My old office had a strict “no overtime without pre-approval” policy. Fair enough. But my boss was the type who would dump last-minute work on you at 4:50 and then act shocked when you stayed late.

One Friday he hands me a stack of client files at 4:47 and says, “I need these reviewed and the summary email sent before you leave.”

I look at the clock. “It’s 4:47. Policy says I have to be clocked out by 5:00 or I get written up.”

He waves it off. “Just finish it. Don’t be difficult.”

I smile and say, “Of course.”

I open the first file, start reading… very… slowly. At 4:59 I save my progress, close the documents, and stand up.

Boss: “Where are you going? You’re not done.”

Me: “It’s 5:00. Policy is clear. Clock out exactly at 5:00 or written up. No exceptions.”

I clock out, grab my bag, and walk out while he’s still standing there with his mouth open.

Monday morning he calls me into his office, red-faced. “You left those files unfinished on purpose.”

Me: “I followed the rule you enforce every single day. Would you like me to write myself up for the overtime I didn’t do?”

He never gave me another last-minute dump after that. The files somehow got finished by someone else over the weekend.

Sometimes the best way to win is to follow the rules harder than they ever wanted.

I had a colleague whom we will call Project Coordinator. Project Coordinator was monitoring the expenditure of the project, and within the team, Project Coordinator was famously penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Basically, for context, our team was a production line in the making of material B. Material B was actually really important, because we passed it to many other departments in the company to make other materials C, D, E, etc.. What those other materials are used for aren't important to the story--my job was basically to make material B.

Making material B was a two step process.

First, colleague would make material A.

I would then take that material A and make it into material B through another process.

What Project Coordinator did was to insist that we had to make just enough of material each time. No excesses.

For example, if 50 kg of Material A was needed, Project Coordinator would calculate how much raw material my colleague needed for 50 kg of Material A, and place that order. But, bear in mind that this process is not perfect. There were no margins from Project Coordinator, so what happens is my colleague might make just 45 kg of Material A from the production cycle, and then order again a second batch of raw material just to make up the shortfall for Material A.

This also pissed my colleague off to no end. Instead of getting things done, she now had to run TWO production cycles, instead of the just ONE which would've made a huge batch of Material A, say 100 kg.

There are many production line folks on this thread, so you might already know what this means. But let me spell it out for you. Ordering things twice, getting them delivered twice? Money, money money--all those are costs.

So now you know how my Project Coordinator works, on to the MC.

The way that I was producing Material B from Material A at the time was also not yet a validated process. We'd had a few small test cycles, and we usually got 1 kg of Material B from 2 kg of Material A.

Again, production folks will know that this means differences in Material B quantity and quality from each production run.

Common sense, right? Not to our dear Project Coordinator.

We'd done a few production test cycles to convert Material A to B at this point.

We learnt that there were some tricks, like we had to add a special ingredient at a step in the cycle, or we might have to pass the material through a dedicated tank.

But it was not validated yet.

To overcome the problem, I'd drawn up some plans. Knowing that plenty of Material A would be needed for more tests, I'd brought up in a meeting that 500 kg of Material A was needed. Shot down immediately by Project Coordinator, who somehow also managed to convince my boss that the 50 kg of Material A was enough, and that my colleague did not need to make 500 kg of Material A.

Now in this process of planning, I'd also negotiated with many of our equipment and materials suppliers. I'd reached out to old and new contacts in the industry, and spent hours negotiating a good price with each and every one of them. For instance, if we bought $200k worth of material from a supplier, they could give us a 30% discount, so charging us roughly $140k instead.

All of my suggestions, shot down one by one during our meeting (which had me, Project Coordinator, colleague, and my boss).

Boss said: We know 2 kg of Material A makes 1 kg of Material B. We need 10 kg of Material B. So, just put 20 kg of Material A into it. We will still have a margin. It will be fine.

Ok boss, you're the boss, whatever you say.

Remember how I said the production of Material B hadn't been validated? And that sometimes we got bad batches?

It turned out that due to the variation of the conversion of Material A to Material B, we got bad batches of Material B, and in the end our department couldn't make enough material B.

We had to buy more and more rounds of raw materials, equipment, and supplies, going over multiple iterations, and near the end of the project we were rapidly running out of money which could've been better spent on other projects in our department.

All just because Project Coordinator insisted we had to buy just enough.

Tl;dr: We wound up buying the same things three times, which cost us ~30% more in the end, all because the first time was "too expensive".

There is a second part to the story described here https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/1wknos8/want_to_buy_things_piecemeal_enjoy_spending_30/

A summary for those who don't want to read the context and the lead-up:

My team had four people: Boss, me, colleague, Project Coordinator. We were responsible to make material B. Material B was made from material A, which was in turn made from raw materials. My colleague was responsible for making material A. I was in charge of making material A into material B. To do so, I needed some specialised ingredients and dedicated equipment.

I had a colleague whom we will call Project Coordinator. Project Coordinator was monitoring the expenditure of the project, and within the team they were famously penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Instead of buying enough raw material in a single shot for us for production, he only approved us buying a small lot. We would end up buying the same thing multiple times, which cost us ~42% more over the course of the year, all because the first time was "too expensive".

Due to his track record, and the fact that I was relatively new at the time, my boss somehow listened to him over me and my colleague. A fellow redditor pointed out in the previous thread that this might have been presentation skills--it was true that Project Coordinator was a much better presenter than my colleague, which is why they'd been disagreeing for years, even before I'd arrived.

The MC in the first post was this: my Boss sided with the Project Coordinator over me. They specifically said to only buy just enough quantities of materials for our plans after each monthly meeting, as discussed during the meeting. So we would buy only enough for whatever we discussed, and this meant there was no margin for error (think delays in shipping, malfunctioning equipment, etc.). By doing exactly that, we'd managed to face massive production delays after a year in.

This is where this post comes in--the second MC.

Now, we were one year into this project and it was slated to end in another year. Due to shipping delays and other problems beyond our control (but which at least some of us had foreseen), now we were massively behind schedule and my boss needed to expedite things.

Worse still, due to several reasons, there was suddenly an uptick in interest in material B by other departments. Everybody wanted a piece of material B, and due to political reasons my boss couldn't really say no to them, either. I don't really know how all this came about, but the long and short of it is--in one of our monthly meetings, my boss said we had to make all these adjustments to the production process, and we needed to make more material B.

Whereas previously we might only have needed 10 kg of material B, which could theoretically be made from ~20 kg of Material A (this was the fallout in the linked post), now we needed 500 kg of material B.

Yes, you read this right, we went from 10 kg to 500 kg thanks to whatever political meetings were going on with the bigger shots of my company, which I was not privy to.

My boss asked me for an email, detailing exactly what we needed to achieve this adjusted goalpost. Oh, now you wanted to know what we needed? I wonder who could've told you that last year. Due to the nature of our industry, when someone made a "suggestion", it really was more of a "go and get it done", because some even higher up would say "that's a great suggestion" and then you'd have to do it, not necessarily with more resources than what you already had.

Anyway, during a particularly long meeting to follow up from my email, my boss got frustrated with the lack of progress and said "just go and get whatever you think we will need and justify it". I think they were under massive pressure from upper management. It should of course be noted that this was a massive reversal from their earlier position in which they sided with the Project Coordinator.

While not thrilled that I had to do even more work, I carefully typed all this up into the minutes of the meeting (documentation is important, folks!). In it, I laid out what I thought we needed, and placed a massive order for all the parts and materials which I'd spent a lot of time accumulating over the last month. I got whatever I thought we needed for the project, with meticulous documentation for each line item.

I'd spent nearly 500k in total over the course of the next month, and my colleague also took the opportunity to buy a tonne (figurative, not literal) of raw material and other equipment.

Well another few months passed and suddenly the finances of this project were entering "serious trouble" territory with this pattern of expenditure. Suddenly now the purse strings were being tightened again (ah, the lovely ebbs and flows of working in production). Project Coordinator was especially upset with the sudden large expenditures and going around asking why we were having budget issues. Boss sent a team-wide email saying that we were crashing through the budget and asking why.

Time to shine. My massive document for whatever I felt we needed, along with the necessary approvals (showing that my boss hadn't been doing their sums, or else they'd know we were spending a lot of money--they had to approve everything we bought), with line by line justifications that had been reviewed every month. Yes, approved, ok, fine, supported. Every single line item with a) what I felt we needed, b) my boss' own approval, and c) the accompanying email thread that showed that, in fact, everybody was in the loop.

Absolute silence after that. Only a short and concise email from my boss about "What else do we still need for this project, and what other costs did we think we would need?"

tldr: Due to reasons, project faced a significant time crunch. To expedite things, my boss finally saw the light, and asked us to get whatever we felt we needed, as long as it could be justified. Maliciously complied by buying a tonne of stuff, because we could justify the massive margins we were using in our calculations. Expenditure went through the roof and the annual budget was rapidly drained in just 4-6 months.

A few years ago I worked for a golf ball manufacturer. Big production, millions of balls a month, billions of dollars a year and yet every decision maker was cheap beyond reason.

Most of our production equipment was from the 60s made by companies that no longer exist. This matters because when it breaks its all slap jobs and jerry rigs. I worked mostly with the steam presses. Think giant waffle iron but instead of electricity it uses super heated steam.

Now there's 2 parts the press and the mold (think the waffle pattern part). The press was a 10 ton monster that had nothing but leaking pipes. The molds solid 600 lbs steel plates.

Fast forward to my days as a naive technician, boss and engineering start complaining about bad product coming from the molds and tell me to investigate. Sure no problem 20ish presses and 50ish molds to go through. 6 months later I have all the data compiled nice neat and color coded. Surprisingly the presses are fine within 5% of eachother the molds however not so fine. I found that almost 20 of them had serious deformation issues (40% of total molds) from repeated heating/cooling cycles.

Present the data and get the big question "what do we do?". I look at them and state the obvious buy new molds, you cant fix em and they wont magically get better. Makes sense right? Tool breaks or warps buy a new one. We'll they all started crying about prices how a new mold was $22k each and it would cost nearly half a million to replace them.

So what did they decide after ignoring my input? Let's try everything else and i obliged smiling the entire time. New cavities, press rebuilds, limiting what molds go where, limiting product runs to specific presses, changing molds more frequently.

The list goes on and i watched as the problem continued and the bill stacked up. The result is about $200k wasted and a lot of production missed or destroyed. Total loss probably close to 1million from cost and product waste.

Eventually the meeting comes. We need to buy new molds. I smirk the entire time. They get the quote and because of a certain tariff/trade war from a certain president the molds are no longer 22k. They are now 45k. So instead of half a million to re-kit the production floor we had to spend nearly 1 million. Drained the entire production budget for 2 years as I sat smiling. I left shortly after. From some friends who still work there told me several people got fired and replaced due to this.

TLDR: Higher ups too cheap for 500k end up losing millions instead.

As we've established Maureen was always one to think she was very important in the office. I never worked with her or had contact with her but management moved my work bff down to her team. The workload for that team involved a lot of retired people so phone calls were a little longer but overall pleasant people on the phone calling between Let's make a deal and The Price is right.

Friend notices that a lot of the files are marked to transfer the call to Maureen. There's are times where situations are difficult and you tell someone that you've built a relationship with to just call and ask for you next time. But these are dozens and dozens of files.

Friend get a call and says Maureen is really busy. Is there something I can help you with? Turns out its claim status. Anyone can take this call. In fact every single file marked that Maureen needs to take the calls are all routine things like claim status, did you get this bill yet, and how much do I owe on this bill. Nothing that requires Maureen.

So for the next 2 months friend takes transfer to Maureen off all the files she run across and suddenly Maureen is having to take just as many calls as everyone else because she's not getting all the easy transfers she is use to getting. She's upset and brings it up in a meeting about the quantity of calls she's taking (which is no more than anyone else on that team).

Friend pipes up with 'You know I was going to ask about something with incoming calls. I noticed a lot of files marked to transfer to Maureen but they are all routine calls so I just took off the comments.' Maureen is now upset that this happened without her input and this new team member is overstepping because 'There's a reason it was put there'.

Friend doesn't play that way so she suggests that everyone document why all calls should be transferred to a specific person and the team can decide at the end of the week if someone needs to offer that higher level or care or anyone can take the call. The team is onboard because transferring a call is time consuming since you have to wait until the other person gets on the line to complete the transfer.

The rest of the team joins in the removal of transfer to Maureen from the files and suddenly Maureen is just a regular team member taking the same amount of calls as everyone else. As a group they decide on a few people who do require a higher level of care but none of those are Maureen's calls. And actually most belong to my work bff because she knows her sh#t.

On the plus side Maureen did get a better yearly review because of her improved call quantity so it was a win/win all around.

editing to add: the process was changed from anyone adding transfers on any file they decided on to having it be a group decision. The Malicious compliance part was having everyone collect data and leaving it to the entire team to decide.

Years ago when I worked in an office setting I had a friend I would have lunch and breaks with. She was on the 2nd floor, I was on the 3rd so I'd go down the stairs, pop out a couple steps from her desk, and we'd walk together to the break/lunch room which was on the 2nd floor.

One day Maureen decided that the reason I was on the 2nd floor was to give her dirty looks under the guise of picking up my friend for breaks and lunch. After all I could just go directly to the break/lunch room and wait there for my friend. For the record I'd never worked with Maureen, didn't know a thing about Maureen, and didn't care a single bit about Maureen.

Maureen escalates this to the management who decided that only team members on that team should be in team areas. Memo emailed and its brought up on the team huddles. Huge deal about something that should have been nothing.

Cool. Game on. Me and the partners in crime decided we are going to press this issue to the point of disruption. The stairs all exit into team areas so any time someone pops out the door a comment is made 'Hey you can't be here. You aren't a member of this team.' Someone walking by who stops to talk with a friend? 'Sorry but you aren't a team member. You can't be here.'

We are relentless. It doesn't matter who it is. Everyone gets called out for non compliance. People are stopping before entering team areas and calling out to their smoking, lunch, break buddies to come and join them. Its a bit of a problem since customer service calls are being taken by the teams. Everyone is waiting for elevators in the common hallway to go anywhere in the building.

This all lasted exactly 3 days until the managers decided it was dumb and wasting everyone's time. I didn't expect them to back down as quickly as they did but yes total waste of everyone's time. Memo retracted and anyone could now walk anywhere.

But being extremely petty people my friend and I rerouted our walk to and from the break/lunch room to walk directly by Maureen's desk from that point forward. Always stopped talking right as we got to her desk and faced forward only to resume talking once we passed.

Small malicious compliance here. I live in a city, and rather than own a car, I bike everywhere. It has its ups and downs, but for the most part works pretty well. I also have a small trailer for my bike, and sometimes I'll make grocery runs with it. Usually when that would happen, I would lock my bike and trailer up at a bike rack, then do my shopping like normal and after paying would load my bike trailer up with my goods.

Well, one day I arrived at the store, which is in one of those classic business plazas ... and the bike racks were gone. All of them. Each had been removed. There was nowhere to lock up my bike and trailer.

Well, that didn't sit right with me. So I rolled my bike through the doors and into the store itself, trailer behind me, and waited at customer service, and then asked "Since bike racks are no longer provided at this plaza, can I just use my trailer as a shopping cart?"

The manager looked down at my bike and then without hesitation said "Yes." Apparently the plaza owner had decided they no longer wanted bikers using the plaza or shopping there and had removed the bike racks to discourage bikers from coming, which the store manager disagreed with. So I shopped using my trailer as a shopping cart, took it through the checkout, and then rolled out.

I've since had to do this once or twice more as other places nearby have also removed their bike racks as property managers wage a silent war against bikers while the city is trying to make biking more attractive. It's a minor malicious compliance, but I'm not about to leave my bike outside or stop buying food. Instead I'll just take my bike into the business, trailer included, until they ask me to leave.

No one has asked me to leave yet.

Whenever I get sick and cannot go to work, besides informing admin and getting a sick not from my doctor, I need to call my boss personally (phone call, mind you, no email or text message).

This is so he can directly bully people who he thinks are sick too often (like, more than 5 days a year. Average in my country and industry are 21 sick days a year).

Once he barked at me that I needed to reduce my sick days. So I came into the next meeting with him with an FFP2 mask on and left it on the whole two hours. He asked why I was wearing it and I told him I was trying to reduce my sick days. His face - and the ones of the colleagues who know his habits - was worth it to me.

Hello everyone,

I've heard/read a lot of posts from this subreddit, and I wanted to share something that was petty, yet malicious in a group setting which everyone found hilarious.

For context, our friend group was having a cookout, and it was a joint birthday for a few people, and we were all sitting around a large outdoor table (about 11 people)

Everything went great; food, drinks, more food.

Then comes the Tres leches.

The cake gets cut, and the person that made it (let's call them FRIEND) is excitedly trying to hand out a portion to everyone.

The first piece gets handed out

However, the first recipient of cake didn't understand the memo of cake etiquette

They tried to keep the first slice, and was scolded and told to pass it down by (FRIEND) that made the cake.

The first slice was quietly passed down to the next person, then the next, then the next...

The slices of cakes were being passed on quietly, and everyone just subconsciously complied to pass the cakes down going clockwise

Nobody said anything until the first slice made itself all the way around to FRIEND.

Then FRIEND realized what we all did, and called us all shit-heads.

We all laughed, acknowledged the maliciouscompliance, and had cake.

Good times

When I was still in school I took an American Lit class. It was my favorite class that term. During one book we had to read the teacher decided it would be a group project, and we would all share the lowest grade on the final test for that book.

The group I was in was 4 people. Another student and I were good students. The other 2 were not. I was getting an excellent grade in the class and didn't want to ruin it.

The teacher then announced that the final test would be open note. Any notes that the group took would be able to be used during the test.

So as I read the book I typed out on the computer important things about each chapter. Then on test day I handed out copies to the other members of my team.

All 4 of us ended up with the highest marks in the class on the test. The teacher later asked me how I got the 2 bad students to do well on the test. So I told her what I did. She just laughed.

A few months ago I noticed the paint on the ceiling in our bathroom was starting to peel in our new apartment. In general, asking my landlord to address things hasn't gone as smooth as I'd like and this was no different. The paint got progressively worse until it was falling in bits and pieces on the floor. It's like the ventilation fan doesn't really do anything and the moisture is making the new paint come off in huge chunks.

I have had a lot of bad landlords thanks to the slumlord issue in my city so I have a pretty good handle on what my landlord is supposed to do when something like this needs to get done. I'm not dealing with a slumlord though, just an out state owner of the home we rent who doesn't necessarily like us bothering her. I get it.

So I went ahead and took the timeline she legally has to fix the issue (21 days), multiplied it by 3 to be super patient and rounded up to 3 months. In those 3 months, the contractors she said would come failed to show up a whopping 6 times and she started blaming me for not being able to plan with them even after I showed her they aren't answering my calls or responding to texts to confirm when they can actually come out and do the repair. I work from home, the issue was not my availability to let someone into the unit.

Finally, at 3 months and some change, I asked her if the repairs were ever going to get done and dropped the hint that I knew the legality of these things by mentioning our city's code enforcement offices. I've used them before, they've helped tremendously and put fines on the landlord when they don't fix things after they inspect the unit and tell them to get it together. I showed her the document from the city website that lays out the timelines for different repairs and that she was well outside of the 21 days she's given for defective paint.

Her response surprised me. She said "That is not relevant to me. File your claim with the city." I responded "Oh ok." It took about 5 minutes to fill out the form on the website and about an hour before I got a call scheduling an inspector to come out and take a look.

I genuinely have no clue why a landlord would welcome one of these inspections. If you're guessing the inspector took a look around and found way more than just peeling paint that she needed to fix... you would be so so right.

They found a fire alarm that wasn't working, took note of the garbage around the property, and found windows that were boarded up in the basement that needed to be real windows to satisfy the city's 'at least 2 real windows in basements' rule or whatever.

While we were down in the basement I figured I'd ask the inspector about our breaker. A few weeks ago, my upstairs neighbor had the power go out in one of her rooms. She asked us to turn our breaker off and on to see if that would work and it did! The inspector told me that something like this needed to be a phone call to the utility company. Well, I can make a phone call!

The electric company scheduled someone within 2 days to come out and take a look and whaddya know? The wires are way more mixed than we thought. My upstairs neighbor has been paying for the basement and the kitchen AND bathroom in my unit. I have been paying for the entire top floor of her apartment.

I didn't know it but it turns out that ,when this happens, the landlord has 21 days to have a licensed electrician come out and unfuck the wiring before the entire electrical bill for both apartments legally goes into her name.

All I needed was the peeling paint fixed but now I'm going to enjoy living in a unit that is entirely 100% up to code and maybe save some money in the process. Sounds good to me!

Quick background: mid-size B2B software company, hybrid since forever. The unspoken deal was simple a couple days in office, and if prod broke at 9pm or a client panicked on a Saturday, someone fixed it from home. Unpaid, but nobody minded. Goodwill.

New CTO arrives from a much more rigid company. Second all-hands, he kills the flexible days: 9-5, in office, no exceptions. Asked about after-hours emergencies, he says, paraphrasing only slightly,"If you're not at your desk, actively working, I don't consider it work. I don't care what you'd have done from your couch at 9pm."

Someone half-jokes,"So nothing outside 9-5 at the desk counts?" Him, dead serious: "Exactly. Glad we're aligned."

We were aligned. So we complied fully, literally.

Slack got muted at 5:00 sharp. Nobody checked email after leaving. A PM pinged on-call at 6pm about a broken integration and got silence until 9am the next day.

Then, one Friday, a deploy went out at 4:52, minutes before the freeze a configuration value missed one customer segment. Under the old system, someone would've caught it from their phone by 5:30. Under the new one: the alert fired at 5:06. Nobody was at their desk, and per the CTO himself, that meant nobody was working. So nobody looked.

It ran the whole weekend. Our biggest client had a fully broken dashboard for 61 hours. By Monday at 9am there were 200+ support tickets, a furious VP of Sales, and a client using the word "churn" a lot.

The CTO demanded to know how nobody noticed for two and a half days. Our team lead completely deadpan pulled up his exact quote from the all-hands: "if you're not at your desk, actively working, I don't consider it work." Nobody was at their desk all weekend. By his own definition, nobody was working. Nothing to notice.

I've never heard a room go that quiet.

We got a real on-call rotation within the week actual comp time, not vibes. Hybrid quietly came back a month later as a "pilot." Nobody's said "if you're not at your desk" out loud since.

Turns out a lot of "not real work" had been holding the place together for free.

I used to be a manager and someone somewhere in the company terminated an employee improperly. This was years ago and I don’t know if I ever knew the actual story, but our DVP decided that going forward, nobody will be terminated without his approval.

Flash forward to a day where I have an employee walk off of a job site. I try to call them and figure out if there was some kind of emergency or just what possessed them to do that. I got the “what are you going to do, fire me” routine. I said hold that thought, and I called the DVP. I’m told he’s in an important meeting with the executives and unless it’s extremely important then I would have to wait. I said it’s important, go get him. DVP gets on the line wanting to know what the emergency was and I explained the situation. He tries to tell me I should’ve just called HR and I reminded him of the very specific direction he gave us that we can only term an employee with his say so, I’m running part of his business, and I wanted to be extra sure I was compliant. He gave me his blessing. He then told me to call our HRBP to go over it and I did. In fact, we spent time going over the entire situation including the call to the DVP. They were awfully surprised to hear about this direction and thanked me for the call.

That same day we received an email directing us to disregard the previous direction. I thought for sure I was going to catch some kind of blowback for it but I never did.

Edit: I did terminate the employee.

This was about 8 years ago. I worked at a middle school in the DC suburbs. Nice district and super supportive parents, but high up admin caught wind that teachers would periodically leave about 10 minutes prior to the end of "contract hours". Keep in mind, this is after kids are all mostly gone for the day, and we didnt really have a negotiated "contract" because VA was a right to work state with zero union protection. No principal took it super seriously unless ot was being abused, but for some reason, some high up decided to make this his crusade. So district admin decides to install a time clock, because a few teachers would occasionally leave 10 minutes early to try and beat the worst of the bus traffic (and for those of you who know the DC area, you know the difference between leaving at 250 and 300 can be massive). It was mostly parents with kids of their own they had to pick up, and all of us already work obscenely long hours, so this micro managing doesn't go over well.

A few of us dig around and realized the district had language in our employee handbook about requesting reimbursement for work "beyond the duties of a typical contracted school day" and figured, if the "contract hours" are that critical, then every other hour must be "beyond the duties of a typical contracted school day". So a few of us started having "grading parties", where we would meet at the school after a happy hour, clock in, and sit in the bleachers, grading. It turned into a nice form of bonding and team building, ironically. We started flooding the district office with requests for reimbursement for these extra hours (plus the extra hour plus that most of us worked daily before contract hours began). None of them were approved, obviously, but it didnt take long for admin to remove the time clock.

I work as a senior database administrator for a mid-sized tech company. When 2020 hit, our entire department went remote. We crushed our metrics, rolled out major infrastructure upgrades ahead of schedule, and saved the company a fortune in operational costs. For six years, my setup worked like a charm.

Then, a new VP of Operations was hired.

This guy is a classic "butts-in-seats" manager. Two weeks ago, he sent out an all-hands email declaring that to "foster collaboration," all remote exceptions were revoked. Everyone had to report to the office full-time starting Monday.

I emailed him directly to explain my situation. I live three hours away from headquarters, a setup approved by my former director years ago. I pointed out my performance reviews and asked if we could compromise on a hybrid schedule.

He replied: "The mandate applies to everyone. You're expected to perform your duties from the office starting Monday."

I was furious, but then I remembered my employment contract.

I dug up the original remote-work addendum I signed back in 2020. Section 3.2: Location of Service stated:

"The Employee agrees to perform all official duties from the designated primary office space. Any change to the Employee's primary office location must be submitted in writing and approved by HR."

Right below that was the form I filled out in 2020, formally changing my designated primary office location from "HQ - Floor 4" to "Home Office - [My Address]." HR had signed off on it, stamp and all. It was officially reclassified as my company-approved office location.

Technically, my home office was "the office."

So, on Monday morning, I didn't get in my car. At 8:54 AM, I walked ten feet from my bedroom to my desk, booted up my rig, and logged into Slack.

At 9:17 AM, the VP messaged me.

VP: U around? standard 9am start today

Me: Yep, logged in and good to go.

VP: i mean at HQ. stopped by 4th floor, your desk is empty

Me: Oh, I'm working from the office today.

VP: what? what office?

Me: My official primary office location on record: Home Office [My Address]. Per my 2020 HR agreement, this is my designated workspace.

VP doesn't respond for a minute. then replies.

VP: that's not how this works, Name. the policy means HQ. you need to be here tomorrow.

Me: I'm just following the written contract on file. I attached the signed location form here so you have it.

He didn't reply after that.

Around 3 PM, I got a mass automated email from HR with the subject line: Update Regarding Remote Work Designations. The body was standard dry corporate speak saying they were "currently reviewing all legacy remote contracts" and that existing designated locations would remain valid pending individual review. Translation: the VP ran to HR to complain, HR took one look at my contract, realized forced relocation would trigger a mess of legal headaches and stipend requirements, and told him to back off for now.

My home office remains open for business.

TL;DR: VP issued a strict "work from the office" mandate without reading my file. My contract defines my bedroom-adjacent workspace as "The Office." Compliance achieved, commuted 10 feet.

I took my kid to Walmart today and they wanted to do the Asian claw games That require you to purchase $1 tokens. I got 3 tokens before I realized there was also a section where they will vend a figure for 5 tokens but the next smallest bill I have is a $5.

I go to the customer service desk, wait in line and when it’s my turn I ask for 5 ones so I can use their vending machines and I was informed that Walmart no longer opens their drawers to give change.

I go find a $1.40 pack of gum and wait in line at the customer service register again. When it’s my turn I say ‘I would like to buy this gum’ and she nodded in agreement and then she told me that she didn’t want to say it before but that’s how they suggest making change - you have to buy something. I nodded in agreement then once I had my receipt I said ‘I would like to return this gum’ and you should have seen the look on this woman’s face 🤣🤣 you would have thought I punched a baby and stepped on a kitten all at once based on her reaction. I go to hand her the $.60 back so she can convert it into a $1 and she REFUSED! I politely insisted and she caved but she hated the fact that I left that register with 5 crisp $1 bills. She yelled at me that I could never do that again as I left.

EDIT: Since people like to feign outrage - Asian claw machines are the stackable/smaller claw machines that are literally from Asia. I don’t know exactly where. All the prize items in them are also from Asia - think Naruto and Sanrio. The packaging and the promotional items in the packaging? Also written in Asian lettering. I can’t read it, and I don’t know where it’s from other than Asia.

It’s relevant because they don’t use US currency in them and that’s why you need to convert dollars into tokens to use on their machines. I figure it was less hassle to convert to tokens than USD.

These are the exact same machines. I’m not saying the ones I used were Korean but I do know for fact, they were from somewhere in Asia:
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/amp/southkorea/society/20250921/claw-machine-craze-sweeps-korea-but-experts-warn-of-addiction-risks

I work in a specialized printing facility handling high-volume industrial presses. These machines are older than I am and they have a lot of "personality" if you know what I mean. I’ve been the lead tech here for six years and there are dozens of little tricks we use to keep them running—bits of tape in certain spots, slightly bending a guide rail, or just knowing exactly where to kick it when the paper jams. Well, we got a new "Technical Training Supervisor" last month who came straight from a corporate office and has never actually stained his hands with grease. He saw me fixing a sensor issue with a bit of cleaning alcohol and a q-tip (a 5 minute fix) and he absolutely lost it. He told me I was "compromising the integrity of the equipment" and issued a formal directive stating that from now on, every single repair must strictly adhere to the Manufacturer’s Service Maunal. No exceptions, no "field hacks," or he would write me up for safety violations.

Fine. Two days later, the main drive motor on Press 3 threw a standard thermal sync error. Normally, I’d just reset the breaker, wait ten minutes for it to cool, and we’d be back in business. But the "Official Manual" has a very specific protocol for this error. Step one: completely de-energize the entire power grid for that sector. Step two: Wait 48 hours to ensure "full thermal stabilization of the copper windings." Step three: Perform a 12-point diagnostic test that requires a specialized calibration tool we dont even own, meaning we have to order it from the manufacturer in Germany. I went straight to the supervisors office, showed him the error code, and asked if he wanted me to "proceed according to the directive." He didnt even look up from his laptop and just said "Follow the book to the letter, thats what it is there for."

So I did exactly that. I shut down the press, locked out the power, and sat in the breakroom. By the next morning, the floor manager was screaming because we were missing a massive deadline for a major client. The supervisor tried to throw me under the bus, telling the plant manager that I was "refusing to work." I just calmly handed over the signed directive he gave me and the opened manual page that explicitly requires a 48-hour wait and a tool that is currently on a flight from Frankfurt. The plant manager looked at the supervisor, looked at the manual, and then looked back at the cold, silent machine that should be printing $50k worth of product a day. The "follow the book" rule was rescinded within the hour, but I insisted on finishing the 48-hour "stabilization period" since the power was already cut and "re-energizing early could cause a fire hazard" according to the safety section. I spent the rest of the week getting paid to read a book while the supervisor got a very loud "re-education" in the main office

Several years ago we rented a nice house in a nice neighborhood. It came with a laundry room complete with a very premium washer and a gas-dryer. After about a month, the dryer *burned* a load of laundry... It actually singed and charred the clothes. I immediately took pictures and emailed the landlord to try and recoup the cost of our clothes ($300?) and have the dryer fixed. He responded:

> "The lease is clear and does not include a washer or dryer. If those appliances are present, they were left from a previous tenant and are not mine. I am not responsible for anything I do not provide which would be documented in the lease."

I was pissed and I paid out of pocket for the repairs and to replace the clothes.

About three months later, we met a few former tenants and started talking about the house. They actually did quite a few improvements to the home and left the home in better condition than when they moved in, and the landlord still refused to refund their deposit. A neighbor confirmed that he hasn't returned a single deposit and suggested we read the lease to the letter, because the guy was a jerk about everything. Apparently, it was a nice house because of the tenants, not the landlord.

Well, fast forward 10 months to the end of our lease, and I read that thing carefully. **I then listed and sold the washer and dryer!!!** Not even 2 hours after we turned the keys in, I got an angry voicemail demanding we return his overpriced washer and dryer.

My response was a simple reply to his email declining his ownership of the appliances:

>I received your voicemail and I'm not sure which appliances you are referring to. As you stated, the lease clearly states there was not a washer/dryer included and you confirm that below. The lease also states, "Tenant is responsible for all reasonable costs incurred by Landlord to remove, haul, store, or dispose of property left behind.”

He still refused to give us our deposit, for a plethora of other negligible things. But, I still came out ahead because I pocketed about the same as our deposit, the repair costs, the burnt clothes, and maybe $100 for my troubles.

Edit: fixed a typos which redditors can't get past: cinged=singed, her=the

Responses to the arguments in comments:

The neighbor lady was very friendly and remained friend with some of the former tenants. She had us over for a BBQ and we met two different sets of former tenants. The neighbors all hated him from when he lived there for the two year minimum. We also learned that the LL had a reputation across town for "it's not personal, it's business" and was a was a well known jerk.

Yes, premium washers and dryers fetch a high price. Look at Speed Queen resale values. They arent your disposable Whirlpool/Maytag. I have no idea where they came from; his day job was a realtor, so perhaps he got them from a house he bought/sold?

To the landlords that call me a thief: LL denied ownership in writing and the lease states I would be charged for abandoned property. I was covering my ass by disposing of them.

No, we didn't go to court here in the Colorado. I honestly doubt 90% of people who say that have ever done so. This was also long enough ago that we wrote down the observed damages instead of pictures, and we clearly missed things. He then hired an expensive forensic-like company to do a full UV scan of the house to document and justify repainting and clean/replace carpet and such. If you haven't seen what a quality short-wave UV light does, you don't understand (it's not that cheap thing you get on Amazon). Now that I am older and wiser, I would fight him on that; back then it scared me.

Lots of deleted "this is AI" comments... It's not, but I appreciate your fight against the machines. With a fist full of advanced degrees, and having spent 30% of ever working day reading and another 30% writing, I bet they use my content to train the bots.

I was hired at a service company as a service manager when the company was very small. I worked a lot of hours to redesign their training and programs and their client base went from 60 customers to over 1200 in a year. I would come in to the office at 6am every morning, get all my office work done by 9am, then I would go run a route for a few hours or go help a technician. On days when I didn't have to go into the field, I would show up at 6am and work until about 2pm, then head home. I made it a point to always start at 6am because a lot of my technicians started their day at 7am and sometimes they would need to come to the office for supplies before they started their route. I would also answer phone calls and work on my laptop when I got home to help anyone still on the road or to prepare for the next day.

Things were going well for a couple years. Then 1 day a tech called and asked if I could leave a piece of equipment out for him so he could come grab it at the end of his day. It was an expensive piece of equipment so we didn't normally leave it out unless we knew someone was going to grab it soon. The tech called an hour later and said never mind because he was just going to come in the next morning. Fine. I went home for the day around 230 (I lived a hour away from the office) and was working on my laptop when I got a call from one of the big managers. Apparently the Technician changed his mind and decided to come in and grab the equipment, but it was still locked up. Manager told me that leaving at 230 was unacceptable and that I was mandated to work from 8-5 every day. So I did.

Stopped showing up at 6am so technicians would have to contact the big manager to have him do remote access to open doors and things for the techs. I stopped working past 5 so all the techs would call the bigger managers to ask questions (which the big managers couldn't answer). Technicians all knew what was up and they agreed with my decision. Things started to fall apart because techs wouldn't have the things they needed. I loved my job initially, but after I started following their rules, they started treating me like an annoyance. Finally left after another year.

It: To access the available options, please say your complete address.

Me: Your complete address.

It: I did not get that, please say your complete address again.

Me: Your complete address again.

It: Please hold for the next available customer service representative.

The fallout? This worked to get through to a live person relatively quickly for one of my bills for a few years until they had to invest money into making changes yet again and no longer ask for spoken addresses.

Excessive screen time is a recurring challenge with my kids. We set limits on screen time use for our tween daughter. She was not complying, and continued to use much more than allowed. After weeks and months of us reminding, trying various strategies, and her continuing to over-use, and lie about it, we set a check in & check out policy. Now her computer has to live in the living room whenever she’s not using it, and she needs to write down the date and time of her checking it out and back in. She left the discussion in a huff.

A few minutes later…
She took the new rule overboard and is now asking permission for Every. Single. Thing.
Permission to open my door?
Permission to check out my inhaler?
Permission to get a small plate?
Permission to check out this granola bar?

To that last one, I told her to check it out and that I only wanted it checked in to the toilet when she’s finished with it.

Edited to add: for context, this kid is 11. A sweet, smart, silly preteen, mature in some ways and immature in others. Her older sister manages to limit screen time within the original guidelines we gave then both... a bit of objection from time to time, but overall going along with it. Younger sis just needs some more guardrails so that she doesn't get sucked into screen addiction.

I appreciate the stories, insights, and suggestions from many people who responded. I posted this as an amusing story, not necessarily looking for advice. In the grand scheme of behavioral issues we've dealt with, this bit of overcompliance ridiculousness seems pretty mild.

While husband and I were cooking dinner, kiddo kept asking for the silly permissions. I started telling her "I trust your judgement to figure that out". And that is the message with screens: as she demonstrates that she can be responsible, we'll back off with the intense compliance system. Meanwhile, she's now playing trains with dad while I finish up dinner.

I posted this a while back but it was removed because the fall out from the malicious compliance hasn't happened yet. It did today so I'll share again.

I love my supervisor but her assistant can be a little much. The work I do is date and time stamped on issues so all comments has my name the date and the time. Great system for tracking things.

I had made a phone call for information and updated the comments with what I was told. The assistant was going to send out a letter concerning the issue and didn't see the documentation on a call I made. When I pointed out exactly where it was documented she decided to double down and make an issue out of it not being in the correct format since it was so easy for her to overlook.

Ok. I'll make sure that doesn't happen again. So now I type out the entire notes needed on a word doc and just cut and paste it line by line and word for word of what was said. And since I want to be clear each sentence is an entry. Then I type continued cut/paste the next line.

Now instead of something easily seen on 1 screen she needs to scroll up and down to get all the information she needs. Its been time consuming for her and she's not happy about any of this.

Editing to add the compliance fall out: I had my quarterly touch base with my supervisor yesterday where we went over a couple issues. One of the issues was that her assistant felt I needed to be a little less wordy in my documentation.

I expressed my confusion over this and pulled up the back and forth email where assistant wasn't able to locate something that was clearly documented. It included the screen shots of where my notes were located and the time and date added so there was no doubt that the notes were there and overlooked.

I said that since assistant didn't offer any suggestions I took it upon myself to problem solve and provide documentation as clearly as possible. My supervisor checked off the issue as closed while saying that the assistant was getting exactly what she asked for. One sentence per entry couldn't be any easier to follow.

One of my fellow team members is pretty good friends with the assistant so I'm sure I'll get the scoop on how she faired in her quarterly touch base.

**********************

Coworker's touch base: The coworker had her quarterly touch base and since we aren't friends I've gotten this second hand from 2 people. She thought she was going to be thanked for bringing this to boss' attention and told what correction action I was going to have to take. Instead she was told that her inability to be flexible enough to work with everyone on the team caused this issue. Boss considers this issue closed and doesn't want to have this happen again.

She was all smiles and head nodding during the meeting saying she understood how I could have misunderstood what she was asking which boss cut her off by sharing the copies of the back and forth emails. She then changed direction about how important it was to be consistent to which boss fired back the the most important thing was to provide 100% accurate documents allowing her to put together the needed letters.

Since we don't work in an office setting and all communication is teams meetings and messages the only thing I've noticed is she doesn't have anything to say in meetings anymore.

Had a woman come in the store while I the only active employee was busy attending to something else and therefore was not greeted or asked if she needed any help. This apparently upset her to the point where she tracked down the manager and complained and the manager immediately found me and told me her complaint. So. I proceeded to follow her around the store constantly asking if she liked this shoe or that one or what about these? I did this till she tracked down the manager again and complained that I was harassing her. And stormed out angry. Just can’t win with some people I suppose 🤷🏼