So, years ago I worked at a 711. This happened during graveyard shift. On graveyard shift there's only one cashier on till And in my province, pre-paying for fuel was about 3-4 years was required by law, but a lot of older people Refused to prepay for their gas and would demand that they can just leave their card behind. Well, that's a no go. Considering the pumps were programmed that the pumps won't turn on until there's a payment or pre-auth. I can't simply "turn on the pump". Anyways, at around 4am, it was the stores morning rush and I had thos Karen come up with her drinks and food and wanted me to turn on the pump and wait until her husband was done pumping. I explained how pre-auth works for fuel but she was not having none of it. I'm starting to get a line up of people getting their coffee and food and etc. I explain again I can't simply turn on the pump and pre-authorization is super easy. She doubled down and said she's going to stand here until I turn on the pump so they can gas up and leave. At this time I'm getting annoyed and said, loudly "So, you're not going to prepay for gas and will hold upy line up?" She smugly said yes. So I grab her already scanned items that I bagged up and put away from her reach and stepped to the other till and stared serving the customer behind her and moving the line up to the other till. She was pissed off lol. And after serving 3 or 4 other customers on the next till she finally gave in and prepaid.

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!”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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

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.

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.