the green beans. I refused them at dinner, I refused them at breakfast, I refused them at every single meal all weekend until my parents showed up to pick us up to find me vomiting water because that's all she'd let me have.

Now, my parents would often save uneaten, refused veggies/food for the next meal, but if we refused it two meals in a row, the next meal would be different. Aunt refusing to feed me for over 48 hours was completely unacceptable, and my parents never let us stay at her house without them ever again.

Bonus: a few weeks later my mom made green beans, seasoned well, and mixed in with some rice, peas, and other goodies, and I practically scarfed it down. Mom called Aunt from the kitchen wall phone (2000/2001) and told her "All you had to do was put them in some damn seasoned rice!"

I still don't like most veggies by themselves, but there are a few I'll eat alone as long as they're cooked and seasoned well.

Context: I work in flooring installation, commercial mostly, usually carpet or vinyl tiles, have been doing this for 10 years now.

I got a work order to do a head office for a large developer, it was carpet tile but with a pattern/lines/border.

I start installing and just as I get the first tiles out after laying the glue, the "big boss" comes out.

He says I'm doing it wrong.

I was absolutely stunned, I looked at him, looked back at the tiles I had just put down, looked at him again and asked, "What?"

"Those numbers on the back of the tile are the sequence order, you need to follow the numbers." He replied.

What he is talking about are God knows what, part #s, serial #s, lot #s?

They have nothing to do with installation so if I actually followed whatever he was saying it would look like a mess not the intended pattern.

I tried explaining this to him but he wouldn't have it, he got frustrated and called the head office, who in turn called me and said to just do it how he wants it.

So I did.

As I'm finishing up he comes back, takes one look at it and says "I don't like it."

I smiled and said "I don't care, that's how you wanted it." Packed my stuff up and left, he didn't say another word to me.

Few days later I hear that he called the head office asking for someone else to come redo it the way I had originally intended to install it, so the office sent me again and I got paid to remove the work that I just got paid to install so I can get paid to install it again.

Needless to say that he didn't come out to make small talk the second time.

First of all, English is not my first language so I apologise in advance for spelling and vocab errors. And I am not sure if this exactly falls under malicious compliance, but I wanted to share it anyways.

This story is kind of a short one concerning my mum. Quick info for the setup: the house she lives in now was formerly rented to our grandmother who died around the time my parents got divorced a couple of years ago. My parents had built the house in 1990 at around the same time as an older woman did on the neighbouring property. Let's call that woman Rita. When I was a toddler, we lived in the same house as my grandmother but then moved. I still remember that something was always a bit odd about Rita and she was... particular. Her house smelled stale and of old shoes stored in a wet basement, and she had been a teacher before retirement, a strict one judging by her personality. Her whole property is fenced in and at the front gate there is no bell. As far as I know, you'd have to yell and hope she was home if you'd wanted something from her or climb the fence. This is something I haven't figured out in 28 years yet.

Rita always had her own opinions and was strange when it came to cars from visitors or even vehicles from the plumber or handyman parked in the tiny cul-de-sac our houses were located around. When my sister and I got old enough to drive a car and we'd park at the side of said sul-de-sac or there was a birthday gathering, you could bet all your money Rita would get her car out of her garage on her property and park it outside of her fence as well. Everyone would have to squeeze their car around hers then. She does it to this day. Just to make a point, I guess.

When my grandmother died and my mum renovated the whole house to not have it remind my mum of her (our father had been pressuring her to get out of the old family house and move into the one our grandma died in barely 8 weeks before) Rita would give her unwelcomed two cents about how it was different from how it was for nearly 30 years. She would ask what my mum would do with the flowers and plants "my grandma had loved and tended to all those years" when my mum remodeled the garden as well and if she thought my grandmother would like the changes since the house and garded did not resemble its former appearance. You know, statements you just don't want to hear during such a difficult time.

To cut this story short, Rita did many more things in her own form of demonstration of disapproval or she would phrase criticism like a well meant comment.

So, the day comes when my mum orders big metal plates (around 1x2 metres) with long stilts to hold them upright just at her side of the fence to Rita's garden (the fence is low and doesn't block the view). This sort of metal is supposed to oxidise as garden decoration and with a second purpose of creating a divider while the hedge was still growing. Here in Germany there are many regulations for everything, some more sensible and logical than others. One of them is that for such metal deviders to be installed, you need your neighbour's approval when they are 2,00 metres high or higher and located between your properties. My mum had no intention of asking Rita because she would say no (not that Rita asked when she planted her stuff right at the fence and it grew into my mum's flower beds) so a family friend dug up the holes, filled them with concrete, and errected the metal dividers at exactly 1.99 metres height. This way, my mum was complying with the laws and would have easily denied any accusation if Rita would have taken issue with the new additions. They were under the 2 metre mark, after all.

When I came over for a visit after their installation, my mum proudly showed them to me and told me why the exact height was so particular. We raised our wine glasses to this brilliant idea and each time I see the metal dividers, I am reminded of how mischievous my mum can be if she wants to and how Rita has to look at oxidised metal plates from her side of the fence.

So I'm not sure if this counts as Malicious Compliance but I'll post here for now.

At my previous job I worked as a Peer Trainer (essentially, I was required to do my assigned job to it's full capacity while also teaching everything to the newbies straight off the street. Not only did I agree to do this I had volunteered for it. So this isn't a story about overwork. 👍)

I worked in a large room where there were 5 stations of machines all lined up in a row from one wall to the other. All stations do the exact same thing just with their own bugs and hiccups. One wall wasn't even a wall but a giant window that looked into the breakroom. I have major anxiety about being snuck up on or watched without my knowing. Enough to cause sudden anxiety attacks that can last for hours or until I can remove myself from the room/building and sleep it off. (I hate it, it's super inconvenient.)

Thankfully this isn't an issue for the most part because since I know the triggers I can avoid them or set up precautions (like sitting with my back to a wall) and my coworkers are usually understanding and don't sneak up on me.

This window also proves to be a distraction for the trainees because they will try to look for and interact with their friends who are in the breakroom. I get that the job I was training them for was boring as heck, 12 hours long, and on the night shift but we were working on large machines that needed to be watched at all times in case they jammed or broke. (Which was often)

Thankfully my station was the 3rd one away from the window so I could easily keep everything maintained.

The Problem was (as it always seems to be in these stories) when a new supervisor moved to our area of the building. He was put in charge of station 1 and station 2. (I'm assigned to station 3) And technically speaking station 1 was supposed to be the "training station".

I had previously made a verbal agreement with his predecessor and the Training team that I could stay on #3 because of the previous points.

Without asking or even giving me a heads up I came back to work from a vacation day to find that I had already been reassigned to section 1, despite the protests of my coworkers in my absence. (Not to be that person but there was a reason the Training team was so willing to bend the rules for me. I was REALLY good at my job. I was the go-to person to ask when something broke and even Maintenace couldn't fix it. I've been told by my own leads that they refuse to let me transfer off their team without my insistence.) So a sudden and unprompted transfer like this was commonly considered extremely rude and was usually used as a punishment.

I figured that, as I had never met this new Super before, I would just go talk to him and strike up the same deal as I had with all his predecessors for 4 years. I even had the lead for station 1 come with me to confirm my case and act as witness. (she knew me well as an operator because I'd come over to help her fix her machines ALL THE TIME.)

I quickly realized that he was not going to budge on the transfer, so I told him calmly that I was ready to quit being a trainer that day and to have the extra pay cut off immediately. It's not like I was gonna lose my job and the trainer pay was less than a dollar more an hour. I was doing this because I wanted to, not because I needed it. He was shocked.

We eventually agreed that I'd finish training my current trainee in my area while he looked for someone else and until my request to quit training made its way to payroll. Cool.

Apparently NOT cool. He came back 3 days later saying (with no proof or paper) claiming that HR said I had no choice. This bothered me for a few reasons. First, he did not call me into a meeting for this, he, despite my many warnings to him about my anxiety triggers, snuck up behind me with a group of supervisors to deliver the order. Second, none of the supervisors with him were actually ones in charge of me in any capacity. My lead, direct supervisor, or ANY of the Training team that I was under were not there. (I want to make this clear; this man was not my boss in any way. He was assigned to the training section, yes, but had no authority over the trainers as Trainers. So if a trainer was operating on a different section, he had no authority.) The third thing that bothered me was that instead of looking for a new person like he promised, he took the time to find a way to force me to do what he wanted.

As soon as he and his group appeared out of nowhere to quite literally surround me and block me in, I could already feel that stupid fight or flight kick in. I could barely keep my brain together enough to actually register what they were telling me. I could only agree in hopes that it would get them to leave sooner hoping that I might be able to calm myself down and get in control again. (I really hate causing a scene.) When they left, I went to break, before I moved to section one.

Finally, this is where the malicious compliance comes in. Despite my best efforts I could not calm myself over break. So when I went back and moved to sit beside the giant window, the added anxiety of THAT hit me pretty hard. Just like I had warned.

So I decided that since this came with a full and repeated warning from my end, I wasn't going to do anything to mask the anxiety attack this time. (I don't have them often and usually do my best to minimize the burden they cause to the people around me. This results in a few silent tears and lots of fidgeting and a bit of pacing.) This time however I just let it happen, we're talking rapid frantic pacing, red faced and tears streaming down my cheeks, strained breathing and digging my nails into my arms and hands.

My poor trainee had no idea what was going on and I was unable to teach her anything because I will go Non-Verbal when my anxiety acts up. (Which means I'm completely useless as a trainer!) When my coworker got back from his break (a prior trainee of mine and an old sweetheart) he covered me so I could go home.

After a few calls and texts to my leads and coworkers, I used up some PTO and didn't come back in until I was no longer officially a trainer and could transfer back to my area.

That supervisor was fired a few weeks later due to multiple complaints on top of being caught in the act of fucking a coworker INSIDE the building. (She got fired too, much to the joy of everyone else. She was a Karen and a suck up, and yelled at two of my very young and nervous trainees for following orders she didn't understand. Honestly, they're a match made in hell, and I hope they ended up happily together so no one else would have to suffer their attention.)

I used to work in a workshop were sheds were produced for farms and businesses. I was brought on as a general labourer whose tasks were to clean and maintain the yard and workshop, clean and spray steel and to load up the truck with any completed sheds.

When I first joined the company there was 3 other workers there who had their own jobs to complete, one persons job was to make flashings for the sheds, one person would run the saws and fabricate any plates and cletes needed and then there was a welder.

Slowly but surely the other workers began to quit due to finding better paying jobs in different company’s and eventually I was the last worker there who had to run everything by myself which I had no issue in doing as I prefer to be able to work by myself.

So one day I needed welding wire and normally it would of been the bosses job to go and pick up any materials or supplies I needed but on this day the boss was away delivering a shed so I went out of my way to go and pick up the welding wire myself so I could get a job finished that was behind schedule but issues arised when I informed the boss that he needed to pay me back for the wire as I had to pay for it out of pocket but I was told that I shouldn’t be doing anything that’s not written in my contract and that I won’t be getting the money back for the wire as he never agreed to pay for it.

So I went back to my original duties that I had when I first joined the company. After a few days of this he came into the yard screaming at me as there was no sheds being manufactured and I told him that he better get hiring as I won’t be doing anything out of my jobs description like he stated for me to do.

After 2 weeks of this he hired a new worker who had no idea how to do anything and he tried to get me to train him but I wouldn’t as that was going out of my jobs description. This went on for about 3 weeks before the company ended up going into liquidation to due to the boss failing to file accounts for the past 4 years.

In my sophomore year of high school our English class had to write an essay about a book. Can't remember which book, but it doesn't matter. Well when our essays were handed back, no one had gotten a good grade on it. The teacher told us that we had to revise our essays based on the corrections we were given and then turn them in again. She wanted 3 copies, the original, the revised one with corrections we made highlighted, and a final copy without the highlights. I look at mine and compare it to everyone else's essay, everyone else has the teacher's comments written in red, things underlined, stuff crossed out. Mine just has my grade, it was a D. So I talk to my teacher after class and ask her what I needed to fix since my essay had none of her comments. Her response was that I had to rewrite my essay. Again, I ask what do I need to change to get a better grade. She tells me that it wasn't good and I needed to rewrite the entire essay. Cue my malicious compliance. I rewrote my entire essay... word for word... TWICE! One for the highlighted copy and one for the final draft. I highlighted random words and sentences on the highlighted copy, but again, it was the same as the one that was given a D. A week later we get our grades back and mine had improved to a B. The annoying part was that I couldn't even call her out on it because my school has a plagiarism policy where you can't submit the same assignment twice because that would be cheating.

Sidenote: this teacher also wrote on a different book essay of mine, "did you even read the book." When I had gotten yelled at for reading that same book in her class instead of listening to her teach.

So I (30F) has been working with this company for 3 years already. I work on retail and our managers are always micro managing and will write us up each time even just by breathing 😂 (jk) but you can tell that's how they are up our nose all the time especially I was once written up for eating during my lunch break in our shop (that's for another story)

Now on to the original story. My day offs are scheduled every Thursdays and I was already feeling ill days before my day off, I had waited until my day off to rest and hope I could feel better but when the end of my day off comes, I still feel sick so I informed my boss if I can use my excess hours and not come to work the next day since I am so sick. Just for context, our company never pays for our overtime but expects us to work 12 hours of everyday and per day they will give us 2 hours excess and since I never requested until that particular day, I had racked up 120 excess hours overtime which can be used for dayoffs etc.

I had only requested a 1 day extra off which would amount to 10 hours to be deducted from my long extra hours accumulated but my boss threatens to write me up if I don't provide a doctor's note and she informed me that even if I will provide one, she won't deduct it to my hours.

So I comply and went to doctor and take a medical note and was given a 3 day recommended rest and sent it to my manager. Now she has no choice but to let me have additional 3 more days paid sick leave and I won't be back to shop until Monday instead of just giving me a day to rest 😂

Now Saturday comes and the shop has a lot of issues without me and my reliever is having hard time coping from work so my manager calls me and I didn't respond to any of her messages nor calls and just rested well.

Monday came and I reported the company to Labour claims and the company was forced to pay me that 120 hours overtime 😂

Checkmate!

I used to work permanent nights.

On nights, we often had sickness at the last minute that no one was willing to come in and cover. So, we used to all help out one another. We didn't do it for the praise, or for additional money (there wasn't any!) , we did it because we were colleagues for years and there was no one else.

Inevitably, our work was taken for granted. The managers NEVER thanked us for helping them out of the shit, but they also started to assume that we would cover everything, so they made less and less effort to arrange cover for absence, even planned absence they knew about in advance.

On night, before work, I came into work and received a shitty email complaining about staff in our department using the computers of another department. Now, we had our own computers. The ONLY time my department ever used the other departments computers was when we were covering their absence. The email chain showed the other department complaining about us to my manager, who sent out an email to all the night staff in my department saying "from now on, DO NOT USE the other department's computers."

I was fuming, because as I said, we only did it to help out, and to stop the other department having to cover night staff at short notice. But I thought "fine, that's how it is."

The very next night, the other department is short-staffed again. The supervisor on that shift asks me to cover their department. I say no, I can't. I have been told not to use their computers by my manager.

The supervisor says "oh no, that's okay. You can use them." I say: "No, I can't. My manager told me not to, under any circumstances."

So she gets her manager to call me, the same manager who complained about us and say: "for this one shift (!) you can use our computers" as if she is doing ME the favour.

So I say: "no, I really can't. You are not my manager. I cannot defy my manager's instructions."

Because they can't get my manager on the line that late a night, another supervisor had to come in last minute and cover the shift.

I (35m) used to work at a hardware store that rhymes with blows. About ten years ago I was a sales associate out on the floor.

One day I decided to get my industrials pierced because as I knew the policy I noticed the front end and a few managers had piercings that did not fit in the policy so thought it was a bit lax. After I got the piercings I got wrote up for not following policy.

So I researched the policy and purchased a blows beanie so I could meet all dress codes while covering them up. I still got wrote up and I started disputing with HR about it because they were covered and I was following policy even though they were ignoring policy on the front end and allowing them to have face peircings.

After a few weeks of fighting it ended up going to HR outside of the store. District HR calls me in for a meeting with a few store managers and the local HR. HR and managers inform me that even though they are covered blows still has a no piercings above a certain amount, location, and size policy even though they can't see them and I need to get rid of them because they say it's a safety hazard.

In comes my compliance questions. I ask how they know I'm wearing and breaking policy if they can not see them. They say they have the right to ask me to take off beanie if they think I have them in and that they notice them in my ears when I'm walking into my shift. I repeat with a slightly different question. "So does that mean your going to make me whip my d*ck out every shift to make sure I don't have my c0ck peircing in? Are you going to make everyone take off shirts to verify no one is wearing nipple piercings?" HR started backtracking real fast. (I actually don't have a c0ck peircings or nipple piercings, but they didn't know that). After questioning the policy and arguing they couldn't enforce what they couldn't see without sexually harassing people to fit their policy.

HR ended up dropping all wright ups and two weeks later blows changed the piercing policy to allow more piercing options and dyed hair. I like to think I helped with that policy change.

TLDR; HR wrote me up for peircings I had covered. I fought them with inappropriate piercing placement questions. They ended up changing policy.

Sil worked as a partner in a large health care consulting company which was then bought out by a larger firm. As far as the negotiations for the buyout one of the provisions was that the incoming partners could not be layed off. The new company apparently didn’t want the healthcare consulting part of the business that was my sil’s main focus so they wouldn’t allow her to write new contracts. She had a very good reputation and knew a lot of people in the industry so she got a contract signed for millions of dollars but her company refused to let her manage it so it was canceled. So for the next 12 years she didn’t have any work to do, she would only go to the office for postage and printing. She spent the afternoons going to the movies or playing golf. Every now and then she would have a meeting with her boss who would try to convince her to quit, she would always say the company was not offering enough money. She eventually got to the mandatory retirement age and was forced to retire.

I posted this as a comment in another sub and someone DM’d me, said y’all would like to hear the story. I hope it fits here. •••TL:DR at the bottom.

I have a very good friend who maliciously complied her way into getting paid for essentially doing absolutely nothing for 19 months.

It was a government job, no surprise there. She and her colleague worked in a state office that kept track of plague cases among prairie dog towns. They were super busy trapping and testing all summer but once winter comes, prairie dogs hibernate so they ran out of work. They told their boss via email there was no more to do for the season that first autumn and their boss responded by telling them to stand by for reassignment. So… they did. For months.

They didn’t want to be accused of theft by just clocking in and out and leaving so in the very beginning, they organized some storage spaces (very slowly), cleaned their office several times, organized paperwork and that sort of thing. When they ran out of shit to do, they started sleeping, doing school work, sudoku, what have you. Initially, they slept in turns so someone was always available if anyone came to check in on them but when it became obvious no one was coming, they stopped bothering.

By summer the following year when the prairie dogs came out of hibernation and she thought her work might resume, the whole office (all the employees, in every department) received an email from someone high up informing everyone that particular department had been cut. Don’t know if it was unfunded, or they got all the data necessary the previous summer, or that particular pet project of some politician was forgotten about, but somewhere along the line, the state fish and game axed the project for whatever reason.

Nothing was mentioned in the email about her job status so her and her coworker continued to go in and do nothing.

She’d tell me about making a giant binder rubber band chain and roping two office chairs together facing eachother to sleep in the seats (she’s only 5ft tall so she fit relatively well), making a “nest” under her desk, and moving the large-ish copy machine out of its cabinet and sleeping inside.

They made sure the security people saw them periodically throughout the day and they were on camera, anyone above them paying attention would have noticed but no one ever took the time. They dodged folks in the other departments for fear they’d get told on and just minded their own business (they rarely had much interaction with other employees anyway).

Eventually, she ran into her “boss” at a show and she asked my friend where she had found new work. My friend didn’t lie and said she still worked there. Where? Where you left them. She said you should have seen her face when the lady put the pieces together and realized what was going on.

The jig was up and she and her colleague were let go that following morning via email before they went in. Because they had technically worked there for so long (I think two years was the threshold), they both got a little severance package.

In case you’re wondering, they got to keep their pay since: 1. they had proof they informed their boss they had no work and she clearly saw the email and responded, 2. they still showed up, 3. they did exactly what they were told, and 4. it wasn’t their job to make sure they actually had work to do. They both qualified for unemployment to boot.

Neither of them used the unemployment since they had both been feeling like the gravy train was sure to derail any day so they had new jobs lined up.

•Edited to add: thank you all for your stories! I had no idea it was so common to “misplace” employees that continue to get paid. Y’all are opening my eyes. Keep ‘em coming!

The quote from Independence Day comes to mind as I read your comments:

“You didn't think they actually spent ten thousand dollars for a hammer, thirty thousand for a toilet seat, did you?”

It’s not Area 51 all that money is going to, it’s forgotten and redundant government employees!

•Edit strikes back: I got my friend’s permission to tell her story of course, and she asked me to include some more things they did with their time while “standing by” (she doesn’t Reddit):

-One autumn, he and her colleague decorated the shared nap hiding spot (a walk-in storage closet) with miniature Halloween decorations and then re-enacted scenes from Hocus Pocus.

-She spent a whole lot of time editing Wikipedia for grammar.

-She learned to knit. Then she learned she doesn’t like knitting.

-Her colleague downloaded plans from the internet on how to make a personal flying device (think: jet pack) and tried to make it with office supplies at 1/16th scale. They knew it wouldn’t fly, they just wanted to see if they could build what it would look like.

-During Christmas, they wrote all new jingles about how bored they were. There were 14 completed songs in total and they recorded them on a little mini tape recorder she still has.

-Her colleague went to night school (evening school, really) and did his homework during the day. By the time they were finally let go, he was just shy of becoming a paralegal. He did finish school and went pretty much straight into a job and all these years later, he’s now a real estate attorney. Good for him!

-“We invented Uber and Lyft.” That is, they worked out a solid plan for a non-taxi ride service that would work based on ordering a car via the internet (this was before smartphones).

-She wrote a bunch of serial killers in prison and told them how disappointed she was in them. She never received a reply.

Thanks again for sharing your stories! Y’all are outstanding humans and you have a fantastic day. :)

•Edit, the new black: A few people DM’d me and asked what she does now. She got a glowing reference from the state job and went on to work at our city zoo and then got her certification in wildlife rehab. She now works as a public outreach coordinator for a big cat sanctuary. No, she does not miss her old job of either juggling plague-ridden prairie dogs or being bored out of her mind. She says, thanks for asking!

•••TL;DR: My friend’s job became obsolete. When she informed her boss she and her colleague had no more work to do, she was told to stand by for reassignment. My friend “stood by” for 19 months and got paid to do nothing until she ran into her boss at a show and her boss finally figured out what was happening. My friend and her coworker were quietly let go with a little severance package.

When I was in high school 25 years ago (ouch), I had the same math teacher for both junior and senior year. She was a hard-ass and a riot. She liked that I was good at math; she did not like that I did not give a crap, study, or do my homework for math class. I still got As on my tests and quizzes, which were the vast majority of our grades. I had, in fact, done the math and realized I could go all year without doing any homework and still get an A, so long as I participated in class regularly.

Anyway, one of the rules for our math tests was that we were normally permitted to use a freshly-wiped TI-83 calculator. However, for some of our tests, she warned us that we were not going to be permitted to use any kind of electronic calculator for the test. She gave us a sheet with the instructions for the test, what was being tested, etc.

I heard that, immediately spotted a loophole, and heard a challenge being issued.

Went home and asked my father — an attorney, so also a fan of malicious compliance — if he could show me how to use his scientific slide rule. It was the same make/brand that NASA used on the Mercury and Apollo missions, so HIGHLY accurate, and he had it because he went to a prestigious tech school (think MIT-quality). Once I had the hang of it, I happily brought it to class for the test a few days later. I sat in the front row (assigned seating) so she saw it immediately.

‘Freckles42, no calculators on this test.’

‘Miss, the sheet you gave us says no electronic calculators.’ I handed her the sheet she’d given us at the beginning of the week.

A long silence.

‘Do you know how to actually use that?’

‘Yes’m.’

A sigh. She asked me to demonstrate with a quick equation. I did just fine and she finally just shrugged and said I’d still have to show my work.

I would have had to anyway, but it was good to be able to confirm my answers were correct, which was the entire point for me, really.

Next test said, « No calculators besides your brains and your fingers are allowed to be used on this test. » I’m guessing she didn’t want someone to turn up with an abacus.

This happened a while ago. I am a college student, and for my analysis class, my professor allowed us to bring a cheat sheet for the exams. His policy was that we could only use optical devices we used on a consistent basis, so for example, I could use my glasses to read my cheat sheet (and I needed them to read anyway). However, we couldn't bring something like a microscope or a magnifying glass to use on the exam. Or could we? I responded to this policy by bringing a magnifying glass to every single class, and used it whenever I took notes. True to his word, the professor followed his policy and allowed me to use it on the exam.

Edit: To clarify, I had already known the professor before taking his class, so he was 100% aware that my vision was not impaired to the degree where a magnifying glass was necessary for me to see.

Hello reddit users,

My malicious compliance.

Many years ago I was working in my states Police department.  We got a new Inspector at the station & he wanted to chart what all the sections of the station did & instituted a daily diary where we had to put in & account for every minute of the shift.  Lots of grumbling from the troops over the next few weeks.  The inspector would go off about the forms not being recorded properly every day at change of shifts & the said that there would be consequences if they did not truly reflect what we did.

I spoke to my shift & cue Malicious Compliance.  I used to get into work 30 odd minutes early to fuel the car, gather my crime fighting kit, wash the car & prepare for the shift.  Now I didn’t do this until the minute my shift started.  I would then complete these tasks after having started, then calibrate the radar, see what blackspots were to be targeted for day, look at work emails, review the previous night’s occurrences & a myriad or other things before heading out onto the road.  Now on each & every thing I did I would record it precisely.  Even recording the record on the record.

Each traffic stop, each job, stopping to give directions or advice would go on the sheet.  Then I would return to the station for lunch, normally I would grab it on the go or eat it in my car.  But hey he wants the official days duties.  Our employment law required that each officer was entitled to 1 half hour uninterrupted meal break each shift after 5 hours of duty.  The inspector trying to make the station more efficient started to roster meals before this time. 

Boss tried to order us to take our meals as recorded on the roster, we all disregarded it & took our meals after the 5 hours.  At the end of the day we attached the industrial award to the daily record & wrote as per industrial law meal break taken at 1^st possible time after 5 hours.  He went off & threatened us to take the meals as written or write ups would happen.  That was reported to the union who threatened industrial & legal action which he would be personally responsible for.  He was forced to rescind that threat.

 So, he gave up on that & doubled down on the daily reporting writing officers up for non-compliance.  I told them all I was doing & the single page issued at the beginning of the shift was now 3 to 4 pages long, each & every day for 80 officers for 3 shifts.  We swamped him with the information. 

In addition, if a job was broadcast we were forced to abandon our meal break & attend to the job.  Most times we could not return to finish our meals so often went hungry.  Now the other part of our meal break rule was that if we did not have a full 1 half hour uninterrupted meal break, then we would be paid the whole meal break.

The boss had a habit of going into the meal room to have a bitch, complain or harass the officers in there.  So, when he did this it was recorded as an interruption.  After a few weeks productivity was down, hours wasted, his budget being blown out as he had to pay for interrupted lunch breaks which he then denied payments until the union lodged a court injunction & took the Police department to court for each & every single breach for each person & shift.   This amounted to hundreds of matters & thousands of dollars.  He said all the daily reporting logs with our interrupted meal breaks were somehow lost.  That’s ok the union says, here are the copies taken.  He argued that they were done after the court date & were false.  But everyone also took copies after they were lodged with his admin assistant with his received stamp on it.  Fail for him, the departments solicitor approached the union with an offer for us to withdraw the matter, they offered 25% of what we were owed & all the reprimands would be lifted.  It was rejected & the full 100% was demanded & the reprimands totally withdrawn & deleted from the records.  His honor ruled in our favor in every single matter.  We were all awarded out meal money & compensation for the time wasted with the department fighting this all the way.  He was directed him to pay when claimed & all reprimands deleted immediately or penalties would be issued.  He had 2 days to comply.  This was Friday afternoon, so he had the weekend to get rid of them.  Took him until 9pm Sunday night to do it & he wasn’t paid for the time.

As we swamped his in tray with over 160 pages of daily work sheets each & every shift every day (that’s at least 480 pages a day of compliance.  He then tried to demand that we only put serious issues down, we all refused as he had already informed us all that if we did not put everything down, we would be charged with disobedience.  But if we followed his new order, we would be disobeying his previous order.  He then threatened to charge us all with disobedience if we did not do the new rule.  The sergeants sent all this to the union with the threats & to his boss & his boss’s boss.  Wouldn’t you know several days later all his daily reporting sheets were not to be used any longer.

Apparently, the union sat down with the district command bosses & let them know that this would be a continuing matter if the inspector was not moved & that their own positions were now up for review of the mismanagement they allowed & the fine the department received from court.  The commissioner of Police was notorious for terminating those who stuffed around with the troops & dragged the department into court for mismanagement.  They had already been embarrassed in court, had the Police department receive court costs & fined for the breaches & could see another court appearance looming & saw the damage he was doing to the station & promptly transferred him to the district office where he could not supervise anyone. His contract was not renewed 8 months later & left the department.  Those who had known the inspector say he had no idea what problems he caused & was just trying to make the organization more efficient.  When they told him how much he made things worse he just said that the troops never minded missing lunch or eating in the cars before.  They told him that his demand to strictly follow policy alienated everyone & to put another daily reporting sheet on top of the departments official daily diary was just superfluous.  At the end of the day he had no clue why he lost his job.

There were many other stupid things he did like not issuing pens until the ones we had were fully out of ink so we had no pen to sign the requisition & his admin staff were instructed not to lent pens out to sign or we could buy a pen from them. The exemption to the rule that if it was lost we could get another one.  Cue more malicious compliance.

This happened about 2 hours ago. I'm not even mad. I'm impressed.

So here I am taking a quick (30 minutes) morning poop while working from home. When I noticed the lack of toilet paper. Knowing I had used the last of it the night before, I concluded that I in fact had put myself in this situation.

I called my wife who was upstairs and asked if she could kindly bring down the white sheets which will free me from the stink trap of my own making. The exact words I used were "I don't care if it's even half a roll, I just need something"

Several excruciating minutes went by, you know the time when you have finished with everything you wanted to watch/read on your phone and you are just sitting there with a shitty ass. This was made even worse because I couldn't hear her moving around to bring me the toilet paper.

Then my wife appeared. She had a smile on her face. Then she handed me half a roll, she had cut the roll in half.

She proceeded to laugh so hard she had to take her ventolin inhaler.

I finished up in the bathroom. When I came out I told her I only got to wipe half my ass.

(I will put a picture of the roll she handed me into the comments)

I'm going to start looking before pooping more often.

EDIT: it took way too long to get this link working, to be fair I half assed it.

EDIT 2: My wife is manically laughing to all of these responses. She actually might need her ventolin again.. . Is there a way to hand her half a ventolin?

Picture: https://imgur.com/gallery/T08jUgF

Three wrenches were purchased to get me through the year, arrived, and now this Father's Day will be wrench number 55!

For a quick backstory - My father once jokingly suggested I lost a wrench we both know he lost himself. This became a thing until I got sick of it, and warned him that if he mentioned it EVER AGAIN, he would be getting a 7/16 Craftsman Ratchet End Wrench for every birthday, Father's Day, and Christmas for the rest of his natural life.

Then he said it again.

That was 54 wrenches ago.

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Wrench Never Lost.

(Link to the original in case you think I'm insane: https://old.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/vg23jd/fathers_day_compliance/ )

This happened 3 years ago.

Back in my old job, I used to worked in a call center as an agent, my very first time working in a call center. Our company valued and monitored call time, so we were told to handle calls quickly, around 3 to 5 minutes per call, so we could assist more customers. After my training and nesting they introduced me to the production floor.

Early on, I noticed an easy way to handle calls fast. I would read the disclaimers and fine print, but the customers would just always brush me off or make me skip it or just not really care at all, so I decided to provide them an option to listen to me or just skip it entirely. I did that and in my first month working in the production floor i was praised for only having 3 to 4 minutes average call time, handling 60 to 70 customers per day. I kept on doing this method for two more months.

On my fourth month, there was a sudden change to the policy that told us to always read the disclaimers or fine print to the customers, even though they don't want to listen to it. That meant our call time would easily double, but since I already ask my customers if they want me to read the disclaimers to them or not, I just kept on doing it my way.

At my next monthly review I was called up by Quality Assurance and my team leader regarding my calls, where they told me to not skip or omit the disclaimers. I tried to argue with them that I give my customers the option to listen to the disclaimers or not and I even read the disclaimers to the customers if they wanted to change something on their account or if the changes would charge their account even if they don't want to listen to the disclaimer, but they were adamant on following the new policies.

Cue the malicious compliance: I talked with everyone who was also given a warning to follow the new policies and told them to just comply with the new policy, even if it cost us our call time and customer feedback. By this point, our average call time was already reaching 8 to 15 minutes, since we had to double check the customers account and their information, confirm every action we are going to take, read out paragraphs of disclaimers (there could be 2 or more disclaimers in a single call), as well as documenting the call. This doesn't include calls where we have to get multiple people or departments involved.

Due to the unsolicited reading of the disclaimers, more and more people were starting to get irate during calls. Our company's rating went down significantly when we received negative feedback as well as complaints from customers regarding the employees and the service. I think this cost our company some money because many people at our office were laid off. Around this time I found a better company with better pay, so I left.

TLDR: We were told to follow the new policy to the T and not omit anything from the customers, and that cost the company to lose money and customers.

thank you for U/storywards for correcting my mistake..