Malicious Compliance

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Agyaani_ on 2025-01-30 17:29:17+00:00.

At my previous job, we had a strict expense reimbursement policy. The rule? Only expenses with receipts were reimbursed—no exceptions.

One month, I traveled for work and had a few small expenses, like bus fares, street parking, and tipping, where getting a receipt was impossible. I submitted my report, clearly listing these minor charges, totaling about $20.

Rejected. My manager: “No receipt, no reimbursement. Policy is policy. We need every receipt for Audit Purpose”

Fine. Cue malicious compliance.

The next trip, I went all in:

• Needed a bottle of water? Bought it from a fancy café with a printed receipt.
• Short taxi ride? No cash—only expensive app-based rides with e-receipts.
• Instead of public transport, I took more costly options that provided invoices.
• Tipping a server? No cash—added it to the bill at high-end restaurants with detailed receipts.

My total expenses? $280 instead of $20.

When finance processed my claim, my manager was furious: “Why is this so high?!”

Me: “Well, you said no receipt, no reimbursement. So I made sure everything had a receipt.”

A new policy was introduced the following week: "Reasonable expenses may be reimbursed at management’s discretion—even without receipts."

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Nervous-Mess7 on 2025-01-30 04:21:03+00:00.

Where I work many of my coworkers have visible tattoos and it’s never been an issue. Even some of the assistant managers and higher ups have tattoos that can be seen while in uniform. For some context, during the summer months we are allowed to wear shorts if we want to do so. I get very warm during the summer and just don’t handle the heat well so I opt to wear shorts almost every day from May-August.

I have a tattoo of a mermaid of the side of my lower leg. It’s a typical American traditional mermaid and she has breasts. The nipple of the mermaid is a black dot, simple and small. It’s not overly sexualized or drawn in a pornographic style. Plus it’s on the side of my lower leg mixed in with many other tattoos so it doesn’t stick out. For a few weeks I had no issue with the tattoo, I even had one manager comment on my leg pieces saying he liked the style.

However, one day one of the assistant managers came up to me and told me my tattoo was all of a sudden inappropriate and out of line for work. She demanded I wear pants or completely cover the chest of the mermaid tattoo everyday. I asked her if a customer had complained or if our manager had said something. She said no, that only she took offence by the tattoo and she demanded I cover it.

I asked a bunch of people and they thought she was being ridiculous but this particular manager had a history of steam rolling over everyone and getting her way. Even other assistant managers had issues with her in the past. So I decided, fine, I have to cover the nipples of the mermaid. That’s what I should do then.

I went to several craft stores to find as many sea shell/sea themed stickers I could find. I also bought some small gem stone stickers and thread. I used the gem stone and thread to make tiny breast tassels for the mermaid. They were super cute and drew lots of attention. I had coworkers and customers all commenting on how cute the tassels were and how creative it was to do that as a cover. The assistant manager that had forced me to cover the tattoo saw what I had done and she wasn’t please. She had thought I would use bandaids or something to cover the tattoo instead. But I got her to admit that I was technically following her demand as the mermaid nipples were no longer visible.

The longer I had to keep the tattoo covered the more creative I got with it. I used all sorts of fun, flashy stickers and designs. I even used googly eyes at one point. All my coworkers loved it as they agreed it was unnecessary to demand me to cover the tattoo in the first place.

Eventually that assistant manager was fired and when she left I stopped covering the mermaid. I haven’t had any issue with any other managers about it so I think the issue is resolved and at least I had some fun while it lasted.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/creomaga on 2025-01-30 03:56:52+00:00.

In high school we had student teachers shadowing the English department. They acted as assistants to the teacher while getting whatever experience they needed for their degrees.

My English teacher liked to assign topics she thought would interest us as a way to focus more on the writing than the topic. She rarely commented on the subject matter but would tear the essay itself to pieces and give specific detailed feedback to build the writing skill. Some of us went all out on these assignments. Most of the class gave a collective eye roll and handed in something that met the word count.

Then there was Roy.

Roy did not like homework. At all. In any class. He felt it was a personal insult that he had to be at school anyway, and the idea of taking schoolwork home was downright offensive. This was compounded by his firm conviction that English was an unnecessary subject. He skated by in most of his other classes because making him do the work wasn't worth the hassle.

Once it became clear that Roy wasn't going to do anything in this class either, English teacher takes it as a teaching opportunity for the student teacher and the three of them sit down together. An agreement is made that student teacher and Roy will work on his homework during detention time, as an alternative to actual detention for not handing homework in. Student teacher does most of the assignments, Roy hands them in. Praise all around. This goes on for several months.

Student teacher eventually realises she is getting duped, and starts insisting Roy do his own work. Big assignment that is to be presented to all three year level English classes is handed out, right before a break so we've got plenty of time to work on it.

Break ends, first week back we are given the schedule of when we're presenting to the classes. Roy is scheduled for the end of the week. Student teacher offers to help him finetune his presentation skills, and finds out (to noones surprise but hers) that he has done absolutely nothing. She flips her lid and tells him he has to do something, it's worth a huge percentage of the end grade. Roy tells her to write it herself and goes off to smoke at the bike sheds.

So she does.

At the end of the week Roy takes his place to present "his" assignment, cocky in the belief that he'll ace it because all the other work "he" did got excellent marks. His topic was superhero fiction and the presentation was being marked on a number of things including visual aids, presentation skills and vocabulary. He starts off strong and is using a LOT of big words and complicated language (student teacher had even spelled things out phonetically in the notes for him). English teacher's eyes are getting wider and wider, and then we get to the visual aids.

The superheroes in question were the Powerpuff Girls. We got a detailed version of the origin story and details about various powers and abilities, and a great deal of speculation on what their activities would be once they had grown up. This included multiple visual aids which were not quite homemade porn, but not your wholesome superhero drawings either. I should note here that this was late 90s so the images were not sourced with a quick google the way they are now - so student teacher went to some effort for this.

We were all very impressed at his level of interest in these particular heroes, and made sure to tell him so regularly for the rest of high school.

And no, he didn't pass English.

TL/DR: High school student refuses to complete assigned homework, when confronted tells the student teacher to write it for him. She does and he presents something that would now be considered raunchy fanfic to a large group of his peers.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/ZHISHER on 2025-01-29 18:27:26+00:00.

Shared this is another sub who kept recommending I share here. This happened yesterday.

I had just landed for my layover, and I was in the very back of the plane, second from last row. The back was empty-I had a row to myself, across the aisle was a boomer who had the row to himself and who just watched Fox News the whole time. Same deal in the last row-two women who each had their own row.

We land, seatbelt sign comes off, and people start to stand up. I stand up, he stays sitting. One of the women stands up and lines up behind me, that’s when I hear him:

“Where do you think you’re going? No ones getting off yet. Sit down and stop crowding us.”

The woman apologizes and says “I’m sorry, I really need to use the bathroom.” He mutters something unintelligible and boomery.

I tell her she can go ahead of me, and that’s when the guy leapt up and grabbed both seats, physically blocking her. “No! No! No! We get off row by row! Row by row, we don’t go ahead of people, we don’t push and shove, we get off row by row.”

I start saying “calm down buddy, it’s not that big of a deal” but he just keeps repeating “row by row!” He brings his guard stance down and she pushes past him, dude looks like he’s going to keel over from anger. Now the lineup is just me, then him, then the other woman behind us who looks disgusted.

So I say “okay buddy, calm down” again and we start walking. 2 rows ahead of us is a couple, still sitting down, getting their baby packed. They clearly have a few minutes to go before they’re ready, so I stop behind them and do the same stance he just did.

“You guys take your time” I say, parked to make sure boomer isn’t going anywhere.

The dad says it’s okay, they’re going to be a moment, but I say very loudly “no no, we get off row by row. Row by row, you guys go ahead.” The couple had definitely heard our spat and knew what I was doing. We waited a solid 3 or 4 minutes for them.

Then, as we got further ahead, I did it again with another woman who was waiting for the flight attendant to bring her her bag. This lady was more confused when I insisted we wait, but she went along with it. I just kept saying very very loudly “we get off row by row.”

The first time, the boomer said “this is stupid” and I said “row by row!” The second time he was silent. But I certainly wasted a good 5 or 6 minutes of his life he couldn’t afford to spare.

Edit: A few things that have been asked:

For clarity, the woman who needed to go to the bathroom was NOT behind me by this point. She had made her way past us. The woman behind us was a different woman, the last on the plane.

The woman behind us gave the guy a very disgusted look when he first started talking, so I thought she might be okay with it. I looked back once or twice to make sure she was good, she smiled at me, so I figured it was okay. She smiled at me again when we were off the planes.

Why did she not use the bathrooms in the back of the plane? No idea. I didn’t ask.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/IAmWeasel93 on 2025-01-29 16:05:16+00:00.

I got hired as a line cook when I got out of culinary school, it was a big hotel chain. I got hired for the day to day work and we had 8 other line cooks and a head chef who was always bragging about his work load and how he: spared us from the paper monster. The head chef was for a better word absent from the kitchen floor and basically a pencil pusher. He did the ordering, the haccp lists, stocking, time sheets, rosters, schedules, communication with HR/GM/F&B and he made the menus.

For the most part the work paid oke and there was not much hassle. Thing was the menu's we had to cook were outdated and very uninspiring. Like think about the cook books from 70 years ago uninspiring. At some point we as a kitchen team were done with that and we requested that we make the menus, head chef for some reason was happy to oblige.

So now comes the kicker, we had a after hours menu with simple meals: BLT, pizza, salads, soup, fries, hamburgers. For some reason, corporate decided that the after hours menu had to go and be replaced by the normal day to day menu. This led to the following situation, almoste nobody ordered food during the Night Shift. Turns out when people come to a hotel late they are either to tired or to drunk to eat a meal that takes around 15 min to serve or are in no mood for a sauteed salmon in white wine sauce. This went on for like a year and corporate saw the nose dive in the Night Shift revenue across the board and they made the only logical decision to combat this problem: fire all Nightshift line cooks or relocate them to other hotels if they could not be fired. Of course the after hours menu was not changed nor was it removed, no instead it meant the shift had to be picked up by another.

So this is where the tale really started: So I worked there for about 2 years and I got in some trouble with the head chef, we didn't see eye to eye. This lead to the following situation:I had to pick up almost every night shift. I would come in at 4 in the afternoon and leave around 5 in the morning. I worked 40 hours on paper but in reality I worked around 50ish. I didn't mind as overtime was paid out and me as a 21 year old could do a lot with the paid out OT. Things was, it was so boring. In the beginning I cleaned the kitchen, checked the walkins for spoiled goods, set up a part of the breakfast and did some minor paperwork. After about 3 weeks I ran out of work to do, every 2 or three days I could clean something or check the fridges but what first took an hour now took like 10 to 15 min. So i did the logical thing and started reading books, watching Netflix, talk to the night manager, starting to experiment with new recipes and hanging out with the interns. Basically i was f-ing around on company time.

So after a while I got called into the office of the GM, I got a verbal reprimand for slacking. When I asked him why he told me someone told him what I did during Night Shift. So I of course explained to him what I did and that in between these hour's I had little to do. This led to a discussion between corporate, GM and my union about what I could and could not do within the position I was hired for but that's a story for another time.

At the end of this whole ordeal I was tasked with kitchen paperwork and chef just unloaded his whole workload on me. Telling me to get to work and that the time for slacking was over. He said this all smug and apparently he was assuming I would not finish this or I would come begging for help. I had to do time sheets, order produce and answer emails. Chef was always bragging about the work and that it took a whole week. After one look I knew he was not familiar with computers and the various programs he had to work with. Within a month I had figured out that our time management system could be linked to our payroll system and I only had to check if the breaks were logged correctly, hit the sync button and place a request for validation by the GM/HR. Same went for our ordering software, I could upload a produce list and order from an iPad while walking around to the different walkins and freezers, also I combined this with the two day spoil check. Within 2 months or so I found out that the work schedule sheet could be copied to another week and with another software link I could sync our HR app so it would automatically generate a warning when someone was on leave or vacation. it took me 2 night shifts to do all of the above and the other 3 I could “slack”. Due to this chef had nothing to do in the office and in turn was slacking, he had nothing to do during the day but to sit around in his office. After about 2 months “somebody” slipped this info to the GM. After that chef had to work in the kitchen and his 9 to 5 changed, he had to do breakfastshifts as he failed to do line cook work, he was stuck 30 years back when sticking everything in jelly was a trend.

Soon after this corporate got wind of this great innovation and asked our chef to document this all and send this over to them. When I left the company due to other reasons, corporate were contemplating cutting the head chef's position and making the F&B manager responsible for the kitchen.

TLDR: was accused of slacking, automated the entire head chef's position so he slacked.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Honigmann13 on 2025-01-29 06:49:39+00:00.

I'm not sure if this is the right sub - but it's too good not to share.

A friend of mine told me this episode from his childhood. The house he lived in with his parents was on a curve. It was the main road to a huge disco. (You can imagine how it continues.)

His room faced the street. For a while everything went well, until almost every other weekend a car couldn't make the curve and crashed into the house. So he has stories about how he was woken up by a car in his children's room. Unfortunately most of the cars weren't broken enough, so the drivers fled. Since there were no perpetrators, his parents were left with the costs.

They wrote to the city asking them to do something to make the curve safer. Of course nothing happened.

Then they came up with an idea:

Since the city isn't changing anything about the curve, our problem is that the perpetrators can keep driving.

They laid tree trunks across the lawn in front of the house. The solution to the problem began the very next weekend. Cars continued to drive into the house. But the trees had damaged the axles of all the cars so badly that they were no longer drivable.

This led to two results. All damage was paid for from now on and, strangely enough, the number of accidents on this bend decreased so that only two or three cars got stuck in the tree trunks a year.

Note:

Of course, my friend didn't have his children's room facing the front the whole time. After the accidents started, he had another room in the house.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Crusbetsrevenge on 2025-01-29 01:57:37+00:00.

This is a few years ago now. I was working for a local flooring retailer. It was a cool job and for the most part the customers were cool. Until one day, let's call him Jonesy, not his name just how I think of him. Comes in and buys some tile. He buys probably 6 different colors for different areas of the house. I explain at the time if he has any full boxes when he's done we'll take them back and get him a refund. He says okay and leaves.

A couple days later in strolls Jonesy and wants to return his tile. Ok no problem until I see that ole Jonesy has brought back 3 or 4 tiles from each of the colors he bought. He has not one single box. I don't have a good way to return single tiles. I let him know why I can't and what we can't do. Dude immediately goes full boomer and starts raising his voice at me and telling me how we lied and misrepresented our process. After a couple minutes I'm thinking this is in no way worth it so I just make up some item roughly the cost of his tile and hand him the cash. As he's walking out the door I hit him with the polite, "have a nice day" to which he responds with a couple expletives.

Here is where the malicious compliance comes in. I knew what he returned was the last of those tile colors and we weren't getting anymore in. So I grab one of the loader and have him immediately take them out to the dumpster and make sure he breaks them in the hope ole Jonesy runs a couple short. A couple days go by and nothing. I was a little disappointed as I thought my plan was awesome. Then about 4 days after he returned his tile he comes in all frantic and needs more. I let him know that since I only had a couple tiles of those colors I couldn't resell them so they were thrown in the dumpster. But he was welcome to see if there were any that were still usable. He looked super pissed but couldn't do anything so I took him out to the dumpster and let him look around but all that was left was broken pieces. It was awesome.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Party_Shape557 on 2025-01-28 09:12:03+00:00.

I'm going to start out by saying that English is not my first language and I wasn't sure that this story belongs here as this is my first time posting.

I used to work in Media Intelligence which is a really niche market in the country that I am from. I started as an assistant and learnt everything from scratch as I switched from the hospitality industry (Pretty big step I know) I was eager to learn and was really interested in what they do as I was trying to get into media back then.

First of all, as I learnt everything from scratch, I got really good at what I do after just six months working there. I was in a three person team and I had one of the best bosses and a rally good colleague which were veterans in the Industry. Both of them helped me a lot to get me where I am then. They left the company after just a year there as upper management was just plain hot garbage. The company had four changes in direction within a year and it was stressing my team out. They did ask me to leave with them but with me being young and naive trying to prove myself, I declined.

The story, after my boss and colleague left, it was just me in my team and I was in charge of a few markets. I was asked to be on-call for technical support and was not offered anything in return. At the time, I was pissed but also trying to prove myself, I obliged. I got really stressed out from working thirteen hours a day for a few months at that point and I kept asking my manager to hire more people as I can't be working like this and it's stressing me out. My manager went on and on saying they DoN't HaVe ThE bUdGeT fOr It, so I just forgot about it drowning myself in work.

One day, the CEO of the company came and we had dinner as he was growing close to me since I was the only one person left who actually know the in and out of the old and new system that the company used. Keep in mind, this CEO is a cheapskate and will try all and every way to suck you dry. He asked me what I wanted to change in the company during dinner so I started of with asking for two new hires for my team where he gave me the same answer as my manager so I asked him for a promotion and a raise which was also declined saying YoU dOnT hAvE tHe NeCeSsArY eXpErIeNcE yEt. I was pissed.

As a normal person would expect, after working thirteen hour days for months, you would need rest. I had almost three weeks of PTO saved and I needed the rest. The manager threatened to fire me if I took any PTO as no one was able to do what I did. I took the PTO anyways, I got well rested and all was good until I came back. There were two new faces and I was pretty confused so I asked my manager who were they and she told me they were my replacements. She told me my notice was two months and I had to train them before I leave. She couldn't do anything as I was the only one in the company who knew how to run the legacy and the new systems so realistically she couldn't say that I was not training them properly as she didn't know how things work.

Here is the part where the Malicious Compliance happens, since the manager did not know how things work. She told me to train the interns on the legacy systems to "know better" on how the company was built up and I did just that. She told me strictly to just train the interns on the legacy and she will be dealing with the rest. Sure, I'll do just that.

It was until my last week when the shit really hit the fan. My manager found out that I have been only giving training on the legacy system and I didn't give them my notes with tips on how to run the system that needed to be used for daily operations. My manager called in the CEO and the Managing Director to hold a meeting with me asking me why I hadn't trained my replacements properly. I just told them I did what my manager told me to which the manager denied until I forwarded the CEO and MD the email that my manager has sent me which the call promptly ending.

After I left the company, I was patiently waiting for the call that was bound to come. It was my manager, she demanded me to get back to work and said that the firing was just a prank blah blah blah. I told them, pay me triple my wage and I'll consider it, they called me crazy and ended the call. It's been two months since that call and based on a good friend from another department, my old manager is neck deep in this shit show.

TLDR: Fire me from taking PTO, get fucked.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Monsignor1979 on 2025-01-28 11:11:02+00:00.

Back in the early 2000s, I was collecting all my change in one of those big plastic water jugs (for water dispensers). I had it about 60% full and needed to cash them in to make ends meet, so I lugged this thing into my local bank. Now, I learned the hard way prior to this, that the bank would not accept pre-rolled coins. They told me there was no way to verify that the rolls contained actual coins, and that they would have to rip everyone of them open to verify. After the explanation, it made sense. But, it was kind of frustrating since I spent the money and time to roll all these coins up thinking I was helping them out. So, this time I kept them all loose in the jug. I also know they have one of those coin counting machines, because I seen them use it the last time, and it made light work of all the coins they had unwrapped from the rolls.

But, it been a few years since I last did this, so here I was waiting in line for the next available teller with my jug of loose change (probably weighing 40-50 lbs worth). When my time came, I waddled the jug up to the base of the teller desk and told them I wanted to cash it in. This is when they told me that they charge something like a 10% fee to count the change. I turned my head to the right where there was a small room and sure enough, that same coin counting machine was sitting in there.

I said "You aren't counting it, you're just pouring it into that machine and it'll count it for you."

They simply replied "It's just our policy, sir"

I then said "You're my bank, isn't that a service you're supposed to provide to me?"

And they said "We charge the same rate for everyone."

So, I asked how much change they would take without charging me the fee, and they said "$50". So, I knelt down, tipped the jug over, and poured as much of it into my hand as possible and put a couple handfuls worth onto the counter. Looking perturbed, she counted it all by hand and gave me maybe $22 and some change. I put it into my wallet, grabbed my jug, and dragged it to the back of the line behind two other customers.

When it was my turn again, I waddled up there, knelt down and place a couple handfuls of coins on the high counter. When I stood back up, you could tell she was pretty perturbed about what I was doing and eventually just gave in. She told me to bring the jug over to the swinging door at the end of the desk and with the help of another teller, they started pouring it into the coin machine.

I made the point to tell them that I knew almost to the cent how much was in there, so don't try to pull any fast ones on me. About ten minutes later, it had chewed through all the coins and the total came to within a few bucks of my own count (might have had a handful of Canadian coins in there or some likely miscount due to worn coins). I remember it ended up be over $1,000 in pocket change but I can't recall the actual total.

But, that was the last time I saved coins. Nowadays, I hear most banks won't do this at all and will just refer you to those coin counting machines you see at hardware stores or Walmart that rob you of a large percentage of the total.

TL:DR My bank wanted to charge me 10% to cash in my large jug of loose change, so I attempted to cash it all in one handful at a time to avoid the charge until they finally gave in and counted it all for free.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Grumps1954 on 2025-01-28 07:50:36+00:00.

Just after the invention of the printing press I worked for a small, but highly respected, academic publisher here in the UK. I was part of the sales team, criss-crossing the country visiting universities and bookshops promoting our titles. It was a good life, before even car phones, never mind mobiles. Once we were out on the road we were pretty much our own bosses. Our sales manager had done the same job, knew how things worked and was perfectly happy to allow us to make our own arrangements and decisions, as long as our territories were profitable year on year.And they were.

Then the stars realigned and we were taken over by a much larger publisher. So now, instead of knowing pretty much everyone in the company, it was just a voice at the other end of the phone when we needed to get something sorted. As is often the way with such large organisations it ran on tram tracks. For example, as reps we had company cars, for which previously there had been a set budget and we could have whatever we wanted as long as it fell within the financial restraints. Not now, there was a choice of three, and that was that.

Came the time when they decided that company wide people were not using their time efficiently, especially with regard to meetings. Thus highly expensive consultants were drafted in, and one of their recommendations was that everyone, every single employee, should go on a time management course. It was just the merest coincidence that this consultancy also provided the course.....

Eventually our sales team got the word, and we had to jump through these particular hoops. In vain we pointed out that: we were not office-based so we rarely had meetings and, if we did, they were organised and run by somebody else; we could hardly tell a customer or university academic that they were taking too long and could we please go a bit faster; and finally, time management for us was avoiding traffic jams and road works so as to get to our next appointment on time. Until matter transfer was developed no course in the world was going to improve that situation.

As you can probably guess all this fell on deaf ears. There could be no exceptions, the trams were heading down those tracks with no possibility of stopping. Somehow this course lasted three days, I have no idea how as most of it consisted of stating the blindingly obvious. In addition there were travelling days at each end as all three days were 9-5. So the four of us had most of a week in a 4 star hotel, with virtually unlimited food and drink, gaining nothing but weight from the whole experience. I can only guess what we cost the company, even at those long-ago prices it had to be a long way into four figures. Plus the time off the road, as for a week the sales team had not sold a single book to a single bookshop.

We were supposed to write follow-ups, detailing just what we had got out of the course, but, after discussion with our sales manager, this requirement was quietly dropped. Probably just as well...

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/sanjuro_kurosawa on 2025-01-28 06:30:37+00:00.

Just following orders...

Republican U.S. Senator Katie Britt said that that federal bureaucrats, “should now be on notice that malicious compliance will not be tolerated and will be swiftly corrected.”

She said newly appointed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will “correct and get to the bottom of the malicious compliance we’ve seen in recent days.”

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Enteprise-srl on 2025-01-27 15:45:47+00:00.

A few years ago, I worked at a mid-sized company where the atmosphere was… let’s say, not ideal. The manager had this ever-growing suspicion that people were just waiting for the right time to leave. He believed that morale was low, and that the team was barely holding it together. And while I’m not sure where he got this idea, he started imposing more and more controls on us to “monitor” productivity.

One day, he introduced a new rule: “Every task, every email, every conversation must be logged. No exceptions.” The justification? “I need to know exactly what you’re doing, and I need to be sure nothing’s falling through the cracks.”

Now, here's the problem—my team was already working at full capacity, dealing with multiple tasks every single day. But suddenly, we were being told to log everything. If you were sending a simple email, you had to log it. Writing a report? Log it. Setting up a meeting? Log it. Every little action had to be documented.

I tried explaining how ridiculous this was. But the response was always the same: “I need to make sure you’re on task.” He didn’t trust us to do our jobs, so he created a system where every move had to be tracked and validated by someone else.

I didn’t see any way out of it, so I decided to comply. But I wasn’t going to make it easy. I started logging everything—and I mean everything—down to the smallest tasks. Simple emails? Logged. A quick 10-minute meeting to touch base? Logged. I even started logging the amount of time I spent thinking about the best way to word my emails—because, hey, it was part of the task, right?

To top it off, I made sure my logs were detailed as hell. I meticulously logged every action, no matter how insignificant.

The result? It was chaos. The logs were piling up, but all they did was waste more of my time. The manager was reviewing everything and asking questions about tasks that had no bearing on the big picture. Meanwhile, I could barely get through a day without constantly being interrupted by the need to document my every move.

And then, it happened: the manager finally asked, “Why is everything taking so long?” I gave him a simple reply: “You asked for everything to be logged.”

He didn’t like hearing that. But the best part was when he finally realized that the whole system was making us less productive. His solution? We were told to “just log what’s necessary.” The policy was quietly dropped, and things slowly started to return to normal. But by then, I had already built something of my own.

After all the frustration of logging every single action, I realized there had to be a better way. So, I started building a tool that could automatically track everything—without the annoying back-and-forth or wasted time. I wasn’t looking to change the whole company—I just wanted a way to do my job without all the micromanagement.

What started as a workaround eventually grew into a full-fledged solution, and I realized that this frustration had pushed me to create something far more effective than the system we were using.

Funny how the lack of trust can sometimes spark the most innovative ideas.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Agyaani_ on 2025-01-27 12:16:26+00:00.

A few months ago, my manager got obsessed with tracking our productivity to the decimal point. Every task had to be logged, measured, and analyzed. No exceptions. If it wasn’t on the spreadsheet, it didn’t count.

So, one day, during our weekly team meeting, he casually said, “I don’t care how long it takes, just make sure everything is logged perfectly.”

Cue malicious compliance.

I started logging everything.

• "Reading the boss’s email" (3 minutes, 42 seconds).
• "Deciphering vague instructions" (5 minutes).
• "Refilling water bottle to avoid screaming" (2 minutes, 10 seconds).
• "Thinking about whether this is real life or a sitcom" (7 minutes).
• "Contemplating the meaning of corporate jargon" (4 minutes, 30 seconds).
• "Strategic sighing to release frustration" (9 seconds).

Soon enough, my task tracker looked like a surreal diary of corporate life. I even color-coded it for extra precision.

When he finally looked at my logs, he freaked out: “Why are you wasting time tracking all of this?!” I reminded him, “You said EVERYTHING needed to be logged.”

Surprisingly, we had a new policy by the end of the week: log only what’s necessary. 😎

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/tvcity6455 on 2025-01-26 15:18:17+00:00.

Years ago, I worked in a satellite office of a large department (300+ people) in a giant corporation. Half of the staff had salary/benefits while my half was hourly contractors. The department was run by two vindictive women who were wholly responsible for the toxic environment. They loved talking about how much they were like sisters; I loved pointing out that when you have sisters like them, one of them ends up under Dorothy’s house.

Like most companies, they were constantly blowing smoke up everyone’s ass about how much we're valued. And they showed that by inviting us to an Appreciation Potluck! There were going to be surprises! And delicious treats from our coworkers!

Of course, the other shoe inevitably dropped: the company was providing only soft drinks as alcohol on company property is forbidden (except when it isn't). The only food at this “appreciation” potluck was what employees were expected to make (“nothing store-bought – share some love with us!”). They couldn’t put it in writing, but it got around that failing to cook something would be “noted.”

It’s tough when the company won’t give you a budget, but it’s tone deaf and insulting to demand people give their own time to prop up the illusion the company cares when half your staff doesn’t get health insurance. The participation non-mandate came straight from the top, and I wanted them thoroughly, inescapably embarrassed.

Two days before the potluck while on a call with my boss, I dropped the live grenade in her lap:

Boss: oh, before we go, I wanted to ask why you declined my Outlook invite for tomorrow afternoon. What’s up?

Me: oh I need to leave early tomorrow to cook for the potluck since I assume you can’t authorize overtime for it.

Boss: overtime?…

Me: My recipe takes an hour or so to cook and the actual potluck is another 2 after business hours, so I was going to leave 3 hours early to keep myself at 40 hours this week.

Boss: wait, you expect to get paid for cooking?

Me: Half this staff is hourly contractors. Does this for-profit company expect 150 contractors to donate 3 or more hours of their personal time for their own appreciation meal?

Boss: oh my God… nobody thought of how this looks? [she was asking herself more than me]

Me: or nobody expected to be called on it.

Boss: but who’s getting called on it? Oh… [sighs] you’re at your desk where everyone can hear…

Me: correct.

Boss: I have to go.

I did feel bad about dragging her into it – she had enough on her plate – but I knew she’d just toss the grenade up the chain to people who get paid to know better. Our satellite office wasn’t privy to many details, but I’m told my call sent people panicked and scurrying around at the mother ship, consuming a day and a half of a lot of people's time. Mission accomplished.

In the end, they moved the potluck to lunchtime (during paid time for contractors) and bought our office pizzas – only our office. We were, however, instructed not to be eating the pizza when we Skyped in because everyone else would get upset. And yes, all the satellite offices were Skyping in like this was the Dunder Mifflin Infinity launch.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/AnnualAntics on 2025-01-26 13:10:37+00:00.

A former employer has decided to shoot themselves in the foot with a bazooka. I thought I'd share it here so you can laugh at them too.

In a nutshell, the business built it's own in-house software which is designed to cover all aspects of the business. From invoicing, tracking stock, creating reports, semi-automating direct debit billing, and virtually everything else; a thousand "sub-areas".

As such, the business ended up with three "IT departments". One was more hardware issues & basic IT issues, there was the "medium" IT department who could fix small issues within specific sub-areas of the software, and the "Legacy" team who worked on the rawest base level of the software and had kept it functioning for over 20 years.

In an effort to cut costs, the senior management decided that the Legacy team were no longer required as they were creating a whole new software anyway & would be ditching the old one "within a year or so".

In doing so, they also insisted that the large office they occupied was completely emptied. This included several huge filing cabinets of paperwork, compromising dozens of core manuals, and countless hundreds of up-to-date "how to fix" documentation pieces as well as earlier superceded documents they could refer back to too.

The Legacy team sent an e-mail to the seniors basically saying "Are you sure?", to which they (eventually) received a terse e-mail back specifically stating to "Destroy all paperwork". They were also ordered to "Delete all digital files" to free up a rather substantial amount of space on the shared drive, and wipe their computers back to factory settings.

So, it was all shredded, the files erased totally, & the computers wiped. The team removed every trace of their existence as ordered, and left for greener pastures.

It's been three months, and there was recently a power outage which has broken something in the rebooted system. The company can no longer add items into stock, which means invoicing won't work (as the system reads as "can't sell what we don't have"). In turn, this means there's no invoices for the system to bill. So, it's back to pen, paper, and shared excel sheets to keep track of stock, manually typing invoices into a template, and having to manually check every payment received against paper invoices. All of which is resulting is massive amounts of overtime required to keep up with demand.

The company has reached out to the Legacy Team, but they've all said without the manuals they were ordered to destroy or erase, they're not sure how to fix it.

The new system is still "at least a year out".

On the positive side, two of the senior managers have a nice large office to share & sit in.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Agyaani_ on 2025-01-27 06:02:27+00:00.

A few years ago, my manager decided to crack down on "workplace discipline." His first rule? Everyone had to work their exact scheduled hours—no more, no less. If your shift was 9:00 to 5:00, you couldn’t start a minute early or leave a minute late.

Now, I’m the kind of person who likes to finish what I’m working on, even if it means staying a little past my shift. But fine, rules are rules.

At 5:00 sharp, I started dropping everything. Middle of a call with a client? “Sorry, it’s 5:00. Let’s pick this up tomorrow.” Writing an email? Draft saved, computer shut down. My coworkers followed suit. Soon, the office was a ghost town at exactly 5:01 every day.

It didn’t take long for chaos to erupt. Deadlines got missed, calls were dropped, and clients weren’t happy. Management started to notice. After about two weeks, the rule magically disappeared, and we were told, “Just do what you need to get the job done.”

Funny how quickly things change when you follow orders too perfectly. 😏

Edit/Update:

A lot of people asked if this was about working long hours—it wasn’t! The issue was flexibility. Many of us liked starting early or staying late when it suited us. But the policy forced us into rigid schedules, which didn’t work for how we liked to manage our workloads.

When they realized flexibility made things smoother, they backtracked fast! 😄

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/KitTheKitsuneWarrior on 2025-01-26 07:27:27+00:00.

A little bit of background before I share the story. Names changed to protect myself from retaliation, because my boss is that petty.

The end of December, my old boss stepped down due to going to school, and our new boss took over. All of us were nervous as our old boss was not exactly the greatest, and the replacement was a stickler for the rules.

I noticed an issue with some of how the tasks were assigned the first week of January. The new boss had assigned...let's call them Eric, a task that was impossible for them to do due to how tall they are, as we are required to take photos of equipments Guages for the client, and said guages were out of Eric's reach. I called the new boss in regards to the issue, and informed them that I would gladly make sure the task would get done, so that the company would not get finned for incomplete tasks.

Said boss told me not to do the task, and that Eric should be able to handle it. I said ok, put the phone down, never thought of this issue again.

Three days ago, in the app we use to communicate as a team, boss was furious. Several tasks had not been completed, and they needed reasons as to why. If you remember back to the start of January, I had asked my boss if I could take the tasks of someone else's hands to make sure they were done, and ironicly one of said weekly tasks was the one I offered to do. The others were not done as everyone had been shuffled around due to the termination of a co-worker, and not everyone had been trained on the tasks they were asked to complete.

Normally I avoid even responding to posts or comments on said app, I only have it to grab my work schedule and then I log out of it for the rest of the week. I even have the apps notifications disabled. However, she was blaming the team for not getting the tasks done and looking to scapegoat people, so for the first time, I decided to just let go and call out her hypocritical self out.

I responded stating "at the beginning of January, i offered to do said task for you. You told me not to. I told you why I should do said task. You still told me not to, and now, because said task is not done, you are in a state of panic. Not my task, not my problem"

Boss is now maliciously ignoring my calls, and avoids eye contact with me completely. Everyone including the client knows I offered to complete said tasks, and she literally has nothing to say to defend herself. Perhaps next time, she will listen to what I have to say.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Different-Average-37 on 2025-01-25 02:12:13+00:00.

I'm a software developer at a medium size company where I would get a project and a timeframe to get said project done. This time frame is insane not because of the lack of time to get it done but because of the excessive amount of time it would give me. something I could get done in 2 weeks is given 3 months to complete. My first 6 months at the company were spent with me doing said projects in the amount of time they took me as opposed to the amount of time given for them to be completed and when my performance review came back I assumed my raise and bonus would reflect my performance.

As many of you can probably guess from where I'm posting this story, my raise did not in fact reflect my performance and instead was the base amount my contract guaranteed. My response to this was not to complain as I frankly didn't care and instead to just stop submitting my progress at the same pace I had been doing it. I still did it in the 2 weeks for 3 months but it was a work from home job and I would just add in bits and pieces to keep the progress at the expected pace while having the completed project on a personal machine.

I still work there and have been working there for 4 years now and and very happy spending maybe 2 months of the year doing my job and the working my second job at a different buisness as a software developer as its a work from home job and there are no mandatory check ins or anything of the sort.

I've been offered a decent raise to return to my original pace multiple times but I've declined each time and after around a year and a half they accepted the current pace as I still do quality work with no delays.

I guess don't shaft me originally and expect me to change my mind when you realize my value? no idea I just make way more money than I would have needed to and now effectively get triple my salary as my other job makes twice my lousy job.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Quirky-Marsupial-420 on 2025-01-24 13:59:20+00:00.

My first job out of college I was working as an assistant superintendent on a golf course. One of the most common jobs I was assigned was to spray pesticides on fairways, greens, tees, etc.

One particular day I was spraying fairways and one of the crew guys who was on the next hole over needed help with their machine because it had broke down, so I stopped spraying and went over and helped him figure out what was wrong with the machine.

My boss, the superintendent, came riding up on his golf cart and starting absolutely blasting me for stopping and told me that if my job is to spray fairways that is the only thing I need to be worried about. So I got back on the spray rig and kept on spraying.

Two weeks later, the same exact scenario happened. I was spraying fairways and a crew guy needed help out on the course. I just kept spraying and ignored the crew guy.

My boss was making his rounds on the golf cart and came over to me and started yelling at me saying that if I see someone needs help I need to be able to break off from what I'm doing and help that person, I'm a manager and that's my job yada yada. Then he goes "Do you understand me!?" and I said no I don't, two weeks ago I did exactly that and you told me to keep spraying fairways if that is my task.

He got all red in the face and drove off in his golf cart and came back like 30 minutes later and told me to just use my best judgement from now on if it looked like a crew guy needed help.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/HakanTengri on 2025-01-24 06:40:06+00:00.

This happened some fifteen years ago, but a recent post on here reminded me. I once worked in a municipal archive as an employee of a contractor company. As in, the city contracted the firm and they contracted me and a few other people to do the work. We had an abandoned cinema full of pallets, each with a mountain of file boxes we had to index and catalogue, since the archive had been unattended for something like 30 years. Of course, they gave us the shittiest contract they legally could and paid us literal peanuts for a high qualification job with legal responsibility, but I was young and needed the money.

So, our bosses got paid per job, but we got paid monthly. They wanted the job done as quickly as possible so they could take another one and started pressuring us to do a sloppy job in order to finish quickly. They were in a different city and their latest idea was to call us on the phone every day two minutes before our time to go to ask what had we done that day and pressure us. The calls would go for maybe half an hour, making us late. We were in a remote town with horrible transport connections and we didn't drive, so if we didn't go out on time we'll have to wait hours for the next bus, plus an hour and a half bus ride home. I guess the idea was to punish us and hope we'll go quicker so they won't 'need' to extend the call to pressure us. BUT they didn't want to admit to (I guess they legally couldn't), so they just said they needed to be updated daily.

Cue malicious compliance: after the second time they pulled that shit I started spending at least the last half an hour of every work day pulling together a very tediously detailed (so.tediously.detailed.so.tediously) written report of everything we did that day and e-mailing it to them at precisely my clock-out hour. Then, when they called, I said 'don't worry, you have the daily update in your inbox, it took me half an hour, now it's my time to go home, bye' and hung up.

Of course, work got delayed by at least half an our each day, but what could they do? I was strictly complying with their request for information, in writing, and with every little detail so they don't need to remember. And legally, in Spain, they couldn't fire us without justification unless they canceled the project with the city.

They did call me back for a different project, but when they realized I wouldn't stand for other shit they tried to pull they actually canceled the project and 'let me go'. They had the gall to still promise to call me for another one 'soon'.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/bubbabearzle on 2025-01-24 03:26:38+00:00.

My company was doing great with us all remote during the pandemic but because it is run by a bunch of lemmings days after Amazon announced their RTO policy outs instituted a RTO 3 days a week.

My boss made the unilateral decision that we would need to be in the office from (lets just make something up) 9:30am until 3:30pm (why those hours? Because those times work best for the boss man and his commute).

The problem that I brought up immediately is that we work with people from all over the world (western Europe and Asia), so if I need to meet with any of them we normally do it as early as 6am so it sucks equally for us all.

I mentioned to boss man that when I have an early call, I will be starting my day in the office at the ass crack of dawn and would leave once 8hrs is up (if you do the math, it is before 3:30pm, especially since I don't normally take a lunch. I do this because the other option we were given was to take the early meeting from home, then log off, get ready, commute, and work the remaining 7 hours in the office. That would extend my work day way past 8hrs (and there is absolutely no work need for such long hours).

So, this is what I was doing until boss dude confronted me about why I was "leaving early" so often (my early meetings happen at least 2 of the 3 in office days). I cut him off and said "because I am here as early as I need to be, I don't take a lunch, and I leave after working 8 full hours.

I was told that I am required to take an hour lunch during the work day (and that it did not count as time worked), basically trying to make me stay even longer each day.

He kinda let the subject drop, but I reached out to It and asked if I could be forced to work more than 8 hours per day just so I could sit and stare at my computer to make boss dude happy. HR informed me that boss dude can set required office hours, and that I am free to skip lunch but it does not mean I don't have to stay til 3:30. He also said that because I am salaried I can be required to work longer days "if needed for business" (again, not the case).

So here is where the malicious compliance comes in: my only required hours are those 6 hours (as long as my work is done) and any early morning calls/meetings. When I was starting in the office at 6am, I was working a solid 8hr day (but often had to come up with things to fill extra time).

From here onwards, I will take the earliest call/meeting from home, then do the log off and commute in for 9am thing. But I am only required to be in work during those 6hrs (as long as my work is done, which it is). I will work for 1hr at home. I will be in the office during the required 6hrs. Because not taking lunch does not let me leave sooner, I will be taking 1hr off in the middle of the required hours.

As a result, I will now be working for 6hrs on days when I take and early meeting from home, and 5hrs on the other days. They wanted to. Micromanage us into not being motivated, I will give them what they want.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/_CitizenVince on 2025-01-24 02:55:34+00:00.

I work at a casino as a dealer.

We have a first-in-first-out way of scheduling dealers. So if you start at 7pm, you get to leave before people that started at 8pm when they are able to close tables down and send you home. Pretty normal and straightforward.

If more than one person starts at the same time, then who gets the option to leave first is assigned on a rotating basis. So if you have the first option one week, you will be second the following, the third after that, then back to one.

So one afternoon, I was reporting to work with 2 other dealers, all set to start at the same time. I was looking forward to a short evening, as I was the first option and I had plans after work. I arrived 10 minutes before my shift, and noticed on of the dealers who was starting at my start time was already dealing. They (the dealer) must have been in the EDR and the pencil needed a dealer to start right away. I confirmed that they had started 15 min before their scheduled time, and they were the 3rd option.

Fast forward 6 hours, and we had tables we could start closing. I'm stoked to get out of there, when I look over and see the dealer that started early leaving before me. I pointed out that I was supposed to be leaving before her, and she gave me a shit eating grin and said "Well I started before you, so I have the first option." And then she just walked off all smug. I was super pissed and said something to the supervisor. He shrugged me off and said "It's policy."

First to start leaves first? Ok, game on.

I knew this coworker had kids, and had to wait for her mom to come over to babysit before she could leave for work, so she wasn't always early for her shift.

I have no kids or obligations, so I started showing up 2 hours before my shift and just chilling in the EDR. I would let the supervisor know I was there in case they needed me to start early (which they always did, because they would not refuse to open a table for lack of staff knowing I was on property and available to work). Three weeks of this, and I had held the first option on every shift I worked. The dealer who was all smug about starting early was getting frustrated and angry at me. Having to stay super late every night was wearing her down.

"It would be nice to get off before close just once!" she said to me once as I was leaving early yet again. I told her I was just following policy, and she was welcome to show up early to make sure she was always first out.

2 more weeks and many complaints to the boss later, the policy was changed. Now, in order to jump option numbers, you have to be called in over an hour before your scheduled time. 15 minutes wasn't gonna cut it anymore if you wanted to leave early.

I hope that it was worth it for her staying until near close for over a month over that 15 minutes. I am petty and I have a lot of free time.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/3KidsInTheTrenchCoat on 2025-01-23 19:14:47+00:00.

*FAIR WARNING – CONTAINS MATH CONCEPTS*

So, this is not my story, but I enjoyed it all the same. I work with/am related to various lawyers, so I hear and deal with a lot of legal stories. Most are boring, especially the number stuff, but this one I can appreciate. Many lawyers are shockingly not great with detailed math and breaking down complicated numbers, this story however, is from one lawyer who specializes in it. 

To try and lay the story out simply… This is a divorce case. Ours is Spouse A, the opposing counsel with the bad math skills has Spouse B. Spouse A had a house before the marriage, and during the marriage they together paid down the mortgage. Because of this, Spouse B is legally entitled to a portion of the propriety value. Rather than sell, Spouse A wants to keep living in the house. To do this, Spouse A needs to pay Spouse B to buy out their portion. Pretty common. 

To calculate the payment offer, you take the value of the house at the start vs the value of the house now, and the increased value of the growth during the marriage. Spouse A’s lawyer (Lawyer A) wanted things settled, not draw it all out, and save both spouses thousands of dollars by not having to cover a lot of attorney fees, expert costs, a new appraisal, etc. Lawyer A was being very generous to Spouse B in her calculations. The starting number is a set, specific, undebatable number in tax value. It’s not an option to use anything else, and the other lawyer (Lawyer B) isn’t taking issue with that part, he couldn’t even if he wanted to.

The second part of the valuation has options. Lawyer A used the same source, the tax value, not the fair market value (like you would see on Zillow). This was a higher current valuation of the property compared to using the fair market value, meaning the payout for Spouse B was much higher and would give them the most money. No other valuation would get Spouse B more money. Spouse B has an attorney who’s not good with numbers. He tells Lawyer A the valuation wasn’t fairly calculated. He doesn’t want tax value to be used, he wants the fair market value, like what would be on Zillow. He accuses Lawyer A of trying to cheat his client out of money! He wrote it in the most condescending way, as if lawyer A is both a cheat and too dumb to do the math. He sarcastically challenged her that she would never use his first-choice price, the Zillow price. However, Lawyer A is more than happy to comply to this request. So, she reruns the numbers using the Zillow price. This new number not only gives his client, Spouse B, less money, it is half of the original valuation.

For anyone thinking this isn’t fair to Spouse B, that they are being screwed over because their lawyer is stupid, don’t worry. After schooling the lawyer and giving the new breakdown in numbers, I’m sure he will want to go back to the original plan. Spouse B isn’t going to lose out because her lawyer can’t do math. But it is fun to imagine the lawyer’s face when he sees the halved valuation using his preferred source.

 *Different states have different rules/procedures, this is how it was done in that particular state.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Honigmann13 on 2025-01-22 23:54:38+00:00.

I just remembered the "Gesetz zur Modernisierung der Gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung" also known as the health reform of 2004.

Introduction:

It was about making the system more efficient. Part of this was the introduction of a patient co-payment: 10 euros per quarter for the practice, 10% co-payment for medicines and medical devices - at least five and a maximum of ten euros.

The politicians had the idea that we go to the doctor for fun and thus place unnecessary strain on the system. A popular claim was that seniors constantly make doctor's appointments so that they can read magazines in the waiting room. The co-payment for medicines and medical devices was mainly based on the idea that people would get medication prescribed by the doctor for fun and thus place unnecessary strain on the system. (Medical devices would be crutches, wheelchairs, etc.)

Let's start:

Practice fee

Everyone was against it when it was introduced. Doctors, patients, and health insurance companies were not happy either. (iirc the malicious compliance starts in the second or third year after the introduction.)

Slowly two things happened at the same time:

People said to themselves "If I have to pay, then it should be worth it!"

On the one hand, that meant that if you had already paid for the quarter, you tried to squeeze in as many doctor's appointments as possible. On the other hand, towards the end of the quarter, hardly anyone went to the doctor who hadn't already paid. So doctors' offices were totally overcrowded at the beginning of the quarter and very empty at the end.

I don't know how many politicians' speeches I heard, radio and TV discussions, newspaper and magazine articles saying that people should be resonable. People should go to the doctor on the last day of the quarter (and of course pay the full fee for the quarter) instead of going the next day and have a full quarter.

Amazingly, the practice fee was already withdrawn at the beginning of 2013. It is therefore amazing that our politicians normally hardly withdraw any law.

Unfortunately, the co-payment for medicines and medical devices remained.

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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/shieldtown95 on 2025-01-22 05:09:57+00:00.

This was in the late 90’s, my city decided to save a few bucks by not paying overtime to garbage collectors during the holidays. Instead of coming up with a reasonable solution, they told the garbage collectors to only pick up two bags per household, regardless of how much trash was actually out.

Here’s the kicker: there was no rule for residents. We could put out as many bags as we wanted. The city didn’t bother communicating anything to us, so when Christmas came (which fell on a Thursday, one of the usual garbage days), everyone put out their mountain of holiday trash like normal. Wrapping paper, boxes, leftovers—whatever didn’t fit in the bins was bagged and sent to the curb.

The following Monday (another trash pick up day) garbage collectors, following orders, only took two bags per house. The rest just sat there. By the end of the week, the streets looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie, with bags piled high on curbs and sidewalks. The result? Absolute chaos. Some houses had 10+ bags sitting out. The garbage collectors had no choice but to haul it all away because, let’s be real, there was no way this backlog was going to fix itself.

In the end, the city ended up paying overtime anyway because the backlog from one week of “savings” was impossible to clear in regular shifts. Instead of saving money, they gave the garbage collectors twice the work and had to scramble to deal with the mess.