People Fork Over Their Stories Of Malicious Compliance Revenge

“I (43 F) am a learned landscape gardener, but due to an accident many years ago, can no longer work the actual craft. In 2020, after 12 years of being a stay-at-home mom, I began working in the office of a quite large landscaping firm.

My position was Assistant to Management, with Jack, one of the COOs, as my direct boss. At the time, I did mostly supporting paperwork. A couple of months later, the company hired Becky as a junior manager. She had just finished her master’s degree, and this was her first “real” job, so she had a LOT to learn, and to gain experience.

In the beginning, she relied on me for the paperwork and how our programs worked, and I thought we got along well, even though we were as different as two people can be.

In spring 2021, there were some changes made.

For once, our whole department moved to new office rooms, and Becky and I were put in the same office. Also, I was taken out of day-to-day paperwork to work exclusively on surveying, to get all the measurements needed to correctly bill our clients.

At about that time, our problems started. I am on the ADHD spectrum, so I have habits of unconsciously fiddling, or talking to myself, and other stuff, that bothered her. She needed absolute quiet while working, whereas I prefer to hear music over headphones.

Every time she told me something I did would disturb her, I tried to stop myself from doing that, be it mumbling, listening to music while she is in the office, or even drinking coffee because “your slurping is disgusting.” (Coffee is hot, duh?) I was not allowed to comment on anything concerning her (I am a terribly curious person), and so on.

Even though I love my job and anyone else in the company, that daily repression made me not want to go to work in the morning.

It came to a fist head when one of our foremen was in the office.

She gave him a task, he was annoyed, and I made a fun little comment that made the foreman chuckle (lightened his mood as intended). But after he’d left, she exploded on me about how dare I undermine her authority, and how unrespecting of her position and person I was, after all, SHE was a manager (junior, but who counts?), and I was merely the assistant.

She went to Jack to complain about me, how she could not work with me when I was so obnoxious, yadda yadda… Long story short, Jack is a super chill boss, he talked to me to hear my side, and three days later I moved all my stuff into another, smaller office, where I work ever since.

As I mentioned, I do the surveying for all managers’ projects who need it, and also for Becky. And she was very particular about how the plans had to be laid out, which items had to be on them, and so on.

So when I did a survey and drafted the plans, we had to have several discussions and corrections about minute details none of the other managers cared about. Everybody else, when I had a question regarding their projects, I would go to their office, see if they were free, and ask for the information that I needed, if I could not draw it from the documentation.

Not with Becky. She demanded I make appointments with her to schedule meetings to talk about these issues. That dragged work on her projects to absurd lengths. Also, she would give me deadlines for finishing, and then take one to four weeks before even looking at what I had made.

THEN she would want to discuss that when I was already at the next project over. It was a pain.

In December 2021, we had another falling out when she questioned me about a project that I had finished in October and got mad when I could not immediately recall all the details.

I mumbled something like “Maybe assemble the bill not 2 months after finishing the project,” and she blew up. “How dare you tell me how to do my work! I know what I am doing, and don’t have to put up with a lowly assistant!” I left, and luckily, that was the last day of work in 2021.

In 2022, work started with Becky calling me to her, and instructing me on how we would proceed in the **ture. I was not to talk to her while working unless she approached me first, or if we had a scheduled meeting.

Also, I was only to talk to her about the tasks she had assigned me, nothing else, as it was not my position to tell her how to do her job. Breaks were fair game, but by then, my interest in making conversation with her had faded. So, that’s how it went.

At this point, I have to mention that as part of my job, I sometimes look at the charts of work that has already been done – how much soil has been brought in, how much of which materials have been used, etc. to get an idea of what needs to be included in the survey.

In Becky’s lists, I sometimes noticed typing mistakes, like the surveyed amount of square meters entered when the volume (cubic meters) was demanded, which resulted in too high bills, which led to complaints by the client and a reduction of the bill.

I tried to tell that to Becky, but she stopped me before I really began, pointing out again that I had to focus on my job, and not speak to her unless addressed by her first. O-kay. For other managers, I would simply have corrected the mistake after a quick consultation, but for her – nope.

In the following months, I noticed a couple of these mistakes in her projects, but I kept my mouth shut. Also did not go to Jack about it, because I did not want to appear like I was blackmailing her or something.

Over the summer, I noticed more and more mistakes, and how projects that had been finished in the spring had still not been billed. But somehow Becky found the time to go on summer vacation – twice. I noticed undocumented items, false entries, lacking entries, and other mistakes in the lists of her projects, and said – nothing.

In early August, she had finally assembled the bill for one of her bigger projects that had been finished months ago and forbade anyone to talk to her while she worked on the next.

Then I received an email. The client who had received the aforementioned bill had rejected it, due to the number of mistakes and lack of confirmability.

I had been CCed as the surveyor – but the problem was not my surveys, but that Becky had not transferred the results correctly. The client denied payment and demanded an immediate correction. The sum was around 250,000€, money the company had been waiting for, for months by that time.

This was serious, so I decided to break my silence and tell Becky. She saw me through the glass door, and before my hand touched the handle, she yelled “Don’t talk to me!” Well, then… what’s a girl to do?

Wait. For about 15 minutes, until my super chill boss, who’d been walking his dog over lunch break, returned to his computer. Of course, he had been CCed as well, and his roar made the walls shake. Jack went to Becky’s office and tore her a new one, afterwards came to me and asked me to please correct the lists as far as I am able.

In the following days, he went through all of Becky’s projects, and needless to say: She’s been gone since September.

She wanted me to do everything her way, and I tried to comply with so much crap. In the end, I complied so much, it got her fired.”