Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Lelketlen_Hentes on 2025-01-21 11:00:05+00:00.

I was working in a hotel in the UK as a lobby boy. My afternoon job was to handle guests' requests for extra pillows, blankets, etc. The system worked like this: the guests informed the reception, the details were written in a notebook (e.g., "Room XY – pillow"), and every so often, I checked the book, solved the problems, and ticked them off when done.

One night, during dinner, the hotel boss wrote a note in the book: "Room XXX – hot water tap is not working." I went to the room, checked it—yup, not working. I went back and wrote in the book: "Can't fix it, call a plumber."

On my next round, there was a new message: "FIX IT NOW," underlined three times…

Well… I went back to the room, checked the hot water tap again (in the UK, there are two taps on the sink, one for cold and one for hot). Still couldn't fix it. I tried a few things until, somehow, the pipe (the one from the wall to the sink) popped out, and boiling hot water started pouring onto the floor at full force.

PANIC MODE ON.

I grabbed the room phone and called reception—busy. So, I sprinted through the hotel (the room was on the farthest side), jumped into reception, and shouted:

"Room XY, PLUMBER, NOW!"

Then I rushed back to the room.

The water was still gushing out at full force, so I just sat on the edge of the bathtub, holding the pipe so that the water poured into the tub instead of flooding the floor.

After about three minutes of this, the hotel boss peeked into the bathroom, went pale, and ran away...

Five more minutes passed. Then the fire alarms went off—because of the steam. Fortunately, the staff already knew what was happening, so they told the guests it was a false alarm and didn’t evacuate the hotel.

Another ten minutes later, they finally shut off the water supply for the entire wing of the hotel.

A plumber arrived and fixed the tap in three minutes.

Now came the fun part: cleaning.

Surprisingly, there wasn’t much water in the bathroom (considering the tap had been gushing for over fifteen minutes). So, I went one floor lower to see where all that water had gone.

I entered the room’s bathroom, switched on the light… but it was very dim.

That’s when I realized: the bowl-shaped lamp cover on the bathroom ceiling was filled to the brim with water, with the lightbulb happily sitting inside it.

Oh shit.

Light off.

Drained the water from the lamp cover, mopped up that bathroom too… but still, it didn’t seem like enough water for what had happened.

So, I went even lower.

Below that bathroom, on the ground floor, there was a corridor (luckily, not another room). But the ceiling had gotten so wet that it collapsed—a 2x3 meter section of it had come crashing down onto the carpet.

After 15 minutes in a sauna-like bathroom, 30 minutes of cleaning, and clearing the rubble, I finally stepped outside for some fresh air.

That’s when my roommate walked past, took one look at me, and asked:

"Did someone puke on you?"

Since then, whenever I say I can’t fix something, they actually believe me and call a professional.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Dedischado on 2025-01-20 02:20:41+00:00.

So this comes from a former coworker who worked in the Catapult shop on a USN supercarrier.

New man is assigned to the shop, given typical runaround/hazing. Eventually is told to go retrieve a "portable padeye."

For those who don't know, a padeye is what you chain down aircraft to so they don't blow off the deck when the carrier is steaming at 30+ knots into a 40 knot gale. They are NOT portable in any sense except that of a moving 100,000+ ton vessel.

So new guy disappears for four days. They are getting worried and seriously thinking about reporting him AWOL (hard to do underway, but it's a floating city) when he comes strolling in with four machinist mates having simultaneous aneurysms from carrying his "creation."

You see, he had, in fact, created a "portable padeye." He had gone down to the machine shop and had them look up the regulations and specs and fab one up out of stores. It was so heavy that just carrying it was bending the bar stock they welded on for handles.

Needless to say, that was the end of the fetch quests.

Edit. Supercarriers displace about 100,000 tons, not 1000,000.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/gossigirl on 2025-01-20 00:50:38+00:00.

Boss went on a major PR crusade last week about "company image." He pulled me aside one day and told me my profile picture (just a casual selfie I took at the park) was "completely unprofessional" and actively hurting the company's image. He ordered me to get a "proper professional photo" ASAP, making it sound like this was some kind of urgent crisis.

Being both broke and pretty annoyed at this point, I figured I'd take the path of least resistance. I did some searching and I found one of those online AI headshot photo generators. Just wanted something cheap that looked corporate enough to get him off my back. I chose the best result from the bunch, swapped out my profile photo, boom done.

Plot twist: He absolutely LOVED it. Not only did he approve it, but he sent out this enthusiastic email to the entire office showcasing my "incredible new professional photo" and praising my "commitment to excellence." Now he's using me as an example of "taking initiative" and "understanding corporate image." The irony is killing me.

Some of my coworkers definitely caught on though. One of them walked by my desk and said "nice profile photo OP" with the most sarcastic smile I've ever seen. Pretty sure 10% the office knows it's AI-generated at this point, maybe that's because they already have one themselves?

I'm honestly torn between laughing and cringing. How long until he realizes my hair color is different? Part of me feels like I should eventually swap it for a real photo, but another part thinks it's not worth the hassle since he's so happy with this one, and even I can't believe it's not a real photo sometimes. Not sure if I should even bother worrying about it at this point.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/[deleted] on 2025-01-16 23:39:41+00:00.

I travel a lot for work, and my company agreement is that I get a set amount for food everyday.

I don't have a knack for fancy foods, so I typically just get what I get and tip heavily to maximize the dollar amount. This was never a problem in the past until my company got acquired and the new company is aggressively cutting costs.

Someone from HR emailed me to tell me I was financially on the hook for tips. I couldn't expense them anymore.

So now, I just buy the food I eat from the grocery store, eat cheaply, and spend the rest on donuts and coffee for all of my co-workers everywhere I travel. There is a set budget for food everyday. If you're going to be a penny pinching POS, I will find ways to spend that money within our agreement to give to others. Next time I think I'll feed the homeless.

Need I remind my company that I'm doing them a favor by traveling because they don't want to pay full-timers in these areas? Don't be cheap.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/foil_k on 2025-01-16 16:53:54+00:00.

To comply with Rule 6, re-posting from my (now sixteen-year-old) son's perspective:

Back when I was three, I was waking up really early, which was keeping me from getting a good night's sleep. I already knew my numbers, so one day, my Mom and Dad decided to put a digital clock in my room so I would know when I should go back to sleep and when it was okay to get up.

That night, the clock showed 8:22 as they were putting me to bed, and they explained the rules: "When you see the seven on the clock, it's morning, and you can get up!"

I waited five minutes, walked out of my room, and announced, "I saw a seven! I get up now!"

They knew from the grin on my face that I knew exactly what I was doing. The only fallout was a laugh and a hug, before I went back to bed again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/foil_k on 2025-01-15 16:50:33+00:00.

Back when my son was three, he had been waking up really early, which was keeping him from getting a good night's sleep. He's extremely bright, and already knew his numbers, so one day, my wife and I decided to put a digital clock in his room so he would know when he should go back to sleep and when it was okay to get up.

That night, at approximately 8:22, as we were putting him to bed, we explained the rules: "When you see the seven on the clock, it's morning, and you can get up!"

Five minutes later, he comes walking out of his room. "I saw a seven! I get up now!"

The grin on his face made it clear he knew exactly what he was doing. The only fallout was a laugh and a hug, before he went back to bed again.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Ancient_Educator_76 on 2025-01-15 04:05:52+00:00.

Back in the sun soaked streets of Phoenix, Arizona my 14-year-old self squints gleefully into the window of. Chevy impala, rolling down as slowly and choppily as OPs writing.

It's time to sell some candy.

I hop into my new favorite escape from my life of picking up cigarette butts for my father, rife with opportunity.

My job was to sell boxes of cheap candy that my boss , "Al", got from who knows where. We sold the candy door to door , an army of tweens driven around by someone triple their age. Five to six bucks a box was our price, a dollar a box was our profit.

Al got the rest.

One weekend he drove us way away from our usual spot, thrust us into ahwatukee , a prominent neighborhood with lush houses. Al expected big things of us.

The day was hot and grueling. That bright shiny day quickly turned into a sweaty hellscape, ending in anger and the disappointment of only selling three boxes. Al was furious.

He picked us up from our drop off locations and drove us to another neighborhood in ahwatukee. He reamed us, insulted us, and accused us of not trying. The truth was it was just brutal in every way. People were on vacation. The only people answering was the occasional hired help He didn't care. He demanded for us to

"Start making way more sales!"

Enter malicious compliance.

The next neighborhood he dropped us off in was about a quarter mile from a convenience store. We took the cash we had from our original sales and bought a bunch of cheap candies from the convenience store. We resold those dollar thin mints at a significant mark up. We kept the extra cash and occasionally sold one or two of his candies only because people saw them in our box of candies and chose those. Each o e if us had about thirty bucks cash for ourselves , and twenty or so for AL. We made more sales alright. Al just didn't know how much more.

TLDR

We were told to sell more candy and we sold our own.

Update.

One more detail

This started a plan where we brought a bunch of our own personal things to sell for one hundred percent profit , like little toys and baseball cards. It was our most lucrative summer. Mine anyways.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/VickingMwoan on 2025-01-14 19:22:18+00:00.

I work as a field researcher so my job requires me to drive around to a lot of different locations, because of this I also get paid my hourly wage for travel time.

This only includes everything to the jobsite, so ‘jobsite->home’ or ‘office->jobsite’ are paid but ‘office->home’ isn’t paid. We frequently have to end our day at the office to drop off items and resupply. However most of the time me and my colleagues just write all driving time since our homes and offices are close-by and in practice it actually saves time.

So I started this project 3 months ago.

This project was in a city a 45 min drive away from home and a 1 hour drive from the office I usually use and I am assigned to. (This is on a very traffic prone highway btw)

However in the same city I had an assignment we also had an office so I started using that office to drop-off and resupply instead of my normal office.

My manager noticed this so asked me why I still wrote 1,5 hours drive time a day instead of 45 minutes and pointed me to my contract where it is put as I explained before. I replied to him telling him I would drive to my usual office then so I could write the time anyway, he couldn’t do anything against it and hung up.

2 weeks later after I had 4 hours of unnecessary paid time written extra thanks to traffic jams and the extra drive time he told me that from that point on I could just write the time from the city office to home. I have an awesome manager.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/SithLordSky on 2025-01-13 21:38:15+00:00.

I've been at my job for about 7 months. All in all, it's a job. I'm a receptionist. A Front Desk receptionist. Sigh. The only saving grace was that I had an amazing manager. She and I figured out the job and the system together, as the lady I replaced left on a Friday, and I started that next Monday. She ended up leaving 2 months ago and I got shuffled to another team. Which is fine. It is what it is, right? Until I got sick.

Friday came one week and the mail was super late so my desk had some clutter because I'm not allowed any OT and I have to leave at exactly 5pm. So I shall comply. I will leave at 5pm/. Monday I was sick with a 24 hour stomach bug and had to call in. I come in Tuesday morning and get told that my space is a sloppy mess and I need to clean everything because it's unacceptable. So whatever, I take the criticism and move on.

A few weeks later, after I had taken two scheduled days of PTO off, I get pulled into a meeting because she can't find anything in my desk and cabinets and I need to organize them in a way that makes sense so people can just come to my desk and not have to search for things. Like what? How? That's honestly impossible. Even if I run around and label things, they're going to have to search through 50 labels to find the one that says, "Manilla Envelopes" like WTF. And one of the first things I did when I got here was reorganize the entire space because there was NO order when I started. Like the manila envelopes were in THREE DIFFERENT LOCATIONS. Oh and I need to make sure I spend 10 minutes at the end of my shift cleaning the desk. Fine whatever, but I can't reorganize for future unknown people, but I'll clean.

Enter today. I had to poop. It happens. Typically once in the middle of my work day. So I go. Well I get 2 messages asking if I'm still in the building because someone came looking for paperwork while I was gone. (I was gone for 12 minutes. And frankly, I don't get my 15 minute breaks so I consider this fair exchange.) And I didn't get them until after I got out of the hall, because I'm not big on phone usage and pooping. Now because my boss couldn't find paperwork that was in clear view on top of a file sorter, I have to let the entire team know when I'm leaving my desk for any reason.

Okay. Suit yourself. Now I'm going to take my 2, 15 minute breaks, and I'll make sure everyone on that team knows when I'm using the bathroom as well. Because that's obviously imperative information. Every piss. Every Shit. Everytime I have to deliver a package or mail to someone in the building. And I'm about to label everything and make this stupid space look like an episode of Looney Tunes with Wile E Coyote and Road Runner.

I'm 100% looking for a new job again. Which sucks. I hate job hopping. God, I miss working from home.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Easy-Economics-8461 on 2025-01-13 20:59:57+00:00.

I worked for a large life insurance company, talking to customers on the phone. I got a call from a foul mouthed, sharp talking, abusive caller. I could see through phone the Ahole- in- a- suit- behind- his- desk caller in my mind. He spoke beyond sharp. He was loud, forceful, and peppered his speech with the worst profanity. He demanded to know if he could split his life ins benefit between two people, and if they had to be family. I told him he could and they didn't. He then demanded to get the change of bene form sent to his office. I told him I could do this. He made me repeat back to him what we spoke about and that I promised to send the change of bene form to his office, not his home. (He said his wife was busy and didn't need to be bothered with menial business.) He actually said "Repeat after me. I will..." He made me do this twice. By the time he was done I was practically in tears. I was shaking. I kind of had an idea of why he wanted the form sent to his office, not his home. Anyone else guess? Well I sent the change of bene form to his office as requested. I did not, however, mention the automatic, I can't do anything about it, confirmation of beneficiary change letter that would be sent to his HOME ADDRESS, listing the AMOUNTS and NAMES of beneficiaries. I went back in weeks later and found the change made as requested - and changed back to wife only again!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Zharuai on 2025-01-13 20:21:40+00:00.

At the airport, they said my suitcase was 2kg over the limit and wanted to charge me extra. So, right there in front of everyone, I opened my bag, layered up with three jackets, a hat, and two pairs of sunglasses. Walked onto the plane looking like I was ready for a polar expedition. The other passengers? Couldn't stop laughing!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/dudsmm on 2025-01-13 19:17:03+00:00.

A few years after 9/11, I was working at a manufacturing facility a couple hours from Jackson Hole, WY. A part of my job was I interacting with the electric utility on outages, safety, and maintenance.

In the Spring, our department's admin was assigned to plan an executive gathering in Jackson Hole. 10 executive for 5 days. She shared the budget was over $100k. The executives would take a 1/2 day side trip to the manufacturing facility to visit us plebes. I also found out they were taking a helicopter in from Jackson Hole, which was need to know, and I was NOT supposed to know...also, no helicopter inbounds had take place since 9/11.

Cue the MC... My job required me to report any aircraft flying near to the High Voltage direct feed power lines. I spoted the helicopter and dialed up the Utility to report. The Utility sent the onsite security to verify, and ID the copter. It landed on a pad nearby and was swarmed by 3 security trucks. They ID"d each passenger, as it was the job. This delayed the executives, so they only spent an hour at the facility and flew back.

I was doing my job, security was doing their job, and the Utility followed procedure...

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Possible_Seaweed4815 on 2025-01-12 18:36:30+00:00.

I used to work at a mid-sized company where our department had its own supply closet. Everyone knew the rules: take what you need, don’t hoard, and keep the area tidy. Simple enough, right? Apparently not for our new micromanaging office manager, “Karen.”

Karen was obsessed with cutting costs. She’d swoop in like a hawk every morning, inspecting the supply closet. If a box of pens was a little lighter or the post-its weren’t perfectly aligned, we’d get a stern email about “unnecessary consumption.” She even implemented a sign-out sheet for supplies. Want a highlighter? Better justify it in writing.

One day, Karen decided to escalate. She put a lock on the supply closet and declared herself the sole key holder. If anyone needed something, they had to email her and wait for her to “approve” the request. This was, of course, on top of her other duties, so getting a new pen could take hours. Needless to say, productivity started to suffer.

Cue malicious compliance.

A coworker of mine, “Tom,” was a bit of a prankster but always stayed within the rules. He decided to test Karen’s new system to its limits. Every time he needed anything, no matter how small, he emailed Karen. Need a single paperclip? Email. Need to replace a dried-out marker? Email. Stapler jammed? You guessed it: email.

Tom’s meticulousness inspired the rest of us. Soon, the entire department was flooding Karen’s inbox with individual requests. Since Karen insisted on handling every single one personally, she quickly became overwhelmed. Approving requests started taking days instead of hours. Meetings were delayed because people didn’t have notebooks. Presentations stalled because someone was waiting for a dry erase marker.

Management started noticing the bottleneck. Our department’s performance metrics were plummeting, and everyone pointed the finger at the supply chain fiasco. Karen tried to defend her system, claiming we were being wasteful and needed “structure,” but the evidence was clear: her micromanagement was backfiring.

After a particularly disastrous week, upper management stepped in. They not only revoked Karen’s authority over the supply closet but also gave her a formal reprimand. The lock was removed, the sign-out sheet disappeared, and we went back to the honor system. Karen, humiliated, kept a low profile after that.

As for us? We may have “lost” a week of productivity, but the petty satisfaction of watching Karen drown in her own bureaucracy was worth every second.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Belisarius-1262 on 2025-01-11 15:26:26+00:00.

This one actually got done to me yesterday.

We had some material that I knew we were going to use more of than projected, so I told the person using it to "cut the lengths you actually need, and then measure the rest and let me know how much is left."

Now, for various reasons, our system uses a wild mix of measurements. There is almost no way to know in advance whether something like this will be measured in inches, feet, meters, or millimeters. So, intending to save both of us some trouble, I told him "Any units are fine. I can convert them easily."

I realized what I'd said about 2 seconds later, and tried to clarify "Any normal units."

So he brought me the measurement in Roman cubits.

And then, once we'd both had our laugh, gave me the sheet in millimeters that he'd converted from.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/StendhalSyndrome on 2025-01-10 16:21:32+00:00.

For reference this took place back in the late 90's. I'd imagine school systems work much different at the HS level now, and my kids aren't that old yet.

Okay so it was my senior year of HS and I had had just enough credits in my Junior year to graduate. I had taken martial arts and taught it too so I got an extra gym credit early, I changed my mind because I wanted to graduate with my friends. So I just loaded up my schedule that year with whatever I wanted or I thought would look good to colleges. A few AP courses like US GOV, Physics, Anatomy & Physiology and some random stuff. The AP'S were a lot of work and, I had good test scores from last year already and I wasn't looking to get lower scores on classes I didn't care about so I dropped Physics/Gov and a random Jewelery 2 class. So I had 3 open periods a day surrounding lunch. It was magical, and i still had 1 AP class so I though I wasn't messing around too much. Both my parents worked so we didn't know anything was amiss. Till we realized we had a broken answering machine...again it was the 90's.

Apparently my school was calling 3x a day every day to tell us I wasn't showing up to some study hall class I had been assigned to after I dropped the few classes. This hadn't happened other years as It would just be a free period.

The funny part was the woman calling us was kind of a bitch about it. After the first few days the messages started to get nasty...yet no one said word one to me in the school, or was anything sent home. This is also around the time my mom was starting her retirement from being a hair stylist, so she'd do like a week on and a week off, and now she was getting the calls. So she tells the woman, shes okay with it, his grades are good, technically he could have graduated already, college aps are already out, so no biggie.

Oh that was apparently the wrong thing to say to this lady cause she read my mom the riot act. Going on about how irresponsible we all were and how she was personally going to tank my applications, how could I be so brazen, etc etc etc etc crazy level of over reaction. Plus she wouldn't stop calling for every single class despite my parents approval, repeated calls to the school, and eventually they showed up face to face.

It was by law they had to report un-pre-approved truancy. So my mom sat down on it, they wouldn't accept their word over the phone or even face to face that I was allowed to leave (as I had previous years w/ 0 issues...) they wanted something in writing. I don't think any of it was legal or necessary because the lady was telling my parents they had to put all kinds of stuff like they knew they were being detrimental to my learning...were essentially bad parents etc etc etc...crazy stuff.

So my mom gets an idea. She says 100% they aren't writing anything like that, she looks it up and it is a law that if a student has an unexcused absence they have to notify the parents. So she started playing dumb making this lady call her up Every. Single. Period. I missed. Then she would hem and haw about hmm do I allow him to miss this period or is it a problem...hmmm. lemme think. Then she'd say make sure, it's okay ...this one time, but to call me if he misses anything else because I'm not sure how I'd feel if he missed more...knowing full well I was missing 3 periods a day every day till I graduated.

They finally stopped calling like a month before I graduated. It was a solid 5 months of my mom messing with this woman named Sarah.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/I_aim_to_sneeze on 2025-01-10 10:59:08+00:00.

When I was little, my mom sent me to a private/religious school. My family isn’t religious, but they felt like I’d get a better education there (and when I switched to public school later I found they were right, I was pretty far ahead).

This school had uniforms: boys wore button down shirts with the school logo and blue slacks, girls wore jumpers.

My mom hated cleaning and ironing these white, button down shirts every day. I was one of 4 kids. Kids play and get grass stains. The shirts were taking up a lot of her time. Finally, she gave up and bought a bunch of white polo shirts and started sending us to school in those. Admin had a conniption fit about it, and brought her in for a meeting. They opened the dress code rulebook and pointed out that these shirts were missing the logo, so they were in violation. My mom looked over the rules and confirmed that the lack of a logo was the only violation. They said yes. She thanked them and left, and the school probably thought it was over. Just to be petty, they sent a school wide memo regarding the dress code.

My mom took every polo shirt and stitched a homemade school logo onto them. It wasn’t hard to do as the “logo” was just the school initials. Admin was furious, but during the next meeting realized their hands were tied.

The memo piqued the curiosity of other parents, and they started asking my mom where she got the “new school shirts.” Apparently she wasn’t the only one sick of ironing and getting grass stains out. Suddenly, I wasn’t the only one wearing a polo shirt to school.

The worst part for the school was that, despite tuition being pretty expensive, they also had a kickback deal going with a local clothing store for the uniforms. The store had a monopoly on the sale of those shirts. When business started lagging, the store made their own version of the polos for sale. Eventually the original shirts were phased out entirely.

That was over 30 years ago, and my mom still loves telling that story.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/AtomicFile_ on 2025-01-10 04:55:34+00:00.

So, let me tell you about my dear neighbor Karen—yes, that Karen. You know the type: clipboard, self-righteous attitude, always sniffing out problems that don’t exist. She’s not even on the HOA board, but she acts like she’s the president of the universe.

The issue started when I decided to brighten up my yard with some colorful flowers. Nothing crazy—just some daisies, tulips, and a little garden patch. Harmless, right? Well, not according to Karen.

One afternoon, she stomps over, waving her little HOA rulebook like it’s the Bible and she’s Moses coming down the mountain. “Those flowers aren’t in compliance,” she screeches. “You’re violating section 12.4! Only native plants are allowed.”

I try to reason with her. “Karen, the HOA guidelines just say the yard has to be well-maintained. These flowers are fine.”

But no, Karen wasn’t having it. She said she was going to report me to the HOA because “rules are rules.” Fine. You want me to follow the rules, Karen? I’ll follow the rules.

So, I did some research and found every obnoxious native plant I could get my hands on. Thorny bushes? Check. Spiky grasses? Check. A massive yucca plant that looks like it wants to eat small animals? Oh, you better believe I planted that front and center.

By the time I was done, my yard looked like a post-apocalyptic jungle—but every single plant was 100% native to the area. And, let me tell you, I double-checked the HOA guidelines to make sure I was bulletproof.

Karen comes stomping back a week later, furious. “This is unacceptable!” she yells, flailing her clipboard. “Your yard looks terrible!”

“Oh, Karen,” I said, with the sweetest smile I could muster. “You were so right. My flowers weren’t compliant. But these are all native plants, just like the rules you pointed out. Isn’t it great?”

She sputtered like a broken engine and ran off to the HOA. They reviewed my yard and, guess what? Completely compliant. Karen ended up getting a warning from the board for harassing neighbors.

Now I sit on my porch, sipping coffee, surrounded by my chaotic jungle of compliance, while Karen avoids making eye contact every time she walks by. It’s the little victories, you know?

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Small_Tooth on 2025-01-09 13:49:32+00:00.

Backstory: For the passed few years I've been a nurse. I spent the first part of my career in the emergency at a small hospital in Canada (we can do basic admissions, surgeries and critical care but will transfer the really sick ones to larger metropolitan hospitals with more services like cardiology or trauma surgery). Because the population we served was so small, we ran with the bare minimum of nurses to keep the department afloat, usually resulting in an extra patient per nurse compared to other hospitals but with a lower acuity level (on average) so it balances out. As a result, we would often be overwhelmed during the second half of the day shift and the start of the night shift when it was most busy but due to low volumes of patients later on in the night we often were well enough staffed to easily handle the workload (i.e. we could safely run even fewer nurses, but management hadn't gone there). Secondly, because we ran with such a small number of nurses, we never had break cover, so if your nursing partner was on break you would watch double the number of patients (not a big deal at night but during day this could result in missing our last 30 minute unpaid break on the day shift due to high workload). A last piece of info is that we used teams of one "emergency" nurse (a nurse extra training to have a higher scope of care) and one "med-surge" nurse (seasoned nurse awaiting a spot in the additional training program). Because of this, the nurses would give and take report together, so instead of each nurse handing over 4-5 patients simultaneously they hand over 8-10 together, so report takes twice as long.

Our union had negotiated our contract to counteract any wage theft, allowing us to sign for our unpaid thirty minute break at overtime rates of 1.5x pay (we missed this break maybe every other day shift, so once during a two day, two night rotation) as well as sign for an additional 15 minutes of straight time pay in case handover went over our 12 hour shift (which was always). Of course, management didn't like having to pay this out, but it wasn't an issue because we (the nurses) were also stealing time. I know it doesn't sound great, but on those quiet night shifts, we would often take an extra 30 - 45 minutes to sleep, which balanced out those 1.5-2 hours of lost pay from the day shifts and handover. Because the workload was so low at the time and because only one emergency physician was on at night, it could be easily managed by one nurse, so patient throughput was the same as if two nurses were working (we often sit around waiting for orders from the doctor). Furthermore, nurses always left their number with their partner so we could be called back early if it kicked off and needed all hands on deck. Obviously, if we had many very sick patients, we stuck to the entitled amount only or missed it entirely. Everyone was happy for the first few years I worked there, the management (and therefore government) saved the extra pay without affecting patient throughput and the extra sleep time on break really helped to maintain nurse well-being as well as making the switch from nights back to days much easier.

Then one of our less-pleasant charge nurses got angry at this. The charge nurse role is like the boss of the unit. On most units with admitted patients, this was a an 0800-1600 Monday to Friday type gig that was covered by regular bedside nurses when the charge nurse wasn't there. In emergency however, we had specific nurses working rotating shifts in this role with a small pay bump and any gaps in the schedule filled by very senior emergency nurses as it was a much more unique beast to manage. I say this only to give benefit of the doubt that this nurse was probably stressed out like crazy every shift. So I'm sitting at work in the morning, waiting for the inevitable onslaught when the email pops up stating night shifts are to be limited to union mandated break time only. I'm a bit pissed off at it, but ultimately they're right. We're only entitled to a 60 minutes of unpaid break time and 45 minutes of paid break time. And to be fair, some nurses were definitely abusing the previous system (one nurse who covered charge would advocate for over 3.5 hours of break time on a night shift regardless of how sick the patients were and that would affect patient safety as it bled into the first part of the night when we actually still busy, most of the nurses refused to follow them on this). However, people like this were rare, most nurses don't come to the emergency to be lazy.

This email soon gets posted in our group chats so everyone's aware. A lot of the younger staff (millennials at this time) were aware of our rights and immediately started signing for all missed breaks as well as additional handover time as well as helping the older staff understand the contract. I missed my last break that shift and stayed until quarter past shift change for report, so I got an extra $50 gross on my paycheque for that. The charge nurse on that day was surprised when I presented to OT form for their signature, but I just told them I was following the rules to prevent any pay discrepancies. My next shift (at night) there was a sign in sheet on the desk for us to write our in and out time for breaks (with a space for our phone number too, so they could call us back, even though were weren't payed the extra $4 an hour to be on call and calling us back should have been paid at overtime rates per the contract). I refused to leave my number, stating that unless there was a code blue (medical emergency-usually means there's no pulse) there was no way I was coming back early. Code blues were called overhead, so they didn't need my number. For the next two weeks, I stuck to the contract. Every missed break and extended handover was documented, and of course I signed in and out of my breaks on the dot. I spent so much time on night shifts staring at my phone waiting for the doctor to give me something to do as I'd caught up on everything else. It might not seem like a lot, but that extra hour of handover pay + occasional missed breaks per shift set would have added up to roughly $2000 extra per year per full time nurse, which is a decent amount of change to a publicly funded healthcare system. Eventually the manager noticed and came around clarifying that while they would sign for any extra wages if we wished, we could also choose to sleep extra on nights if we wished providing we left our number. I asked for them to email that to me, and while I could have sent that straight to the union rep I didn't bother, as I had already gotten the sleep time back.

I left that job later on and have been very happy at a much bigger hospital for 2 years now. Now I have a nurse come cover mine and my partner's break, there's no "teams", and they encourage us to take longer breaks when possible to prevent staff burnout (which was really prevalent at this one). I now document my missed breaks and extra sleep time to make sure it matches up. They're also willing to sign for missed breaks on top of that to help staff retention but my conscious doesn't let me go that far. I'm just happy to sleep.

TL;DR Told to not take longer sleep breaks on quiet night shifts, so we start claiming unpaid OT from day shifts.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/namnamkm on 2025-01-09 04:32:40+00:00.

So Vietnam just implemented a new law that fines heavily people who don't comply by traffic lights. About 5 to 20 million dong, which is about 1-2 months of average wage here. This causes situation where even when there is an emergency situation, like an ambulance or a fire truck need passing through, many people just won't move to let those cars passing by. Some comments on the internet even said they would rather let a stranger die than let their family hungry.

Yea, idk. I think it is malicious for sure. There are of course rules that stated if you disobey traffic rules in emergency situation, you won't be fined, but it seems like many people won't risk it or they just don't know the rules that well. I personally would move for emergency vehicles so I'm not exactly thrilled with this.

Edit: grammar

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Riyeko on 2025-01-08 22:47:03+00:00.

So a few years ago I got back into truck driving after my daughter was around 2-3 years old. There weren't many companies who would take someone that had been out of the game that long, so I had to settle on one of the bigger companies.

What a mistake that was.

Before this I had no issueas as professional truck driver, with having driver facing (or inward facing) cameras. I don't do anything illegal or stupid behind the wheel, so it didnt matter.

It does now.

This company had stuck the camera that faced inwards and outwards along the area where the visor would cover the windshield. As most things like this happen, it was a "recordable offense" to have the visor not only block our the sun from laser beaming me in the face, but having the visor down blocked the camera.

I got calls about it constantly.

I asked them what I should do. Don't cover the camera. But the sun limits my vision. Don't cover the camera. I can't stick anything on the windshield to block the sun, this is unsafe. What do you want me to do? Dont block the camera. Can you move it somewhere else? No. How am I supposed to see during sunrise and sunset hours? Don't block the camera.

It came down to them threatening my job (and livelihood) that if I blocked the camera one more time, they'd to remotely deactivate the truck and force me out with a local police escort.

So. I started to find nice safe places to stop every single early morning and evening when I was driving, where the sun would come through the windshield. My dispatcher (understanding of a man that he is) asked me why loads were being late and why I was stopping so frequently for so many hours. So I told him. Safety wouldn't compromise and I can't freaking see out the window with the sun laser beaming me in the face. I'm not crashing into someone because a damned camera is being blocked when i haven't done anything to warrant this kind of abuse. I apologized to him but told him this would continue.

He was able to schedule loads out to where I had the stopping time, but ultimately they fired me anyway after 5 months.

Bonus... I was told I was unsafe, stupid, shouldn't drive a truck, should find work that fits a woman better, and that I wouldn't be hireable anywhere, even in those sketchy second chance companies where the pay, equipment and safety is crap.

Jokes on them. After 2 years of running for a company that treats me like I'm a human being and not some seat warming robot, 4 of their little company trucks have been seen by little ole me in the ditch or median on i29 this year after a two day winter storm. My truck? Still running. Currently waiting on unload.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/SmokeyMoonMan on 2025-01-08 17:03:40+00:00.

I work as a breakfast cook for the largest hotel chain in the world at a 4 star, single lettered hotel in the largest French speaking province in Canada.

Each cook is given a stipend of 200$ to buy personal equipment (peelers, rasps, knives, etc.).

I bought a 7 inch non stick, ceramic frying pan for myself. They have 7 inch Teflon pans here already, but due to people not taking care of them, they are mostly scratched.

It is worth noting that our current chef was brought in to lower the costs of the kitchen, so our quality of food has gone down drastically.

During the holiday break while I was off, they bought new egg pans, but they were 8 inches instead of our traditional 7.

When I filed my receipt, I was told by HR that the pan I bought wouldn't be reimbursed (I paid 35$ for it). They told me that the hotel is supposed to cover the cost of pans, so too bad, so sad.

Ok, fine then. I will use your larger pans for omelettes.

Now, our omelettes are too big for the plates and I have to use more inventory to make the omelettes look like we aren't skimping on our product.

Good thing you guys wouldn't pay me back for the pan that costs half the price of what you bought the new pans for at a larger size and cost.

And now I have a nice egg pan for at home!

Whenever Whatever!

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Glowing_Trash_Panda on 2025-01-08 07:55:52+00:00.

So my parents bought the river/stilt house next to their house for me to move into to help me out in a number of ways. That’s super awesome & I’m forever grateful, however, my mother doesn’t like to always think things through & rush them & god forbid you disagree with her. So, it happened that, apparently, I just HAD to get moved to the river house before this recent blizzard hit or the world would fall apart or something.

Ok, fine. But the problem is, is that the previous owner died halfway through renovating the place & it doesn’t have functional water & sewer. But, my mother in her infinite wisdom decides that doesn’t matter & that I can just walk next door to my parents place every time I need to use the bathroom until my dad finishes getting the water/sewer done. She said he would finish it the day or the next after I officially got moved. And then she said the quote that is the title.

Well, I know my dad & that was never gonna happen. And while I’m no stranger to having to piss in a bucket or in a hole in the ground when camping- needing to poop & having to do it in a trash bag in a bucket & then having to deal with that, is something that I just do not want to have to do.

I’ve been here 4 days now & while I tried to not eat/barely eat over the weekend (I got moved Saturday before the storm hit) in hopes my dad would be able to finish the water/sewer (all the outside stuff is done, just needs the inside the house stuff done) on Sunday or Monday- that didn’t happen.

So, I finally had to eat some actual food & not just candy to keep my blood sugar up come Monday & Tuesday cuz I was starting to get super woozy & dizzy. Well, it’s 0100 in the middle of the night now & I woke up with NATURE FRICKEN CALLING.

So I as quickly as I could without having an accident, threw my outside gear on (it’s currently almost 0 Fahrenheit at my house outside) to run over to my parents house next door, only to discover that their door wouldn’t open. The handle would turn but the door wasn’t budging (it was stuck cuz it was frozen) so I proceeded to use my old “cop knock” from my EMS days to get one of them to open up cuz I’m about to shit my pants right there on their porch at this point.

My mom comes & opens the door a second later (thank jeebus) & tries to lecture me on that I didnt need to scare her & dad awake @ 1am, meanwhile I’m running to their bathroom while pulling my pants down & just loudly yelled “I GOTTA F*CKING SHIT & I AINT USING A TRASH BAG!”

After taking care of business, I went to go back to my new house & my mom mentions that maybe she shouldn’t have had me move before the water/sewer was hooked up….

I will continue to not give a f*ck about waking her up at night if I need to take care of business. She said I could come over any time I needed to do so to use their bathroom & it’s not like I can schedule when my body needs to do it’s thing to only happen during normal waking hours. Oh well. Maybe now she might actually start to listen when people try to point out why she shouldn’t rush certain things (it probably won’t happen but a girl can dream).

Edit to add- I’m paying my parents back for this new house once my old house sells with the proceeds left over after the mortgage is taken care of. The new house is a stilt house on a river bank that they got for only 20k, it’s not like they just bought me a house outright to give to me. And the move easily could have waited another week (the old house was completely livable- mom is just irrationally impatient about things & doesn’t listen to others at all when she gets an idea in her head about how things should go)

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/reallyfuckintired on 2025-01-08 05:10:01+00:00.

TLDR; I can't book a hotel using my company credit that is in my contract that I'm allowed to do? Have fun paying more than double for the room.

I work remotely for a small company (~100 employees) and based on my contract, I have to return to the office for a week 4 times a year. The last time I went back up was in November. In the contract, it's laid out that my employer pays 100% of hotel and gas/airfare.

Normally this is an extremely uneventful routine, it's a mid-sized Midwestern city with not much to do, it is what it is. A few months before I went back up we had our financial audit and one thing that was pointed out to our accounting department was a lack of controls on purchasing. The way it used to be was every manager/supervisor had a company credit card with a $1,500 balance and as long as we stayed under that limit, we didn't have to do any kind of purchase orders.

After our audit, my accounting team decided to make purchase orders 100% of their focus. Going forward, it doesn't matter what it was, what the situation was, if you didn't have an approved purchase order you could not make the transaction. All this happened in early October as I was trying to book my hotel for my on site week in November. Normally I have freedom in choosing when I go onsite, but I was requested to go that specific week by my CEO and CFO as we were launching some strategic planning and they wanted me onsite.

So I put the purchase order in for the hotel and I don't hear anything back. I forget about it for a couple weeks then remember mid October that I still don't have a hotel room booked. When I initially made the request it was about $550 for 4 nights. Looking again in mid October it was now up to $700 for 4 nights. I look around and noticed that same week I'm supposed to go up there's a concert in the same city followed by a big college sporting event in that town. I send an email to my accounting folks that I need to book a hotel, rates are going up, room availability is going down, yadda yadda yadda. I get a tersely worded email back saying that everyone has different priorities and my purchase order will be addressed once all the ones before it are done.

So I sit back and wait and keep checking every other day and keep seeing prices go up. I send a weekly email asking if it's approved yet and I keep getting absolute silence back. Finally a week before I email my accounting team with the CFO included saying if I don't book a room that day, there wouldn't be any left and I wouldn't be able to make it up for the strategic planning work. About 30 minutes later I get back an email that says word for word: "You are authorized to reserve a hotel room for 4 nights".

Cool, I book it, that $550 room is now $1,200. I book it and move on with my life and don't think any of it. Last week, I got around to uploading my credit card receipts and submitted my expense report which included that $1,200 hotel stay. I got a call from my CFO today just exploding on me, furious about where the hell did I stay that cost that much and what was I thinking. I very calm just forwarded the original purchase order and all the emails I sent saying that prices were raising. I had dead silence on the phone as he read through the email chains and just said 'for fucks sake' then hung up. At the end of the day all supervisors got an email that the purchase order system was being shutdown until they could figure out how to manage it better.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/leaveleaves on 2025-01-07 22:56:41+00:00.

I work a service industry adjacent position that requires a flexible schedule. I've been fine with this, and take a day or two off when possible. I worked 18 days straight over Christmas, with my first "day off" being New Year's Eve. I didn't schedule time off, I just didn't get scheduled. The day before NYE, my boss asked for me to cover a shift. I told him I was going out of town. He allowed it, but when we talked next, he said

"I was upset when you said you couldn't work, because you hadn't scheduled time off on the schedule. I thought I was going to get a day off finally, so I was disappointed when you told me you weren't able to help"

I explained since it was both the holiday, and my first day off in over 2 week, I didn't think I had to officially schedule it as "time off", but I will in the future.

Guess who suddenly has scheduled "time off" for every Saturday and Sunday for the foreseeable future?

I'm so done.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/nonbinaryunicorn on 2025-01-07 18:52:30+00:00.

This is short and sweet.

I work at a preschool that teaches 18 month to 5 year olds. I'm with the 18 month to 2 year range.

During snack this morning, I'm encouraging a boy to put his leftover snack in his cup to throw away. He is easily distracted, so he wanders off when I have to stop another kid from trying to get the hand sanitizer on her own.

The other teacher in the room tells the boy to throw his cup away and I watch as he dumps out his leftover pretzels and throw just the cup away.

He did throw away the pretzels on his own after but it made me giggle that he followed the letter and not the spirit of the directions.