A post in AITA reminded me of this story. Thought you all might like it.

Back in the 90s I worked at the family engine shop downtown. It was an L shaped building, with a "back lot" that was separated from the street by a brick wall topped with a wrought iron fence, the only access to it was through the shop. On the other side of the building we had a 20 spot lot that was completely open. The shop was about 3 small blocks from the local hospital.

The hospital decided to remodel and expand, but since they were landlocked at the time, the only place they had to build was their parking garage and lots. So they immediately changed their policy to only emergency room parking on site, they bought or rented several lots around the city and ran a bus (maybe busses) to get everyone to and from the hospital. From what I gathered, the staff lot was the furthest away and the bus stopped at every lot on its route adding quite some time to the staffs commute. They got very strict that there was no staff parking for any reason in any lot other than the staff lot, this included visiting doctors or specialists, whatever. It wasn't long before our parking lot started filling as we were the closest business with an open lot. At first we simply had any car with a hospital sticker towed. About two weeks after that we would start getting keys in the drop box with notes like "makes funny noise when turning right, have ready by 2pm". We would take the car around the block for a "test drive" and write some notes if we noticed anything. Of course they never wanted to fix whatever that issue was if we actually found something.

My uncle quickly got tired of these shenanigans and had a glorious solution, use the back lot to store these new "customer" vehicles. He would have me move the cars into the back, behind the customer and shop vehicles right next to the fence so the "customer" could clearly see their vehicle(s). he then charged for a days storage and for every car we had to move to get the hospital staffs car in and out. I don't know exactly what he charged, but probably around $100 total for the day. Not only that, but it would take me 40 minutes to an hour to "move everything around" just to get to one of these vehicles out. Of course the hospital staff would yell and complain over the price and how long it took me to get their vehicles. My uncle would just smile and if they didn't want to pay tell me to move slower "take extra care of this important customers car" he'd say while he set up the paperwork to place a mechanics lein on the vehicle. It didn't take long for the issue to reduce from a full lot to maybe one when we got to the shop in the morning.

I'd like to preface this by saying that we work remotely from our manager (he's in Europe and we're in Asia), so whatever he hears from us he considers to be true. Furthermore, my manager has been the most reasonable and understanding boss I've had in my career, almost everyone who's been under his supervision had only good things to say even after they left the company. And lastly, I do know that part of this was also my fault.

Which leads me to the meeting earlier — I admitted that all of this could've been avoided if I raised the flag the second I didn't agree with what John said. My manager being a reasonable guy, didn't really get mad but gave a stern reminder that I should always be transparent every time there's a problem. During the conversation, my manager was really focused on asking the "why" question. Why John didn't leave proper documentation on the reports, why the reports were connected to local files on his laptop, why was there little time spent on the knowledge transfer. As much as I don't want to jeopardize John's career, bossman really wanted to get to the bottom of this, having me eventually just tell the full truth with full confidentiality, at least that's what he said.

John isn't really interested in learning the product of the client, making it very hard for him to understand the process and sharing that knowledge to anyone. He also has a habit of frequently going out to go to a coffee shop and just kill time, you'd seldom see him glued to his seat, even if most of us just stay at the office during downtime in case something urgent happens that need our immediate attention. He doesn't enjoy learning new tools, hence why his reports would seem archaic and has visibily no improvement in efficiency (both in file size and run time).

And these are the things I shared to my manager. I could've told other things as well just to build my case — like how he sleeps at work because he has two other part-time jobs keeping him up at night, how he'd regularly leave office earlier during weekends to catch a flight to go to his girlfriend, and how some reports he had were inaccurate but other teammates fixed it before the client and our manager could notice it. He's a redflag for employers, which is why what happened is the one and only time I'll be covering for him.

After hearing all of these, my manager just reminded me to just be transparent and to not ley something like this happen again. He'll be onboarding me moving forward, and have instructed the rest of the team to have documentation on all reports by next Q1 2025. He then told a story avout a previous workmate of ours that he fired because of the same things that John was doing. He'll be conducting investigations on John's in-and-out of the office and will push on him to optimize reports so he can have a more permanent solution for him.

Original post:

I work with a pretty chill team. Almost always when somebody goes on leave, someone's there to cover for the reports with little to no problems.

However, the past months, our headcount declined which means some people had to work a bit more (but smaller) clients. This colleague, let's call him John, was handling two clients, C1 and C2.

A bit more background, I've been with this team for more than 2 years now, handling client X. Last September I resigned, but eventually came back last November. Somebody already filled up my spot with X so I got reprofiled to C1 and as backup to C2 (John's client).

John was happy because I basically know majority of the general processes within the company, which means less stress for him when he onboards me.

During my first week, John told me he was going on a week-long vacation on the following week. I asked him if our manager already knows and he sakd that everything was ok. Being backup for C2, I immediately raised the concern that I might have a hard time covering for him because even though most processes are similar to my previous client X, there's some nuances which makes me not have the confidence to do the work correctly.

Monday, the week before his vacation, I asked him if he can onboard me, he just told me try and study stuff on my own while he tries and solves some problems with the reports. I obliged. Tuesday, he introduced me to one report. Took him 10mins to run me through it, and then went out to do whatever his foing. Wednesday, my manager asks if I can hop in a call with him and John. I found out that John just asked permission to go on vacation on this day. My manager wad quite alarmed and asked if I was already onboarded with all reports for C1 and C2. Before I could speak, John said that 100% is ready and I can fully take care of myself during his vacation. After the call, I confronted John and told him that he had 9 reports per day, and I was only onboarded with 1. Not even onboarded, he showed me, in 10mins, how he does it and what the excel sheets mean. He assured me that I'll be ok and that he'll call me during his vacation. Thursday and Friday, I kept bugging him if he could write full documentation of all the reports just so I have a guide in the reports maintenance and I could debug queries if there are problems. Friday before his shift ended he gave me a list of the reports with data sources, and around 3 sentences of where to copy-paste which.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt that I could do it. But mind you, I already have three C1-client reports that I am still trying to figure out and had errors and bugs that I had to solve without any documentation. On top of this, I had 8 different reports I needed to prepare, which takes almost half my day just running the queries, rendering my laptop useless.

During his vacation, I was able to power through Monday to Wednesday, wherein everyday it had errors with the queries. Some reports even had queries connected to data sources that's only available on his work laptop.

Then came Thursday. I found out there was a weekly business review. Another report which weren't part of the first 8 that he listed. He told me it was going to be easy and that he'll call to walk me through the report. First half of the day I did the usual reports I needed to do. Around 4pm, the client asked me to deliver the report at 6pm.

I had 2 hours to do the report. I called John, and he wasn't answering. For thirty minutes I kept calling him until he finally picked up the phone at around 4:30. Luckily, we were able to finish it by 5:30, but Jesus the amount of stress because some queries weren't working, some files were only on his laptop which I needed and I had to get permission from my manager who leaves halfway across the Globe to access data on his laptop. My manager was pissed already at this point, and I was too, because none of these were supposed to happen if only he did the onboarding correctly. But I got work to do so I really didn't bother for now, I just needed to get through it. After shift I confronted him basically telling him my gripes on the work he left for me without any proper onboarding or what. I really lost my temper here, I was basically doing OTs just because all the reports he had were poorly made. I basically told him this is the last time I'll be covering for his ass.

Came Monday the week after, he went back from vacation, barely even talked to me.

Then I found out that I had three other reports with C1. None of these were mentioned to me during my first weeks, and I had no clue what these are. I sent him a message asking if we could start the onboarding again. But John, again, just chatted me a list of the reports and where the data sources were.

Everytime I tried to reach out, he'll just send a very bad set of instructions, and expects me to figure it out on my own.

So that's what I did. I decided to fuck it and just do the exact things he wrote down. If anyone was wondering how bad the instructions, it reads like this:

"Copy values from Column A to C and paste on file B on column D-E, and G." "Click this button"

If you work with data, sometimes data isn't perfect, and that's what happened. The queries were returning error values. Some numbers don't make sense. But fuck it, he said these exact words to my manager:

John: "I gave clear and detailed instructions to OP, he should be able to do it."

Until today. His instructions were "message this person and ask for this data"

So I did. And the person was hella confused. He then messages my manager, and my manager asks John and I. He checks the reports and sees a lot of mistakes. Manager asks me what the fuck was going on with the report.

I told him I was just following the instructions John gave me. And that I have no clue about the other things he's asking because John didn't tell me anything about those.

John sees the chat, storms out of the office and blocks me on all social media.

My manager wants to talk to me tomorrow to let me explain what was going on.

TL;DR - passive aggressive bully at work questioned how everyone does their job, so I did mine and blocked her access.

I work an office job in charge of finance for a European company. There's this mean single woman reaching her 50s at work that always feels the need and privilege to judge everyone else. Her judging ranges from anything to how people do their jobs, their personal life choices, and even their personality and what they wear. The economy has been tough recently and pressure is high within the team, and this has manifested into lots of friction and complaints in all directions, mostly coming from her.

One of the many complaints directed at me was that I wasn't protecting our sensitive data enough, saving our monthly reports in a sharedrive for others to access. It has been this way for decades before I joined and no one was any issues with it, with the said sensitive data often printed out and stuck on walls anyway.

Normally I just ignore the complaints and carry on my work, as both me and my boss are good at ignoring noisy complaints with no reasoning behind. But this time I decided to maliciously comply, and now have set unique passwords for each and every file with remotely sensitive data. Now not only does she need to keep track of all the passwords I've set, she also now has no access to some data that me and my boss decided was no longer appropriate for her to see, including what budget we have for some of her operating expenses, and now require proof of said costs otherwise that budget is gone.

I worked in an accounting department at a small business. My boss, Gary, was great and gave us lots of autonomy to get everything done. It was a small business, and over the years, as is common in small businesses, I picked up a number of duties that weren’t strictly in my job description but were pretty important. We also had a number of processes that were not well documented, but we were understaffed and not able to make any real changes. Things overall were pretty good, though, and our work flowed well and everyone was happy.

Not everyone, though: Gary’s boss, Carl, recently had taken over as president of the company and wanted to slash costs. Gary was one of the highest paid employees, and Carl tried to get him to take a pay cut or a cut in hours. When Gary refused, Carl fired him and shortly replaced him with Matt, who was much less experienced and much less qualified.

Around this time, I used my leverage with Carl to get a solid raise. I knew Carl would be looking to replace me soon like he did Gary, but I was too essential to lose without Gary there either. I figured I had about 6 months, which lined up with about when I was planning to move out of state anyway. So, knowing that when I did leave, my coworkers would be stuck picking up the slack of my job, particularly all the ancillary stuff I had picked up that was not documented at all, I started writing a detailed manual for my own job when I had time here and there. I didn’t really care for Matt or Carl, but I figured it would save my coworkers a lot of stress.

Matt was a poor accountant and a worse manager. He was an awful micromanager with no concept of the “bigger picture.” Pretty quickly, he noticed that I was spending time doing all these other duties not in my JD. He told me I was only to work on projects he assigned me directly. I tried to point out all the things that would not get done if I didn’t do that. He was having none of it and told me not to worry about it, as it wasn’t my job.

Sure thing, boss! I stopped doing anything except what he told me to do. And the department started falling apart: customer emails went unanswered, software stopped working with no one to support it, files weren’t organized, etc. I normally took care of these and a hundred other things, but Matt was pretty clear I’m not to do any of it. I also stopped working on my manual.

After a few months of this, but sooner than I expected, I was laid off by Carl and Matt for “budgetary” reasons. (Of course, they listed my job on indeed that same day, for a laughably low salary.) I was given no warning, just sat down for a meeting with the two and walked out the door. Matt didn’t allow me to take anything from my desk, access my computer, or say my goodbyes to my coworkers. He was also very clear I was not to retain any company documents or information. Sure thing, boss!

So I left, and I heard from coworkers still there that over the next few weeks, things took an even worse nosedive. They weren’t able to fill my job, and nobody could cover most of my actual job duties or any of my ancillary duties. By this point, vendors weren’t being paid, and payroll wasn’t going out on time.

And then I got the call: Matt found the file I had left in a conspicuous spot on the network drive: ____ JOB MANUAL AND PROCESSES.zip. It was encrypted. What’s in it? Oh, just a draft of all my job duties and everything I was responsible for that I worked on during downtime. Why was it even encrypted? Well, it had a bunch of confidential data and passwords in it, boss! What’s the password? Sorry boss, I don’t know. I didn’t retain it after leaving. But it’s in my files!

In reality, since it wasn’t finished, the manual wasn’t going to be some panacea for all the company’s problems, but I had padded it with a lot of images, so I imagine the file size was pretty attractive. And the password was indeed in my files. If Matt cared to look, he’d find an unlabeled sticky note with a nondescript string of letters and numbers in a random folder in one of my 2 dozen filing cabinets.

As an epilogue: about three months after I talked to Matt, Carl fired him after discovering what a disaster the department had become. My coworkers both left around the same time for better opportunities. Carl’s still been unable to fill any of these jobs (after almost 18 months), so the entire accounting department is staffed by contractors and consultants, who I am sure are costing the company a fortune. I hear the board is looking for a change in company presidents.

So this happened several years ago while I was working at Taco Bell and involves a pretty gross customer request.

For those of you who don't know, Taco Bell asks for your name when taking an order so they can yell it out when your food is ready. One particular customer, a dude in his forties wearing camo, decided to abuse the rule. When asked, he told the cashier his name was Daddy. This isn't good in any situation, but the cashier at the time was a very young girl. I don't even think she was 18 and definitely not his actual daughter.

Naturally she goes to find the shift lead, Kevin (not his real name). Now Kevin is a lot of things and one of those things is gay. I'm trying to find the right words to say this without offending anybody, so I'll just say he really wasn't macho. We live in the midwest and I can guarantee he's been called more than one slur even before actually showing romantic affection towards another guy.

I wasn't there for that part, but I've been told his reaction to what the creep was trying to pull was like handing a needle to a kid in a balloon store. When the food's ready Kevin goes up to the counter and just belts out "Daadddy!" in exactly the tone you're imagining. Some people go silent, others start whispering, and the entire back is just trying not to laugh.

Daddy doesn't say a word, just marches up, gets his food, and leaves.

*Edit* If anyone wants to post this elsewhere that's fine, you don't gotta ask, I'm not trying to farm Karma or anything.

I got my first job when I was 16, dodgy family run business, paid less than minimum wage but whatever. Anyway, there was one manager there who was the definition of “middle aged women hate the younger female coworkers”.

Let’s call her “Smudge” (her mascara application was dreadful). Smudge was one of those people who gave you the most harsh, vicious critiques but with a huge smile on her face. She wrote the book on passive aggressiveness and for some reason she was CONSTANTLY on my case. Even though I’d go above and beyond in my role for this shitty company. (for reference, i worked in an area where i just collected and cleaned dishes which had to be transported upstairs, restocked stuff etc).

Anyway, this one shift there was a huge rush and I had to run around collecting dirty dishes. The trays were so flimsy it felt like i was piling stuff on cling film. So i couldn’t stack as much as Smudge wanted me to (even though i was still way over stacking dishes). “My Name you need to be way more efficient and stack the cups and plates way more than this, this is just lazy” and pointed to my tray that was about to give way in my tiny 16 year old girl arms.

No problem! I got a new clean tray and went to the downstairs section which was still heaving with dishes even though I’d made several trips already. But orders are orders!

I piled 2 stacks of 10 ceramic plates, 4 thick round mugs, 4 tall slender mugs, and 7 tiny espresso mugs. The tray honestly felt like it was gonna break but efficiency is key so i used all my strength to lift it up and began walking up the stairs (littered in rubbish because nobody did their jobs).

What do you know? I trip on a wet wipe and couldn’t hold the weight of the tray so alll of those dishes fell and 10 plates smashed, 7 mugs got chipped but I had to keep pushing up the stairs because EFFICIENCY.

Told Smudge what happened and she panics and asks “Why did you stack that many???” “I was doing what you said”. Next day there was a meeting about not pushing past your limits.

I work as an analyst at a start-up and part of my job involves keeping track of projects across multiple teams. Recently, I emailed a project manager asking for specific updates on her projects, based on data I had pulled from our project management tool. To make her life easier, I extracted the relevant information into a spreadsheet—dates, project types, statuses, you name it. All she had to do was add a new column with the missing details I requested.

I’ve done this exact process with other managers before, and it’s always been smooth. They review the spreadsheet, update the missing details, and send it back. Simple, right?

Not this time.

The PM's response was... unique. She emailed back saying:
"As mentioned in a meeting" (which I didn’t even attend) "my information is up-to-date. For reference, I have attached what you asked for."

Okay, I thought, maybe she filled in the table but in unconventional fashion used a word document, or at least added notes? Curious, I opened it... and there it was: a single screenshot of the project management tool, showing the exact list of projects I had already pulled for her. That’s it. No updates. No new information. Just a grainy screenshot.

Technically, she did share the project details… by copying and pasting them in the least helpful way possible. The kicker? It probably took her longer to take that screenshot, paste it into a Word doc, and write the email than it would’ve taken to fill out the spreadsheet!

The cherry on top? Her email made it sound like this was somehow a generous gesture. "Here’s what you asked for!" 🙃

So, now I’m left staring at this ridiculous Word doc wondering if I should email back.

See here for previous which also links to the earlier part too

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/uklandlords/s/xwP42eH6Ar

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/uklandlords/s/Borp4lD8J9

After telling them I've reported them to the police, they vacated not long after.

He sent me this via email

"I have already contacted the police to report your behaviour and will press charges if you make ANY attempt at contacting me. Please return the deposit immediately. This can be sent today WITHOUT explanation. You DO NOT need to contact me to do this. You can make a transfer and no contact has to be made. "

He thinks I'm unstable and harassing him by telling him stuff I legally have to ie: such and such a person is coming to view your room at such and such a time, or "There's no water and the water company is looking into it", "Water is now working", "Door locks are an issue", "Door locks are now fixed" etc... Yknow usual house stuff as well as of course telling him that it would be better if he leaves earlier after physically threatening a younger woman

I charged £100 deposit on £400 (bills inclusive) rent. He deliberately caused this damage when he threatened a younger woman

https://i.ibb.co/JRx26SB/IMG-20241202-125626.jpg

Now given he said that I have to send his deposit back (which would cost more than £100 to rectify) , and that I can't contact him to ask him what his bank account details are, it means that per his instructions even if I wanted to give him his money back, I can't

They could theoretically do a charge back but then I have ample evidence to show my bank that not only did he live here but also the damage he caused was worth more than £100, so that's a charge back that I will just win anyway

But hey, I'm complying with his requests to not contact him even if that's for his bank details. So it's tough for him

Many moons ago, I worked for a building management company in downtown Minneapolis. Part of the position included handling all the parking spot rentals prior to when these would have been on a simple computer screen. They were folders...thousands of them...updated manually with who paid what, whose check didn't clear, blah blah blah. I worked for an eastern New Jersey dude named Frank who was a narcissistic jerk on his nice days and an absolutely heinous individual on his bad days.

He's thirsty for coffee one day shortly after I returned from lunch, so he picks up his cup and taps it on his desk (annoying, I know), "Torrie, Coffee!" I am on my way to the back room with about 2 feet of files, so I call out, "I'll be right with you, Frank!" I take two steps, and he retaps, "Torrie, COFFEE!!" I walk back the seven steps to his office to show him my heavy load, thinking he might not have heard me. "I'll be right with you, Frank!" I turn and take one step out of his office: "TORRIE!!" Three loud bangs on the desk, "COFFEE!!! NOWWW!!!!!"

I turn back into his office, pull my arms out from under the files, and drop about 300 folders of data. Contents fly everywhere. I step over the pile, grab his cup, "Coming right up!" I said as sweetly as possible. After filling his cup and dumping about a half cup of sugar in it, I brought the syrupy goop back to him and slam it on his desk, sickly sweet black coffee spilling on his appointment calendar, his white shirt and blue tie, and across his leather chair.

While he was sputtering, I walked back to my desk, made a quick phone call to my lunch appointment and accepted the job they had offered me that I was deliberating. I was working for the new company 22 minutes later.

I ran into one of my former coworkers a few months later, and she told me he had already been through four others in the position. Apparently, nobody wants to get coffee for jerks anymore.

So, for context, I'm currently a head cashier at Home Depot. I work in a higher volume store that remodeled the "front end" (where our registers are) a couple months ago where our central checkout is now entirely self checkout registers (referred to as sco). While it's sco, it's known as "assisted" sco, and they want us to be assisting as much as possible (6 items or more, high price items, and anything that could hide anything inside of it are a must), as well as pushing credit card applications.

Now here's where there's been a huge issue. Starting with the cashiers not pushing credit enough, so we fell behind on our goal. So last week to make up for it, around halfway through the week, my supervisor told us she wanted everyone physically on a register. Head cashiers included. They don't even want us checking the schedule to send breaks, or the cashiers home even though no one is allowed to get overtime. Unless there's money to handle, we aren't allowed off of a register.

I bet some of you can understand how frustrating that is. It's literally a sco. I'm having more people starting to get upset that we're constantly helping them than when we changed it to a sco, and had a ton of people angry there aren't any normal registers in the main area of the store (2-3 normal registers open total on the opposite ends of the store, and that's it). And me and the other head cashiers weren't complying the entire time about staying on a register 100% of the time because we were going to prioritize at least knowing when to send breaks, and our cashiers home. Even if it meant us getting into trouble.

Well, today was black Friday, and my supervisor, a long with the store manager, and a few other managers were lurking around almost constant. A couple actually helped, which was appreciated, but I digress.

The other day, I mentioned to my supervisor when she insisted head cashiers had to stay on a register, how we were supposed to send breaks, or how we would direct the line because most people won't walk to an open register even when sco is empty. She told me to figure it out, and if I have to keep my head on a swivel so I can check customers out AND get the line down, then so be it.

So, I let them run the show. They put me on a register. I complied. I only left when I was told to cover for someone going home, or to use the bathroom. My lunch was two hours late. I didn't say anything until an hour and a half after the fact because I rarely get my breaks on time anyways, but my lunch is mandatory because "no overtime."

My lunch wasn't the only break late though. When I finally got to go on my lunch, one of my cashiers came back from the bathroom, and we both saw his fifteen minute break was nearly an hour late. I apologized, and let him know I hadn't been allowed to check the schedule, or I would have sent him already. I told him to go, but let him know he should double check with our supervisor just in case since that would mean two people would be leaving at once.

Then, I come back from my lunch and find out one of our full time cashiers was forgotten on one of the few normal registers, and was actively building overtime. Something if I was physically there for, would have never happened as she leaves at the same time every day. Except, I was on my lunch. Two hours late. Then later, I'm sent to garden to cover a lunch over half an hour late. When I got back inside, another cashier calls because his fifteen is over half an hour late. Almost 45 minutes.

That's just some of what happened. I wasn't allowed to do my job, and therefore, my cashiers were actively being forgotten about because it wasn't important enough. Oh, and we got just as much credit card applications as we did early last week before we were forced to constantly be on registers. It's not about being on a register. It's about asking in general. Something I may not like, but I do because it's my job.

Or at least, it was. After seeing how me not doing my job to comply with dumb rules that makes no sense effected my cashier's today (and the fact I got a call back from another job), I put my two weeks in. Just to seal the deal after a shitty day. But I'm happy. I'm leaving Hell Depot, and couldn't be happier. I just worry for my cashier's who are probably going to continue to suffer with these new rules and regulations, and especially if anyone above them actually complies to them 100%.

Tl;dr: was told to be a normal cashier, so I let my supervisor and managers run the show. Almost everyone's breaks were forgotten about until a minimum of 30 minutes after, and they forgot to send someone home. But hey. I'm just a cashier. Oh wait, I'm not

So I have a coworker who would put Spanish music on in the BOH and it would be the most raunchiest trap music ever. I’m talking about Bad Bunny, KAROL G, El Alfa kinda raunchy. Even some merengue and bachata hits are insane when I hear it as an adult.

And yes there would be people just ignoring the music and then there would be others that want a translation. Well the Latina coworker doesn’t speak English really well so she wasn’t able to explain it, so they look at me for answers. I would usually tell them that it’s “just a bunch of nonsense and the songs are designed for you to turn up” and that would usually get them to leave me alone.

Not this nosy coworker though. She was keen to know what a certain song is about. When I told her my usual spiel, she didn’t want to hear it. She wants to know the meaning behind the song “Mesa Que Mas Aplauda” and why the singer keeps saying “socks, socks,socks.” I told her that we (Latinos) don’t look too deep into the lyrics but if she wants to know the guy isn’t saying “socks, socks, socks” he’s saying “za za za” which means absolutely nothing at all and when he said “la mesa que mas aplauda le mando a la niña” he’s saying the table that claps the loudest gets the girl.

She was instantly uncomfortable but nah sis if you wanna know so much I’m gonna explain it further. I told her that they play this song in strip clubs, birthday parties, weddings, communions, quinceaneras, and just any random occasion. So for the rest of the shift I would tell her what every song is about just to make her uncomfortable. “El Venao” is about this guy gaslighting his girl after she heard rumors about him being a player. “Obsesion” is about this guy being a creep towards this girl who doesn’t want him and he’s trying to convince her to leave her man for him. “4K” is just a raunchy song about giving it to these hoes in 4k like their p0rno girls.

And by the time I left she looked like she could’ve lived the rest of her life without knowing all that. I can’t wait to tell her what “Deliquente” is about tomorrow. I bet she’ll clutch her pearls.

Edit: thanks everyone who pointed out that the song “El Venao” is about the guy getting cheated on by his girl not the other way around. I’ve watched the music video and it made way more sense.

And for those who were saying YTA first of all I wasn’t asking if I’m TA I know I am and second of all the coworker in question is fine. I told y’all she’ll survive this ordeal. And speaking of which she was clutching her pearls when she heard someone else explain “El Caballito del Palo” to her and I had to tell her that no sexual innuendos are included in this song. The guy just wants to ride a horse.

Many moons ago, I worked at a restaurant that is part of a national chain named after a fruit and and insect. I had put in my two weeks notice after finding a better position elsewhere, and we were about to slightly tweak our menu and so were having mandatory staff meetings to acquaint ourselves with the new food. The only time that we could schedule these meetings was in the morning, prior to the restaurant opening, so that all the staff could attend.

As a closing bartender who would sometimes be there until 2 or 3AM cleaning up, I did not relish having to turn around and go back to work just for an hour long untipped (earning just minimum wage) meeting on less than 6 hours of sleep. Since I was on my way out the door and would not be employed by them when the new menu actually started, I asked my boss if I actually had to come to these meetings. He told me "if you want to work your remaining scheduled shifts you do". Being a college student who lived paycheck to paycheck, I could not afford to lose out on a week and a half wages, so I sucked it up and went.

Part of the roll out was a booklet we were supposed to fill out about the menu items, which included the prompt: "How would you describe this dish?" Presumably you are supposed to come up with clever tantalizing romanticizations of the items. Stuff like "it's a quarter pound of Angus beef, smothered by melted cheese and tender onions", but there were no specifics about what you could or should not write.

Cue malicious compliance.

I sat slightly out of my managers line of sight and looked up the nutritional values of the menu items from our corporate website on my phone. I filled my notebook out as follows: "the classic bacon cheeseburger has 1320 calories, 140% of your daily saturated fat (28 grams) and 124% of your daily sodium (2860mg)", "the BS mushroom swiss burger has 1580 calories, 155% of daily recommended saturated fat (31 grams), and 126% of your recommended sodium (3100mg)", "the quesadilla burger has 1580 calories, 190% of your daily saturated fat (38 grams), and 191% of your daily recommended sodium intake (3470mg)" etc.

The next day my boss called me into the office to discuss my booklet. He asked "are these the real nutritional facts numbers?" I replied "you're the manager, you should know, but yes. I pulled them right off the company website." He said something along the lines of "God that's disgusting! I should be looking for a new job too. We shouldn't be selling this shit."

I worked the end of my shifts, and then came back as a customer a week or two later. I proceeded to order a pitcher of the strongest beer we had on tap for myself, and then loudly played "trivia" with some of the bar regulars who were my buddies, asking them the same nutritional facts about the food. The bartender (my former coworker who was a stuck up B) kept giving me dirty looks, but she couldn't say shit to me, since I wasn't the loudest one in the group, and we weren't discussing anything vulgar.

Note to everyone: the food at ApricotBeetles is really unhealthy.

I am a science teacher and one year we got a new principal. He micromanaged everything and everyone! In the past I did a few labs that had food in them. He sent out an email stating that if science teachers want to do labs that had food, that we must send him a detailed lesson plan. I don't mind if the principal wanted to know why we did the lab and how it fits into the concepts we are teaching but a detailed lesson plan? I don't have a problem with rules but he was the type that didn't have an open door policy, it's my way or the highway type of administrator.

Cue my passive aggressive side, I sent him 20 page lesson plans (I am really good at bs'ing educational jargon). And every lab that I could find that had food in it, I did it that year! He did make my solar cooker completion impossible, which killed me because I had gotten grant money from a major leader in the engineering field the year before for the same exact project.

He ended up having so many grievances filed against him. It was a great day when he finally left!

A long time ago I worked weekends in a warehouse that received chips in bulk(think like one truck shows up all one flavor) where workers loaded up other trucks with the orders going to individual stores. So think of pallets of chips in boxes stacked 30feet up and trucks in docks being loaded up with a mix of chips of all flavors going out to convenience stores and grocery stores.

Our job as “pickers” is to push around a large cart and pick boxes of chips of all flavours as we go around the warehouse. Then we load out order into the truck and go to the next order and so on.

When we dropped a box and a bag burst open, well we would eat it. There would always be at least a couple open bags we could munch on at the warehouse.

I only worked weekends. During the week, a lot of things would happen and I would only find out about changes the next weekend.

One weekend I show up and we are not allowed to eat chips anymore!!! Apparently a new manager was hired and he was on a power trip and told the guys “the next person I see eating our chips will be fired for theft of company property” This seemed to me to be a little ridiculous as they would also make us compact hundreds of cases of chips when they came to be too close to their expiry date.(like less than 6 weeks). There was a lot of waste so for them to get on our case for eating a measly bag of chips was a little infuriating.

Anyway I don’t need to tell you that the guys were pissed about this and morale was low that weekend.

Next weekend I come back in. The guys let me know that the manager is in a super bad mood. The workers devised a plan to get back at the manager. They would buy chips from our main competitor brand and eat that competitors brand of chips as they worked. They argued to management that since it was from another brand, they could not get in trouble for theft as it was 100% certain the chips had been purchased with their own money.

Now the management of the warehouse was appalled by the fact that we were all munching on the competitions goods but there was nothing they could do about it.

It took a few weeks for this situation to get resolved but the way they “fixed it” in the end is that the managers would put a sticker on some bags for us to eat. In the end we would be allowed to munch on the company products once the bags had been “approved” to be eaten by management . So then it was not considered theft anymore and we were able to resume eating from the company stock.

I work in tech support, but basically a call center fixing computer problems. So when someone calls, we record their information. Everything from their name, to the reason for the call, to the solution. During a team meeting, one of my higher ups (we’ll call her Paula) announces if a client calls back about the same problem in a short time, whoever ultimately fixes it gets full credit for the work.

For context: I’m not here to be “Super IT”. I don’t care about the credit. I work my 8 hours a day and collect my check. That’s it.

One day I get a call. The client says they were just on the phone with someone else, and they told them to call right back. I look up the coworkers name (John); he just went to lunch. I ask the client if they want me to transfer them to the John’s voicemail. They say, “Can you just help me?” Np. I’m familiar with their problem and fix in it 20 minutes. I adjust the record for the problem to my name. I add John’s name as a footnote so he still gets partial credit.

Fast forward: John gets back from lunch. Comes up to me and demands to know why I took his name off the record. Tells me he spent an hour on the phone with that client and he would appreciate if I would let him know if I touch his records (Mind you, John and I don’t speak. He’s cold towards me and we only interact when absolutely necessary. Today, he doesn’t even say hello. He just starts in on me.) I wait a moment and calmly explain how I got the call, the client didn’t want to wait, and how I followed procedure. I also pointed out that I added John’s name as a footnote for partial credit (which is not required to do). John says “Oh, I didn’t see that” and leaves. No apology, just a mumbled “thanks” as he walks away.

In our next team meeting, our boss tells us from now on, whoever speaks to the client first gets full credit. I asked her to please clarify because Paula told us otherwise. She reiterates the announcement, says “this is how we’re doing it, I hope that makes sense” and quickly moves on. I can see where this came from but I hold my peace.

More background: John’s approach is to rush through calls to increase his “calls taken” metrics. My approach is to make sure the client is taken care of before the call ends.

So a few weeks go by, and things took an unexpected turn for John. (When a client calls back for a problem that was previously marked “fixed”, I restart the record and only add my footnote. This causes the record to go back into the original agent’s workflow for processing.) Since John doesn’t take the time to read the footnotes, he’s reaching out to me for updates before he marks the record “fixed” again. I take my time to respond, because I’ve already made the info available in my footnote. Not only that, some problems require him to call the client back to confirm the problem is actually fixed. He went from talking to me once a quarter to once a week. So now, he’s doing twice, sometimes 3 times the work, all because he wanted full credit for partial results.

A couple of months ago, I had a run-in with the self-appointed HOA enforcer of my neighborhood—let’s call her Linda. For context, I don’t live in an HOA community, but Linda likes to pretend we do. She’s the kind of person who leaves passive-aggressive notes on cars, knocks on doors to complain about lawn heights, and calls the city for “violations” that don’t actually exist.

The issue started because I parked my car on the street in front of my house. It’s perfectly legal, and I’ve been doing it for years without any complaints. But apparently, Linda decided that my car was an eyesore. One day, I found a note tucked under my windshield wiper that said:

“This is NOT a parking lot. Park in your driveway like a respectful neighbor. Don’t make me involve the city.”

It annoyed me, but I shrugged it off and kept parking where I always do. That wasn’t good enough for Linda. The next time, she confronted me in person.

Linda: “I’ve told you before, parking on the street is inconsiderate. You have a driveway; use it!” Me: “It’s legal to park here, and I’m not blocking anything.” Linda: “It doesn’t matter. It’s ugly and makes the neighborhood look bad. Park in your driveway, or I’ll report you.”

That’s when I decided: fine. If she wants me to park in my driveway, I’ll park in my driveway—but I’ll follow every single rule to the letter.

You see, my driveway is small. If I park my car in it, it blocks the sidewalk. Technically, it’s against city ordinances to obstruct the sidewalk. So the next day, I pulled my car right into my driveway, perfectly centered, and guess what? It completely blocked the sidewalk.

It didn’t take long for Linda to notice. She marched up to my door, red-faced and furious.

Linda: “You can’t block the sidewalk! That’s illegal!” Me: “Oh, I thought you wanted me to park in my driveway?” Linda: “Not like that! Park properly!” Me: “There’s no other way to park in my driveway without blocking the sidewalk. Guess I’ll have to park back on the street then.”

Her face was priceless. She sputtered for a moment before stomping off. Thinking that was the end of it, I parked back on the street. But no, Linda wasn’t done yet. She actually called the city on me!

A week later, a city inspector came by. He checked out the situation, saw that my car was legally parked on the street, and told me I was doing nothing wrong. However, he did mention that Linda had made several complaints about “code violations” in the neighborhood, and they were getting tired of her nonsense.

After that, I didn’t hear from Linda for a while—until last week, when she started parking her car on the street in front of my house. So, I did what any good neighbor would do: I called the city and reported it. Turns out her car was slightly too close to a fire hydrant. She got a ticket.

Malicious compliance never felt so sweet.

Some context: I work overnights at a well known gym franchise that I will not name. My typical shift is 10pm-6am. Usually there is always supposed to be 2 people on night shift together, but lately my coworkers have been calling off a lot, causing me to be in the gym alone all night. My coworker, let’s call her Sam, comes in at 6am when I get off. Here’s the problem, Sam doesn’t usually come in on time, she is usually always 10-15 minutes late.

So onto the problem. Since Sam comes in late, I tend to have to stay clocked in past 6am. Additionally, since I’m usually alone at night, I can’t get any important tasks done until Sam comes in. My boss noticed my time cards, and got very upset that I haven’t been clocking out right at 6am. He made me feel really crappy despite constantly being on the blunt end of all his scheduling messes.

So I told him okay. I will leave exactly at 6am. So that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been leaving the gym entirely unattended until someone gets there, and most of the time, no one does for a while. So now members are confused, my manager doesn’t know what to do considering he is the one who scolded me for staying past 6am. He thought that I would just clock out and stay, off the clock, but why would I do that? I was not going to take the fall for someone else consistently being late…

He won’t fire me or write me up because this is technically what he wanted.

Small edit: no, I don’t have keys…unfortunately

I recently found this sub and I think I have a great story for it. This happened about 2 years ago. I work in construction but more specifically I cut concrete. A lot of people aren't familiar with my job but all you really need to know is that I dont pour any concrete. I use big diesel and hydraulic powered saws to cut and remove it.

I work at a relatively small company (15 employees) and we are THE company to use for concrete cutting and removal in our area. I was the first employee hired at this company and my bosses are amazing, they have been in the industry for 25 and 30 years respectively. We will call them Brad and Cody. They know what they are doing and they still get out and work in the field and will out work any of our employees.

We were awarded a no-bid contract at a very large facility to cut and remove a very large section of their outdoor slab because it had cracked. This was routine for us, we could do it in our sleep, but it was still a large project. The reason we were given the contract but not held to a number was because they wanted it done right and fast and they knew that we were they guys to do this even though we aren't always the cheapest. The customer requested us to bring extra equipment and specialized saws "just in case". Important later.

The day comes that we are supposed to start and they wanted us on site at 6:30am for a safety meeting. Brad and Cody went out while I stayed back to get my crews ready for the day before heading out to meet them. when I arrived at 8 am, they were still standing by their trucks just talking. I asked them how the safety meeting went and they said that no one had shown up yet. Finally they got there at around 9 am and didn't even acknowledge that they were late. We met the guy that was in charge of the project, his name was John. John said during the safety meeting that there would always be a few people around from his company to watch us while we worked. we figured it was weird but no big deal. We ran a routine safety meeting after and it was time to work.

We got about a third of the project completed in 1 day. The entire time we were working there were no less than 25 people standing around watching us work. we kept joking with them to just set up bleachers, it would be easier to watch that way. They made us call it quits at 4pm so they could go home. Right about this time we started to figure there was something up with these guys, they didn't care that we didn't get started until late and wanted us to end early, yet a big part of us being there was to get it done fast? Either way we figured we would still be able to get done in about 3 days and make record time for a project of this size, all while making a fair amount of money for ourselves.

The next morning as we were getting ready to head out for they day, Brad received an email. it said "While we can tell that x company are master operators with their machines, we feel as if they are operating in an unsafe manner by running multiple machines at once and request that they slow down to maintain safe working conditions. They also didn't try to make sure our supervisors felt that they were safe throughout the day." Brad was pissed. we were called in to get things done fast and not once had we done a single thing that could be considered unsafe. when we got to the job that day for the safety meeting, Brad had changed from "screw these guys they don't know anything about what we are doing" to "okay we are too fast? we will slow it right down for them".

At the safety meeting John (same guy who sent us the email) looked at us and said "okay everyone knows what we are doing, lets get it done." He tried to end the safety meeting with that, but that's when my boss spoke up. he said, "hold on, since no one is man enough to tell us in person and just want to hide behind their emails, lets get this straight. we are too fast and unsafe for you?" John became visibly uncomfortable and stammered out "well, there was a lot of people standing around and watching you yesterday and I just felt that someone would get hurt if they decided to get closer to watch". I had set up safety cones with red danger tape strung between it and told no one to cross. we had taken proper safety precautions. if they didn't feel comfortable to have that many people watch, then DONT HAVE THAT MANY PEOPLE STANDING, WATCHING, AND DOING NOTHING! all Brad said was "okay we will be real slow and if someone crosses our line, we shut the site down for an hour for another safety meeting."

Time for the malicious compliance, we started up for the day. Something to note about our saws, tractors, and other heavy equipment is that we have the ability to turn up the idle, or in other words we can turn up or down the speed of the motors, so instead of everything moving normally and how it should, which is fast, everything is moving at turtle speed. Brad told us all that if we ever sped up our machines that he would kick us off the job, even Cody, his business partner. I was cutting with our saw while Cody was in the excavator to remove the pieces that I cut. Brad was in the skid steer to haul the pieces to the dump truck.

I would cut the concrete into a 6' x 6' piece, which would normally take me about 20-30 minutes. It was taking upwards of 3 hours for one piece. after I would cut, Cody in the excavator would turn his machine on, slowly turn and stop. extend his bucket. stop. lower the bucket. stop. tilt the bucket. stop. pick up the piece. stop. turn. stop. drop the piece. stop. shut off his machine. All without idling up. Then Brad would start his machine and repeat the same process to load into the dump truck. you get the point, it was PAINFULLY slow. after the first piece was ready to be pulled out and Cody started the process John, who was just sitting on the sideline pale faced crossed my line to ask if we were really serious, at that point Brad screamed "SHUTDOWN!" and we all stepped away for an hour for a safety meeting. John crossed the line 3 times in the first day and 8 times total throughout the project. His employees never once crossed the danger line. effectively John was the only one he should have been worried about in his email about "getting too close and being in danger."

John kept saying "no way you guys are being serious, what happened to what you were doing yesterday? you were so much more efficient." Brad just said "I have in writing that you felt unsafe, so for the remainder of this project we will be operating at a safe pace."

It ended up taking us 3 weeks to finish at that horribly slow pace instead of 3 or 4 days at full speed. The best part? The head of the facility came out to see what was taking us so long, we showed him the email and he agreed with what we were doing. He told us he hates John and that he's insufferable to work around. He said that the success of this project is directly tied to Johns yearly bonus. he asked how much we were charging them, and we told him that per piece of equipment and truck and saw that is one the site is being billed to them by the hour and that John had requested that we have nearly double the amount of equipment than we actually needed or used. The facility head just laughed and said "fantastic, I will make sure you are paid in full, don't go easy on us with the bill."

That's how we maliciously complied our way into charging about $200,000 for a job that should have realistically only been worth about $45,000. I even got a solid $20,000 bonus because Brad and Cody are fantastic bosses and knew we made a killing on that job.

update:

I felt like I wanted to clarify a couple of things after reading the comments. First, yes John tried to get us to go back to our previous working rate, but he would only ever verbally ask. My boss kept telling him "I need that in writing and you have a deal, hell might even save yourself some money while you're at it." but John either never understood what he was implying or really didn't want to send an email recanting his statement believing he would look dumb for making a mistake. Second, this was a big project, bigger than what my part in it was. That being said, with how John was with us, I would seriously doubt every other aspect of the job went smooth for him. I bet they ended up with some profit but not nearly as much as they would have without John, meaning he still probably got a bonus, just a very small one. Third, how did they have so many people able to stand around and watch for 3 weeks and not work? Well, by the end of the third week there was probably only 10 people watching us by then, but this was a facility that has hundreds of people working there so for 25 people at a time to sneak out for most of a day to watch us wasn't too big of a deal for them, they usually rotated and if we saw someone one day, than we didn't usually see them again for about a week.

also just another little satisfying part of the story I should have included was that Cody has had a saying since the very first time I worked with him, he says, "we aren't trying to retire off of this one single job, we are treating the customer fair, but fair isn't always cheap." After the facility head gave us the go ahead to charge what was needed and not take it easy, Cody looked at us and said, "yep, we are retiring off of this one." obviously it was more of a joke, but the satisfaction I got from hearing him say that after knowing him for 10 years to be the guy who is extra fair will never be rivaled.

Another fun story about my *favorite* supervisor from when I was in the Navy.

A little bit of backstory to help explain some of the later facts. In the military, every piece of equipment gets preventative maintenance done on it to maintain it in "good, working condition". In the Navy, we have a very well-laid out maintenance system with step-by-step instructions on how to do every bit of maintenance, with instructions so simple a monkey could do it. Part of these maintenance procedures lists required tools, parts, materials, and test equipment, and they are also extremely specific. Detailing the length requirement of your screw drivers, the brand of your gauges, etc. The management of this system the Navy uses is called the Maintenance & Material Management System, 3M; or Planned Maintenance System, PMS.

As an electrician, we owned all electrical distribution equipment onboard, and for jobs without an electrical training background, we also "owned" the actual equipment. So the Electronics Technicians, with electrical training, could maintain their own electrical equipment. But the Cooks (Culinary Specialists), without an electrical background, relied on us to maintain their equipment for them. Now, if you've ever used a commercial flat-top grill/griddle before, you know you set it to a specific temperature you want the cooktop heated to, and not a "0-9" dial like your stove at home. Part of maintaining the griddle was checking the calibration of this temperature setting once every year or two (I forget how often this check was, but it wasn't a frequent check).

Relatively early on when I got onboard the ship, young EMFN (junior electrician) GwenBD94 was assigned to do this maintenance check, so I gathered all of my tools parts materials etc. In doing so I couldn't find the proper temperature sensor for our calibrated temperature gauge. We had the round-tip ambient temperature probe for use in the ovens, but not the flat-tip surface temperature probe for use on a griddle. I asked a different supervisor to my *favorite* supervisor for help, and he couldn't find it either, so we ordered a new one, and he said he'd take care of the paperwork for the maintenance check. Being new and unfamiliar with the system I let it go and never questioned when the maintenance check disappeared from the maintenance list the next week (meaning someone "accomplished" it hint hint nudge nudge) and all was good.

The next time this maintenance check came up due, we were on deployment, and it was again assigned to me. By this time, we had a new supervisor, and I was now EM3 (slightly less-junior electrician) GwenBD94! A bit more knowledgeable. I looked where we kept all our calibrated equipment and couldn't find the flattop temperature probe I knew it needed so I asked my supervisor. He found we had one on order but didn't know that we had one in the shop, and told me to "figure it out". Knowing that was an unlawful order and would amount to lying about the check and could bite me in the ass later, I said I wouldn't do the maintenance without the right equipment, and since he couldn't lawfully order me to, we started putting a note on the check that the tools were on order, and delaying it.

This went on for about 2-3 months until the check was about to "go red" (move out of periodicity and cause negative numbers on out maintenance reports), and I was again ordered to figure it out or I'd be written up. I refused, and raised the same issue to my boss's boss and we tore the shop apart trying to find the right equipment but couldn't find it, so he told me not to worry about it. Later that week, while I was on watch as a roving watchstander (allowed to walk around the ship, and even required to) after dinner one evening I saw a newer more junior electrician, lets call him EMFA Timmy (even more junior than i initially was electrician) in the galley (kitchen) working on the griddle! I took a step into the galley and asked him what he was doing and low and behold, he was doing the maintenance check! I asked him what temperature probe he was using and he showed me the one for the oven. I explained to him the issue and told him if he signed the maintenance check it would be "gun-decking" (lying on official paperwork) and he could get in trouble, but let him make his own decisions as an adult. He decided to continue doing the check. I giggled and continued on with my watch.

After my watch, it was nearly 10PM so I went to bed for the night. About an hour later I got woken up, being told my supervisor needed me in the galley. I signed, figuring it was about the check, and I was going to get that earlier threatened write-up. After getting dressed and making it to the galley, the entire electrical shop was in the galley troubleshooting the griddle. You see, EMFA Timmy got to the step in the PMS where it said to use a screwdriver to adjust a dial until the thermometer read the same temperature indicated by the set temperature. When he measured it, it was off by about 150 degrees, so he kept turning up the heat. Eventually, it was hot enough to melt the griddle's built-in over-temp protection device, instantly shutting the stovetop off. Turns out, he *did* need that temperature probe! I was tasked with helping come up with a solution to fix it, because the griddle was a critical piece of equipment for the cooks, and we had no replacement parts to fix it. I asked EMFA Timmy if he ever finished the last steps of the maintenance card (turning the grill off, putting it back together, reporting completion of the PMS). He told me he hadn't. I turned to my boss and said since the maintenance check i explicitly advised against doing without the proper tools was still ongoing, and I was informed I could do the maintenance or be written up, I'd stick with my original decision and refuse to do the maintenance. He could write me up in the morning during working hours, but in the mean time, I was going back to bed. Have a nice night.

In the morning, I did indeed get written up, but for the insubordination (not for refusing the maintenance check), while my boss' boss looked on with the biggest shit eating grin at me for holding my ground, and my supervisor was pissed at me. Turns out, I was right and we *couldn't* do that maintenance check without the right equipment!

This remains one of my write ups I am least ashamed to have ever gotten, and I'd take it again in a heartbeat to give a giant "I told you so" middle finger to idiot middle managers. I later found an electronic record of the counseling chit my supervisor got for tasks people with doing maintenance without the proper equipment, because I laid out that this was a known issue we didn't have the right probe for years and threw his ass deep under the bus (hated the guy).

We got the right probe in about 6 months later!

TL;DR:
i got told to do a job i couldn't do or get written up, i refused, someone dumber got roped into doing it, stuff broke, i got told to help fix it, I said I already accepted being written up for opting out of this experience, and took the write up.

posting to r/MilitiousCompliance and r/MilitaryStories as well

This goes back to my days working at a large Public Transit authority. They stressed safety at every point related to moving buses. Particularly within the depot and outside parking lots. We had 250 buses. As you can imagine moving large vehicles around in tight spaces can be hard on buses, infrastructure and people.

The layout for our outside lot required about 50 buses to be backed in. Two rows of 25 nose to tail. Rules required that when backing a bus we always had to have a "backup helper." For obvious reasons, backing 15 ton vehicles into other 15 ton vehicles can lead to mayhem. Especially after dark and in poor weather. Management decided they didn't want to pay someone to stand around and do this.

There were 6 shifters. (Operators working the yard to move buses after they pulled in. Parked for the night, or moved to maintenance) Rules state you NEVER leave a bus unattended. If it's running someone is in the seat.

First night, first bus goes outside and calls the yard dispatcher for help. Yard dispatcher ignores them. Next bus, same thing. After the 6th bus arrives in the yard waiting for backup help the line for pullins was 10 deep around the block and all the shifters were in the yard. The neighborhood hates the depot anyway. Calls to police begin about buses blocking the streets. Yard dispatcher is flipping out.

The backup guy was back within the hour. On overtime for the balance of the pick (about 3 months) since management had eliminated the job. It usually went to an operator on restricted duty for whatever reason.

They wrote the rules. Not our job to ignore them.

So there I was as an AMMO troop E-5 for on Operational Readiness Inspection (ORI). I was setting up a gas cylinder for some of our equipment. We had never used this space before and it wasn't properly set up for our equipment. No anchors on the walls and no gas cylinder racks. The main feature of the room was a long steel table that was bolted to the cement floor. To secure the cylinder, I used 2 - 5000lb munitions straps to a table leg. I figured, problem solved.

During the inspection, this inspector comes up to me and says that he is going to have to hit me with a major finding....but he was willing to drop it to a minor if I could fix it before he left the area. The finding...the Technical Order for our equipment stated that the cylinder needed to be in a gas storage rack or securely CHAINED to a fixed object. As my load straps were not chains, I had violated the TO instructions.

I was able to borrow some stantion chain, used for airshow crowd control, and a tiny bolt and nut. I seriously doubted the chain would hold 20lbs, certainly not a full gas cylinder. The inspector said that was great and dropped it to a minor.

I reported all of this up my chain of command with varying degrees of WTF responses. That minor finding never made it into the final report. * * Edit: the purpose of securing the bottle with a chain to the wall or in a bottle cage isn't to prevent it from going ballistic, but to keep it from tipping over and hurting someone, dragging equipment, or popping the valve off.

I'm in college, and live in the dorms, where I am required to have a meal plan. I have 19 meals per week.

My degree requires lots of lab work, on the 11th floor of a building, and we wear lab coats. I love getting ice water after my lab, especially since I have to walk all the way across campus. My water bottle is insulated, so it keeps ice for a while, which I LOVE. I go to fill my water bottle with ice, and an upper level worker stops me.

Worker: ma'am, ma'am, no filling personal bottles here.

Me: the workers do it all the time.

Worker: it's in their contract.

Me: okay.

I bet not, but sure. I know workers get free food and beverages both on and off shift, and I always see them using and filling personal bottles. I don't know why I can't, their bottles can also be gross and unclean. Using a reusable bottle is more eco friendly, anyway.

My dining hall likes to be "climate friendly" but they use A LOT of paper plates and plastic silverware, especially when they serve at least 2000 people per day. So, I looked the worker in the face and filled my water bottle with a paper cup. It took so much longer and was more wasteful than if he had just ignored me.

He shook his head and walked away. Now I fill my water bottle with no problems and enjoy my ice water whenever I want.

So, I work at a company that prides itself on having a detailed, overly complicated policy manual for everything. We’ve got rules for rules, basically. My manager, let’s call him Dave, is the kind of guy who loves micromanaging. He’d constantly hover over our shoulders, pointing out every tiny mistake we made, saying, “If it’s in the manual, you must follow it.”

One day, Dave sent me an urgent email asking me to finish a big project before the end of the day. Normally, I’d do it my usual way—efficiently and with a bit of common sense. But Dave insisted that I “strictly adhere to the manual” since it was a “high-visibility project” and he didn’t want “any mistakes.”

Oh, Dave. You shouldn’t have said that.

I pulled out the manual and went full compliance mode. 1. Every procedure, no matter how small, was followed to the letter. Normally, I’d skip pointless steps, like writing a detailed log for every 10-minute task. Not this time. I logged everything. Starting a document? Log it. Saving the file? Log it again. Changing font size? Yep, logged. 2. Requests for approvals? Oh, absolutely. The manual says certain steps need “managerial sign-off,” so I emailed Dave at least five times throughout the day for approvals. “Hey, Dave, just confirming font size 12 is acceptable? Please reply so I can continue.” “Hi, Dave, should I use blue headers or red headers as per policy section 14.3.2?” 3. Breaks were strictly enforced. Policy states we get two 15-minute breaks and a 1-hour lunch. Normally, I’d work through a bit of lunch to get things done, but not today. At 12:00 sharp, I dropped everything and left my desk. I also spent 15 minutes at exactly 10:00 and 3:00 “resting.” 4. Every department had to be involved. The manual said I needed sign-offs from IT, HR, and marketing for certain sections, even though they had nothing to do with the project. I looped them in with formal requests, dragging out the timeline.

By the end of the day, the project wasn’t finished. I spent so much time “complying” with the manual that I didn’t even get halfway through.

Dave was furious and asked why it wasn’t done. I calmly explained that I followed every single policy and procedure in the manual, just like he instructed. I even showed him the email chain proving he’d approved my steps.

After that, Dave stopped breathing down my neck and started letting me work how I wanted.

Lesson learned: Sometimes, the best way to fix a broken system is to show exactly how broken it is.

This was some time ago, but the story is still good one for angry customers. I was working for a cell phone company. In bound C/S and Tech support. As usual is my fault … and … happened
This one customer has always stuck in my mind. ( yelling of corse ) “the bill is always wrong I need my phones shut off now” along those lines. Per policy I need to tell the angry guy. If I shut the account off RIGHT NOW this call will end and all your account will. Told me I was a smart ass and suddenly the line was dead.

( just expanding on a comment I made in another thread )

A couple of years ago I was in the Navy, and assigned duties onboard a ship. At the start of the story, I was an extremely-junior servicemember (lowest rank in my shop). Typically, on-board the ship our usual uniform was coveralls (in our department) and we arrived and left from the ship when in homeport in civilian clothes. Now, we were moving up the river (about 4 hours underway, about an hour driving distance) for a week to on-load weapons stores for a training exercise underway coming up later that month. Typically, when leaving the area of the port of record (which we would, for the training exercise), we're also required to have suitable transit-uniforms aboard in case we pull into port elsewhere.

For this week long weapons on-load, I had no plans to leave the ship, and we weren't leaving our port of record's geographical area, and would be returning to our home berth again before the upcoming trip, so I didn't prep my uniforms to bring onboard, seeing no use for them. At the last minute, our medical department scheduled medical appointments on our behalf at a small satellite clinic at the weapons station, with no input of our own, and informed me I'd have a dental appointment while there. I immediately went to my supervisor with the issue, because I had no suitable uniforms for off-ship use onboard, and we were required to attend medical appointments in uniform. I get written up for not having my uniforms. Now, there is no specific policies on which types or how many uniforms are required to be on board, but there *are* specific policies on having "sea-bag inspections" and what is required to be present for them, so my write up was for not having an inspection-ready sea bag available. Copy that, makes sense! When we get home that weekend, i move all my military uniforms aboard, bringing a full inspection-ready sea bag to the ship as required, and leaving no uniforms at home. Everything's peachy!

Fast forward a few years, and I have Commanding Officer's approval to miss an upcoming late-minute re-scheduled underway due to prior-scheduled leave in order to re-enlist. While I'm halfway across the country re-enlisting, my department fails an important inspection for our deployment workups. The inspectors work with the ship's command to re-schedule, and they adjust the underway schedule last-minute again, now they're getting underway for a re-inspect the night before my leave ends, and the re-inspection starts the day I return from leave (the inspectors will be ferried to the ship the morning of by water-taxi). They ask me to curtail my leave a day early, buy new tickets, and show up, to help with this re-inspect. I inform them that I would prefer not to dole out thousands of dollars of my own money for last minute changes to travel arrangements because of their failure, but understand if ordered I can financially do so. Since my leave was approved by the CO to miss an underway, I'd like verbiage from the CO that my leave has been rescinded, recalling me. And if I receive such, it'll make me question my dedication to re-enlisting in a navy that doesn't care about my financial well-being (meaning i'll leave the 6 months earlier than they expected, when i get out of the navy instead of re-enlist), and won't return with signed reenlistment papers.

They balked, of course, and had me report the day my leave was originally planned to end. They decided I'd catch a ride with the water taxi, and all the senior-officer inspectors, for the hour trip to meet the ship. Sounded interesting.

The stinger? I asked them what I should wear for the water taxi ride, as all my uniforms were on the ship. They freaked out and asked why all my uniforms were on the ship, naturally. I explained I was ordered to do so by my supervisor and received a counseling chit for not having left all my uniforms on the ship, previously. My options? Some recently-cleaned coveralls (I'd take them home for laundry, ensuring I kept 2 pairs on the ship as required for sea bag rules) from before my leave, or my civilian clothes. Why? Because that's what I was told to do the last time a shipboard uniform use issue came up.

So yeah, there I was, a junior E5, in civilian clothes, on board a chartered water taxi with a bunch of O4/O5/O6s in their uniforms, at 5 in the morning, on the way to re-do a previously failed inspection.

TL;DR (thanks /u/LivingAmongMormons ):

Military situation where i didn't have the right uniform available, got written up for hot having it, made sure *all uniforms* were onboard and available in future, but later needed a uniform at home and didn't have one due to earlier write up.

One of my jobs is in what is apparently one of three sources of food (alongside Canes&ChicFilA) in a town of about 150k people.

I don't know if we are just on a cosmic nexus of stupidity or what, but I would say maybe 50-70% of our customers suffer from some form of Illiteracy. One of these is coupon Illiteracy.

So many customers do not know what those symbols on the coupon mean aside from the numbers. (IF they see them...) So when we have a deal going on, sometimes the deal is actually better than the coupon offer.

Thus I end up charging someone more cause I have to price override the item to use the coupon which actually means it went up in price. It's what the customer wants...

Other customers think they can beat us by ordering a cheaper item... then making a bunch of modifications to transform it into something else.

"I would like a veggie sub but can you please add Ham to it?"

Don't wanna just order a ham? Have fun - that's an additional charge to you...

"Hi I want a chicken sandwich but can you replace the chicken with steak?"

Okay so so want a steak sandwich?

"No I want a chicken but with steak instead"

Well if you wanna pay the substitution charge what am I to go with? I mean you don't work here and you said this was how you want it made...

P.S. Why is so much R&D spent making an easily comprehended menu when nobody ever sees it? The literate few look at the dinky little nutrientional&allergen information and say we need a proper menu... never mind the big bold menu that is literally right in front of their fucking faces...

This ain't my story, but a friend's, who's a truck driver.

Recently the contractor company said friend's boss works with got an electric truck. This is a big company, they already got a few of them, but at a different location, where charging is far easier due to many stations around. Cause it "seems" to go well (yeah "seems", cause next year the electric trucks won't be exempt from paying tolls and mind you an electric truck costs twice as much as a full option Scania), they thought it'd be a great idea and good promo to get another E-Truck at the location my friend works at; only before ordering nobody checked on charging stations or even the distances and roads this guy drives, only that his hometown is practical for their endeavor.

Now comes the good part; turns out we ain't got many stations that can charge a truck. I am no electrician by any means, but I'd still consider myself technically apt, so I (yes, I went through the hassle to talk to this company) tried explaining that charging a battery is like filling a barrel, only that you attach the hose to the bottom, so you NEED a certain amount X of base pressure to get that shit flowing and because most charging stations only pack 75-150kW that's a no-go (for a TRUCK). The only 300kW station in the area is located in the next city, not too far, but traffic SUCKS. Imagine driving an hour to make a 10m distance. But management had other problems ENTIRELY; turns out their problem was that the 300kW station charges, dunno the exact value, methinks like 80ct/kW, the 150kW station, however, costs only 65ct/kW, so they DEMANDED he charge the truck where it's cheaper.

And here it gets even better; this here is the reason, why I tried reasoning with them, to no avail of course.

Not every charging station is built to accommodate a truck not even the ones that pack 300kW. Which means my man here has to first find an empty space to leave his trailer. Once your done with that, you still gotta find an empty lot to park and charge. And once you're there, there's still the possibility of someone parking next to you and grabbing the 2nd charging cable of the station, which then halves the performance to 75kW. Just for reference; even charging at a 300kW station takes 2h!

So after our arguments hit a brick wall, he gave in. "You want me to waste valuable time on a piss poor charger, just cause it's a little bit cheaper?! Fine." Next day he proceeds to charging, after 2 or 3 hours the office gets the jitters, cause work keeps piling up and they can't always manage to bring the freight in time, so they call him "Aren't you done charging, yet?!" - "Nope, not even close, buddy." - "When tf are you planning on returning?! We need you at work. Y'know a truck only brings in money, when it's rolling, not parking." - "I ain't the one that came up with the idea to charge a fuckin' TRUCK at a150kW station, you sent me here! I tried explaining it you, but you wouldn't listen. And unless you want me to come over just to look for the next charging station, you'll have to wait." - "How long?" - "Welp, I just hit the 17% mark so imma be here for awhile."

He was camped out there the whole day, didn't get shit done and at the end the battery still wasn't fully charged. They never bothered him again.

So, back in the day I was a truck driver. The company had a few trucks that were made for different jobs. Depending on the job you had to deliver determined the truck you drove. So it was not too uncommon to drive three different trucks in one day. The company was piss poor on maintenance of the vehicles. Over the years with them I received a few fines for things like no inspection and stuff like that. Even though I received the fine, the company would pay the fine. No harm, no foul. Finally our "big truck" really started to go down hill. It got to the point where it was barely running and needed a ton of repairs costing thousands to fix! I told the company I refuse to drive the truck as it was an accident waiting to happen! Well this lasted a week and then they said that I needed to drive the truck for one delivery. Unfortunately, I agreed out of a need to be a team player, and service my customer. The drive was horrible! It was leaving a trail of smoke 10ft high as I drove down the highway! I knew I was in trouble when they loaded a case of motor oil in the cab for me to fill the engine if needed! On the way there in the am cars behind me were turning on their high beams to see becasue of the smoke trail I was leaving! Then as the sun finally came up, people were pulling up next to me on the highway, honking, and giving me the finger! I found out so much liquid oil was coming out the exhaust that oil was landing on the vehicles behind me! It was only a 50 mile round trip and the truck lost 24 quarts of oil and almost a tank of fuel! So I again I told them I would not drive the truck till its fixed. As a truck driver you are required to do a pre trip inspection of the vehicle prior to driving every day. You mark down the defects and there is room for notes in the log book. One copy stays in the truck and one copy goes to the company, there's a third copy that goes to D.O.T if requested. I made sure to fill this out fully everytime I drove this truck! I also made a seperate list, mostly as a note for myself covering things that I thought was important but not nessesarily a part of the pre trip inspection. The next day I came in and found the truck fully loaded. I told them I was not driving the truck! They said Well you have too! After a quick thought I said OK.

Que malicious compliance! I pulled out of the lot, at the traffic light I'd make a left to head to the job, however I was out of fuel, so I had to turn right to get to the gas station to fuel up, then back track to head to the job. And yes I meant gas! It was a 33k lb truck with a gas engine! Well, D.O.T was set up on the other side of the road just before the gas station! They watched as I drove by, wishing they could get me! In case you don't know. D.O.T stands for the Department of Transportation. For big trucks, they run the weigh stations on the highway. But in heavy truck areas they set up a mobile station and inspect trucks randomaly. They verify paperwork is in order and the vehicle and driver are safe! Any fines here are expensive! Plus they can put a truck out of service meaning it must be it cannot be driven till repaired. At that point it must be towed and fixed! Then I pull in the fuel station. As I'm filling, I can feel them watching me!

So, I leave the fuel station and head back towards D.O.T! They run out into the street to make me pull in! They wanted this truck! I pull in and shut down the truck. The D.O.T. cop walks up to the truck with a creeper. I say why do you need that? He says, what? I say the creeper? He says I gotta check your truck! I say nah, I gotta list! I hand him my notes and log book! He says, Hmm! Then he goes back to his car and I can see him furiously writing! After about 30 minuets he comes back! He says to me, Why are you driving this truck? I tell him they told me I had to! There's no other truck? He asks? Nope I reply. What happens if you don't drive this? He asks? I say I guess I sit home! He says I'll be right back! After about another 20 minuets he comes back to me. He slaps a big red "out of service" tag on the windshield. Then he tells me. There are 21 issues that are putting the truck out of service, plus I am giving the company a fine for letting you drive this truck! Unfortunately, your fuel tax sticker is expired! If I write you up for this it is a $10k fine to you! But I called in the local cops, it will be a $90 fine for you that the company should pay! I thank him and he leaves.

I call the company and get a ride back to the warehouse! Bottom line they paid all fines which were north of $65k including towing! The next week we had a fleet of new leased trucks with a maintenance plan with replacement trucks, if ours were down for issues! And they came out and washed the trucks twice a month!

I worked there another 2 years and quit because of other truck issues! A competitor poached me with better money. But this goes to show. I am not risking my life and the publics life for your job! In the end you paid for a $65k lesson! When I say I'm not doing it! I'm not doing it unless it's safe!

Then I pull in the fuel station. As I'm filling I can feel them watching me!

My great uncle passed away at 97 and I heard this great story of malicious compliance at his memorial service today.

He worked for over 50 years at the same confectionery factory and for most of that time he was a boiler room attendant. This was just after WW2 and at the time most of the machines and processes were powered by steam, even the heating. The steam was generated by massive boilers and it was his job to monitor the boilers to make sure nothing went wrong. These boilers could potentially explode, causing great damage. By law the boiler had to be attended at all times and there were shifts that watched them around the clock, even when the factory was closed. They took so long to heat up that it was easier and cheaper to leave them running at night.

After about ten years of no incidents the company hired a leading hand who would also act as the Safety Officer. He had been a sergeant in the army and he took his job quite seriously, being quite the disciplinarian. He instituted a mulititude of new procedures, some warranted, some just to establish control. The first time he wanted to conduct a fire drill, he went around telling the staff that when they heard the alarm they had to exit the building in an orderly fashion. He got to the boiler room and it was my great uncle on duty that day. He informed him he would not be able to evacuate with everyone else and had to stay with the boiler. The Safety Officer didn't give him time to explain why, he just bluntly informed him that he was to treat the fire drill as if it was a real fire, no exceptions.

When the fire bell finally rang, my uncle did exactly what he was told to do. He turned off the gas to the boilers, vented all the built up steam, purged the water an joined everyone outside. At the evacuation point they were doing a head count when the Production Manager spotted my uncle and immediately approached him and asked what he was doing away from the boiler. He said he was participating in the Fire Drill as instructed but not to worry as he had shut the boiler down completely. The colour immediately drained from the managers face.

He was asked how long it would take to bring the boilers back online. Apparently it would take hours alone just to fill the boilers with water and heat them up. The big issue was that because they had done an emergency purge they were required to inspect every pipe, joint and connection for damage before to make sure it was safe to start to reheat. The other boiler men were called in and they got paid double time to work through the night to get the boiler ready for the next day. Production Staff all got sent home but still got paid for the day as it wasn't their fault the factory couldn't run. It cost them a days production as well.

Safety Officer did keep his job but for the next 40 years the boiler staff were all exempt from fire drills.

I work at a big retail chain, where the stockroom is the wild west and chaos is the norm. We recently got a new supervisor, Sarah, who seems to think she’s running the Navy SEALs or something. She’s obsessed with speed—constantly on us about how we need to get things done faster. Doesn’t matter if it’s done right, as long as it’s done fast.

So one day, during peak restock time when we’re drowning in boxes, Sarah storms in with her clipboard and her best “I’m in charge” face. She corners me while I’m halfway through a massive inventory check and says, “You’re taking way too long with these. Just get through them quickly. We don’t have time to check every single item!”

I try to explain that rushing inventory checks is a bad idea, but she cuts me off with a condescending smile. “If you can’t speed this up, maybe this job isn’t the right fit for you,” she says, all smug like she just dropped a bombshell. 😒

Alright, Sarah. You want speed? Let’s see how fast things can spiral out of control.

So, I take her words to heart and decide to follow her instructions exactly. The next day, I’m scheduled for another inventory check. Instead of my usual process where I count everything carefully, I decide to play Sarah’s game. I glance at the shelves and make up numbers that seem about right. I don’t even bother opening boxes to check if what’s inside matches the labels. I fly through the whole process, marking items off like I’m speed-running a video game. What usually takes me 2 hours, I finish in just 20 minutes.

Sarah sees me finish up, and I can see her eyes light up. She walks over, grinning ear to ear. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? If you keep this up, you might even get a little bonus this month,” she says, patting herself on the back for her brilliant leadership skills. 🙄

Fast forward a week, and the store manager, Mike, calls an emergency meeting. The inventory reports have come back, and they’re a total disaster. According to the report, we’re missing thousands of dollars worth of products. It looks like we either lost half the stock or we’re running some underground black market. Mike’s pissed, customers are complaining about out-of-stock items, and the regional manager is breathing down his neck.

Mike turns to Sarah and asks her to explain how this could’ve happened. Sarah, trying to save face, immediately points at the team and says, “They must’ve messed up the counts. They weren’t thorough enough.” She’s throwing us under the bus without a second thought.

This is where I decide to strike. I raise my hand and say, “Actually, I did exactly what Sarah told us to do. She said to skip checking the items and just get it done as quickly as possible. I was just following orders.”

You could hear a pin drop. Mike slowly turns to Sarah, his expression going from confused to furious. “Is this true?” he asks, narrowing his eyes at her.

Sarah’s stammering now, trying to backtrack. “Well, I—uh, I didn’t mean to skip it entirely. I just meant to speed it up…”

But it’s too late. The damage is done. Mike’s already fuming. “So you decided to cut corners on the one thing that affects our bottom line? You do realize we have to do a full recount now because of this mess, right?”

And that’s exactly what happens. The next day, Sarah and a few unlucky team members spend 12 hours redoing the entire inventory check from scratch. The rest of us get to enjoy watching them sweat it out while we handle our regular duties. It’s glorious.

As they’re counting, I make sure to walk by every so often and ask, “Need any help speeding things up? I could skip a few checks for you if that helps!” The look on Sarah’s face every time is pure rage mixed with embarrassment. She can’t say anything because she knows I’m just doing what she asked for.

By the end of it, we’ve found thousands of dollars in discrepancies. Turns out, rushing through inventory checks leaves a lot of room for errors—who knew? 🙄 The regional manager isn’t happy and Sarah ends up getting a formal warning. She stops harping on us about speed after that and even tries to be extra nice whenever I’m around. Guess she realized that maybe, just maybe, some tasks shouldn’t be rushed.

The best part? A couple of weeks later, I get a small bonus for "outstanding attention to detail" in helping fix the inventory mess. Oh, the irony. Sarah couldn’t even look me in the eye when I got the bonus slip.

And every time she walks by me now, I just give her a friendly smile and say, “Don’t worry, boss, I’m working as fast as you want!”