People Grant Us Access To Their Malicious Compliance Revenge Stories
25. Underestimate My Sudoku Skills? I'll Prove You Wrong
“Every once in a while, I think about this story while I’m idly playing sudoku on my phone and it makes me smile.
I don’t want to go into too much detail here but some background is needed. A few years ago when I was in grad school, I was with a man who was several years older than me who had just finished his master’s at the same school (a completely different program but both in the realm of STEM) and started a company based on that work.
He seemed to have a chip on his shoulder about the fact that he went back to school in his late 20s and the fact that I was in a Ph.D. program. I need to emphasize I did not think I was better or smarter than him in any way, and I thought and still think he is incredibly smart and his company does fascinating work.
But, he still projected this inferiority complex on me and it was one of many things that soured our relationship. He was obsessed with feeling smarter than me and bringing me down a peg. The relationship ran its course within a year and the breakup was messy, but he insisted on remaining friends despite a lot of obvious tension between us.
One day he asked me to help him pick up a moving truck he needed for work and I agreed, but when I got in the car we were kind of quiet for a couple of minutes so I pulled out my phone and finished the sudoku game I had up in my browser.
For some context, I am incredibly good at sudoku relative to most people. This is because I obsessively solved sudoku puzzles as a kid and just had big books of them to solve on long bus rides to school, and it’s still my go-to game to play while waiting in line, pooping, etc. I don’t really correlate this with intelligence; my brain is just trained to recognize the patterns and solving them is soothing.
He looked over and saw I was playing and asked what app I played on. I said I just play on a certain website I like and when he asked why I don’t use a sudoku app I tried to be as neutral as possible in my response and said that the website had a nice spread of difficulty and that every app I tried had either been all too easy or too hard (admittedly, it’s almost always too easy, but because of aforementioned inferiority complex I was hedging this on purpose).
He had a kind of “oh really?” response and insisted I try the app he has on his phone because he was sure I would find it hard. So, I maliciously complied.
I opened up the hardest setting of the puzzle in his app and solved it in about a minute, beating the record on his phone by at least a minute and a half.
I showed it to him and he seemed alarmed and basically said I got lucky. So, I played several more times so that my times flooded the fastest times list until his were all gone.
His shock and frustration at this were satisfying on their own, but MANY months later when I had long forgotten about it, he randomly sent me a screenshot of his puzzle in that app with a faster time—except it was for the easiest puzzle setting.
So of course to be petty, I immediately downloaded the app, played on the easiest setting, beat his time by a significant margin again, and sent a screenshot. Was this mean? Maybe. Was it satisfying?
Yes.”
24. Make Sure To Follow The Correct Methods? I'll Follow Them To A T
“I, (30m), work as a cleaner in a school for special needs children. I’m good at what I do and I take pride in coming in every day to make sure that both the children and the teachers that work there have a clean and safe environment to work in.
Some backstory: before I started working at this location in April 2022, they’ve had a lot of bad luck with hiring cleaners, as the branch we’re in technically falls under specialized cleaning and not general cleaning.
In the first four months of 2022, they’ve had 15 cleaners who all stopped showing up or were fired for another reason. This has caused the general custodian of this special needs school (my direct supervisor) to be skeptical of any new cleaner that comes in, which is very fair.
Now, I like to give 110% at work. Whether that’s smart or not, I’m not sure, but I like to leave my work knowing that I gave it my all. That is why, when I saw the daily/weekly task list and had done an online course on how to effectively clean, I knew that in practice, that would leave a very messy workplace, since not everything would be cleaned correctly.
Imagine a desk of a child that has a single eraser on it. According to my online course from the company, that disqualifies that entire desk for cleaning. I won’t be allowed to clean it.
Furthermore, if chairs are not at the desk, I’m now allowed to sweep or mop under them. Because ‘it’s not the cleaner’s job.’
As such, I’ve been making some really positive changes to my work schedule, daily/weekly task list, and the way that I do things to not only meet the minimal requirements that my company asks for but also to go above and beyond, be flexible with the teachers, engage with the students and leave a beautiful workspace.
This went great for a while.
Now, the custodian has, for some reason, been getting way more critical of my work. The smallest speck of dust missed or a small drop of coffee spilled somewhere (that happened AFTER I was done with work), and he’s blowing up my phone with text messages that I need to do things differently.
In a wasteful way, or telling me first thing when I come in that I need to take my work more seriously. This morning, he told me: “Try and stick to the planning and the correct methods.” So I told him that I would.
Now, I started to follow the paper list with daily tasks and my methods completely to a T. Every lazy method that I knew would leave the classrooms and the bathrooms in a horrible state.
The trash cans need emptying? Nope. Not on my list. One piece of paper on a filthy desk? No longer my problem. Spills in the hallways? Looks like mopping the floor isn’t on today’s task list, sorry!
The entire place looked horrible. I had to hold myself back to not do more than the list because I hate leaving work unfinished, but I was finally done.
I approached the teachers of the classrooms that I had to clean today beforehand, explained the situation, and promised them to give their classrooms a proper cleaning the next day because they and the students shouldn’t be the victim of my malicious compliance, but they were in on it.
They even agreed to give their signature on my task list to sign off that they think I did all of the work correctly.
Naturally, the custodian didn’t like my work today. And we had a good heart-to-heart for a moment.
I told him that I really appreciate that he wants to safeguard the quality of my work, it’s what they pay me for after all. But I hope that I have shown him, and some teachers, that I go above and beyond daily.
And that today’s work (that looked like a mess!) was my company’s standard. I also let him know that the constant badgering was incredibly unmotivating, it was really putting a damper on my spirits.
I told him that I’d be doing my work normally again tomorrow, and he said he appreciated all the work I usually do and that he’d try to be more flexible as well and put more trust in me.
All’s well that ends well I suppose. I just want to make sure that these special needs children have a clean school to learn, laugh, and play in after all.”
23. Start My Shift 10 Minutes After Everyone Else? Gotcha
“So this happened last year.
I work for a shipping company. Boxes come out of a shipping container, get scanned into the system, and put onto a system of conveyor belts.
The boxes then come down the belts to a line of workers, who remove said boxes from said conveyor belts and load them into delivery trucks.
I work at the end of one of these belts.
This spot is special because not only do I have to load my own delivery trucks, but I also get the boxes that others missed further up the belt. I have to take these off and put them aside in a special cart for someone to put back into the system later.
At the beginning of each shift, we also unload from those delivery trucks the boxes that the drivers were unable to deliver. They go on the belt, I take them off the belt and put them in the cart.
Because where I am is at the end of this whole process, we have the time to do this before new boxes get fed to us, and so I have the time to take care of these missed boxes before new boxes get to me.
So as you can see, my job starts at the same time as everyone else’s. Then my shift was pushed back ten minutes. You see, because I am at the very end of the end of this whole process, upper management decided they can save some money by having me start a little bit later.
After all, it takes maybe ten minutes for the new boxes to exit the shipping containers before they would ever get to me.
Because their logic is sound, and because the system logs what my start time is, and because I do not start getting paid for my time until then, I decided to wait ten minutes later than everyone else before doing any work.
I warn my belt’s supervisor I’m doing this, not that he can do anything about it (or had any decision in changing my start time). So now when the shift begins, several dozen packages begin piling up at the end of the belt.
These are often ridiculously heavy packages in crumbling boxes, which the drivers left behind because they didn’t want to deal with them.
My supervisor has to get someone else who is on the clock to deal with these packages, which annoys them.
The guy who moves the special cart to deposit these boxes back into the system is annoyed because he’s accustomed to it being ready about ten minutes after the shift begins. I’m annoyed because I have to deal with this pile-up of boxes before I can begin dealing with the new ones coming down the belt.
My supervisor is annoyed because this distraction at the end of the belt prevents them from doing other parts of the job until it’s dealt with. The managers are annoyed because I’m sitting on my butt for ten minutes before I’m able to fix this mess.
This lasted for about two weeks before I noticed my start time was now the same as everyone else’s.”
22. Abandon My Workstation? You Might Lose Thousands Of Bucks, But I'll Do What You Asked
“I am a forklift driver for a supply company in the automotive industry, which means I am supplying the raw materials to the line where they would get processed into the final products, like door covers, handles, cupholders, etc. My company has usually 6-8 forklift drivers in the morning and mid-day shift (6 am-2 pm and 2 to 10 pm respectively) and 1 or 2 for the night shift in which production is basically non-existent and maintenance/cleaning & tool changes in the machines take place.
Today I was assigned to the injection molding line, which is the first and most crucial step of ALL production of the entire location. If this line stands, the entire factory stands still, costing about $1,250 per minute in material losses plus wages.
The thing is, due to vacation season and the heatwave, the production was slowed down considerably from (as my workplace states) 120% to 70%. So we are already short-staffed, even for 70%. Instead of 6-8 forklift drivers, we were 3, one for the injection mold, one for the attached warehouse, and one for the assembly.
This means, nobody unloads or loads the trucks that are frequenting the factory. In their downtime (so in the mid-day shift, the entire shift), usually, the manager would be required to handle these tasks.
So, as one of the faster workers and because I don’t have to look at the logistic plans all the time and know where all the places are, I help where I can in the assembly.
Plus, my station and assembly are right next to each other.
Management sees what I’m doing and thinks that my station has a problem if I don’t work my butt off to keep the timing of the machines.
Then they order me to unload and reload three trucks. Unloading a truck and clearing away the raw materials costs about 10-15 minutes. Loading takes about 5 minutes because the shipment is readied beforehand and put next to the loading bay.
This means I wouldn’t be at my workstation for about 20 minutes.
The problem is that the injection molding machine works on an automated schedule and needs to be resupplied exactly every 6 minutes due to the size of the containers, which hold the granulate.
But being an efficient (read lazy) worker, I usually prep for about 18 minutes to cut down on travel distance and time if things get busy. I work my butt off to keep my current task inside the said 18-minute timeline, knowing very well where the blame goes if the factory comes to a standstill because of no supplies.
But just as I was to drive back to my workstation, Manager comes to me and demands that I have to unload and load the next one as well, whilst he takes his 30-minute break.
I don’t want to, but I am technically not a worker there but a contract employee, which meant that I am not covered under labor laws for the specific workplace I am assigned to. Think of it as a subcontractor who basically rents employees to companies for a given amount of time.
So Manager can just tell me to not come to work anymore, without any issue. Sure, my company has to continue to pay me, but I get a $3.20 bonus per hour on my base pay just to work at this company, which is on a voluntary basis for the contracted companies.
Off to work I went.
Of course, the entire factory came to a standstill just 5 minutes later, but management was out of house on break and I had specific orders to unload and load this truck.
And I took my sweet time since I had a co-worker to back me up. And of course, Manager was absolutely livid as he came back from break. I caused the factory to lose about $42,600 because the production stopped.”
21. Insist I Let Your Kid Watch My Movie With Me? Fine, But It's Not Exactly Kid-Friendly
“I won’t lie, I find this rather funny. Recently, my friends and I have been playing Predator: Hunting Grounds and I’ve become interested in watching the Predator movies. As such, I’ve rented the entire series so I can watch them.
This Sunday, my mom told us that she invited Entitled Mother and Entitled Father over to visit.
Me “Cool, are they bringing their three kids?”
Mom “Yes, that won’t be an issue. Will it?”
Me “Hope not.”
By this point, I’d started the movie “Predators” and had closed my door. Partway through, I heard them arrive and decided to stay in my room. I wanted to watch my movie, and Super-Mormons weren’t going to like it.
A little while later, I heard my door open. I hit pause.
Me “You ever heard of knocking?”
Entitled Child 3, “I want to watch TV!”
Me “Not only no, but I’m watching my movie on MY setup.
You need to leave my room. Now.”
“Schreeches in Eldritch Horror” and storms off
Me “Crap.”
I make my way upstairs to avoid being shouted for. As soon as I enter the living room, I get bombarded.
Entitled Mother, “What is this about you telling my child that they can’t watch TV?”
Me “Firstly, they barged into my room. And yes, my door was closed. Secondly, yes. I told them that they couldn’t watch TV on my computer.
I’m already watching something, and I don’t like others using my computer.”
“Just let him watch TV. He can finish your movie with you.”
“That is a VERY bad idea. Like 10/10 bad idea.”
Entitled Father, “Geeze, are you slow or something?
Just do what she said.”
Me “Fine. Only if you’re sure.”
Entitled Mother, “YES!”
Me, “Okay then.”
Entitled Children 1-3 all get the same look of smug success. I make my way back downstairs, and Entitled Child 3 is going on about how he wants to watch all these children’s shows.
I just keep my mouth shut; I didn’t want to teach him any new words.
Upon reaching my room, I pull up a spare chair for him. I sit in my chair and hit play.
A little bit of time passes, and Entitle Child 3 is looking a bit scared.
Hitting pause.
Me “Last chance, you really want to be here?”
“Don’t make me tell my mom on you.”
Hits play.
By about this point, the protagonists enter an abandoned drill. They soon found out that the guy that led them, is betraying them. The main character then attracts the Predators to the drill.
I’m keeping an eye on both the screen and EC 3.
He had only heard the sound of the predators and was starting to freak out. By now, the Predators appear. The betrayer then gets blown apart by one Predator’s shoulder cannon.
He freaked out. He shot out the door and right up the stairs.
Hitting pause, I follow at a leisurely pace. Upon hitting the top, I start getting yelled at by his mother.
Entitled Mother, “How dare you do this to my baby! You’re a horrible person to watch something so horrid!
I demand that you make it right immediately!”
“Excuse the heck out of me!? YOU demanded that I let your child watch MY movie!”
“You never said that it was inappropriate!”
“If I’m not mistaken, you and your husband Entitled Father DISMISSED me saying it was a BAD idea!”
About five seconds of pure silence ensues, only to be broken by my phone going off. As my text tone fills the room at full volume, Entitled Child 3 freezes in fear. The Predator sound filled the room.
Unfreezing, he breaks down crying. My dad starts laughing.
Entitled Mother, “Well, I never!”
Entitled Father, “How did he…”
They then left.
Post. Script.”
20. Get Antsy At The Dentist's Office? She'll Go So Slow That You Won't Have Time For Your Appointment
“A couple of years ago, I scheduled my semi-annual dental cleaning. I arrive at the clinic a couple of days later thinking it’s going to be the usual routine. Nope.
My appointment was at 4:30 pm.
The dentist closed the shop at 5:30 pm. I was already there at 4. I always make sure to arrive at least half an hour early to make sure I’m on time. The reason being my dentist is a stickler for the 15-minute rule.
If you’re late 15 minutes for your appointment, she’ll move on to the next on the list.
This particular day, the lady (henceforth named Karen) before me was a no-show, so I walked into the clinic with the dentist doing nothing.
Since I was last on her list, my dentist figured she’ll just take care of me first and do Karen after–if she ever shows up.
Sometime later, Karen does show up and speaks to my dentist’s assistant.
“Oh, I was late because yadda yadda yadda…” At this point, the dentist has already started with the plaque removal on my pearly whites. Karen was asked to wait as she was moved to the last of the list because of her lateness.
Now, her being moved is already generous. Normally, she’d be asked to reschedule for another day even if my dentist still had time to check her out.
Of course, Karen was furious. Didn’t think it was fair that her spot was given to me considering she scheduled that particular time (despite being at least 40 minutes late).
Still, she sits down and waits, albeit with the attitude of a kid who was just told no more ice cream.
Now the clinic itself was small. It was basically one big room with a smaller room (where the dentist did her work).
The outer area served mostly as a waiting room with two desks tucked in a corner. The couch where patients sat faced the entrance of the smaller room, offering a partial view of the inside.
The operations room (?) was always kept open for proper air circulation. Its walls were also only semi-opaque glass, so I could clearly hear whatever was happening on the outside and see fuzzy, but still distinguishable outlines.
Every few minutes or so, Karen would talk loudly about things taking too long, etc., etc. She would also constantly take a peek at what my dentist was doing. Then she said something like, “My God!
Could this be any slower? If I went to Doc ____, I’d probably be done by now.”
I guess the comment about the other dentist being faster ticked off my otherwise patient dentist. The dentist noticeably froze and narrowed her eyes.
She straightened up, did a second of thinking, bent down to me, and whispered: “You don’t need to pay for today if you play along.” So I did. I was done with work anyway.
I only scheduled a dental cleaning for that day, but she also filled up a cavity, took an X-ray of my teeth, and proceeded to explain what she found on the X-ray.
All this, she did in an exaggeratedly slow way. Easily stretched things out until closing time.
So Karen had to wait, only to be told that she won’t be seen that day. The best thing was that with every peek, she’d see my dentist going comically slow.
She obviously tried to complain, but my dentist simply just told her if she had only arrived on time, then she’d be done already. Closing time was closing time; she’ll have to reschedule.
I lingered a bit just so I can watch.
In the end, Karen left with a sour face, and my dentist just laughed. I later found out that Karen never returned to the clinic. Didn’t hurt my dentist’s business one bit. And I got my teeth looked at for free thanks to Karen.”
19. Stop Sending You Contracts For Small Jobs? Will Do
“This was several years ago when I was working as an Installs Coordinator for a department store.
If you wanted work done, anything from installing a toilet to building a garage, you’d come to me. I’d give you a quick estimate and if you were on board after that, send a contractor out to your site to do exact measurements, if needed. Then I would work out your exact material and labor costs from there, quote you out, and keep in the loop with the contractor, mostly so I could help work out anything that might delay the work.
Contractors are paid a set rate, usually per unit, foot, or square foot. They also get a flat $50 for the initial site visit whether or not the customer goes through with the project. I occasionally got calls from frustrated tradesmen who felt these 50-buck visits were a waste of their time, but since those visits typically took under an hour including travel, and I was making three dollars over minimum wage, I couldn’t drum up a whole lot of sympathy for these complaints.
Most of our contractors came in two categories: Bigger companies that generally had a liaison who wanted to keep their business partners happy, and individual tradesmen or father/son businesses where the person I spoke to on the phone would be the one doing the work.
I was fortunate enough to be trained by my predecessor who remained at the store but had stepped down to take a less stressful position, so I could go to him for advice more importantly, he helped me quickly build a rapport with the people I worked with.
This would become important because I had wide discretion in how I divided up the jobs but many of our partners were fairly specialized or simply preferred certain kinds of work, a fact that our systems weren’t set up to accommodate.
Officially I was meant to rotate through lists. I used this plumber last time so use that one this time, etc. There was no metric in place to track that I was doing that, however, nor any interest in enforcing it.
As a result, I could send more work to people I knew were in a bad financial spot, skip somebody who I knew was planning a vacation or had a sick worker, etc.
Maybe a couple of months into the job, I got a phone call from a bigger construction company on my list, turning down a site measure I had sent him to fence a yard.
I pulled his file up on screen for the call, as I was wont to do, and realized that he had kicked back the last three jobs I’d sent to him.
He demanded I “stop sending me these chicken crap little jobs.
I’m not interested in anything under a hundred grand.”
His file listed him for fences, decks, garages, etc but there was nothing in his contract about a minimum job size, and I’d have been surprised if there was.
So I just told him sure and ended the phone call, then put a note on his file not to use the company.
The price of lumber doubled that summer, and the combination of four refused site measures in a row along with not doing any work for us over a certain number of months automatically ended his preferred contractor status with us, meaning he was paying more for materials.
He paid close enough attention to his business to stop work he didn’t like from coming in but never noticed that his materials costs went through the roof overnight. I know the company had a rough couple of years after that.
As far as I know, they’re still in business, but I hope that dude has mellowed out a little in how he talks to the people who help put work across his desk. We were never a big slice of his income, but I like to hope my “small” malicious compliance helped put just a little more of a squeeze on him.”
18. You NEED An Address? Well, He's Not Alive, So I Can Give You His Plot Number
What a horrible policy!
“My dad passed away when I was 10 years old, and this story takes place about a year or two afterward.
I honestly don’t remember exactly how long it had been since a lot had been going on to blur those years together, but I do remember my mom was still very distraught about his death.
I think this was one of the first times I actually saw her leave the house since his passing. Also, I’m naturally very tiny, so while I was probably like, 12, I definitely looked at least half that.
On this fateful day, I had to go to the doctor’s office. I think I had pink eye, but again, I don’t really remember. My mom sat me down in the little receptionist’s office and grabs the paperwork to fill out.
My mom’s always used humor to deflect her pain, so it wasn’t strange to hear her mumble “Second guardian/parent address… I don’t know how Heaven’s addressing system works… Guess that’s gonna be left blank.”
What was strange was when she returned to the receptionist counter. I was bored out of my mind, and it was a tiny waiting room, so all I could do was watch the scene unfold.
My mom turns to come to sit with me again but is stopped “excuse me, ma’am?”
My mom turns back around to face the receptionist, “yes?”
“You didn’t finish your paperwork.”
My mom, ready to do her job and ensure her daughter had medical care asap, grabs the paperwork off the counter.
She flips through it, “No, looks like I got it all.”
“Ma’am, we need a second parent listed.”
“Oh, um, he’s no longer in the picture.”
“I’m sorry, but I still need an address.”
My mom lowers her voice, almost too quiet to hear, “I mean he passed recently.
I don’t have an address.”
“Ma’am, I can’t file the paperwork without one.”
Her voice is no longer lowered, “…He’s dead. I can’t give you one.”
“Then I can’t file the paperwork.”
“So you’re telling me I need my deceased husband’s current address to get my daughter looked at?”
“Yes, ma’am. I can’t file the paperwork until it’s been completed.”
My mom isn’t normally one to make a scene. Especially not somewhere like a doctor’s office. Keyword – normally.
I watch my mom open her mouth, close it, take in a deep breath, and nod.
My mom then spoke loud, I almost think she embellished the heartbreak in her voice, making sure everyone and anyone could hear her, “Well, I hope a plot number works for my husband’s address because that’s all I can give you!”
The woman immediately starts to panic. There’s no way her bosses didn’t just hear that, and I could already see people standing up, I assume to defend my mom’s honor. She started trying to take the paper from my mom’s hands, “No!
No no, don’t worry, I don’t need one! This is good enough!”
She glared at the woman, “No, you said you can’t file without an address, so I’m giving you one.”
My mom’s also super stubborn when she gets frustrated. She held onto those papers like they were my dad’s final words.
Tears were streaming down her face, though I’m still not sure if it was from anger, grief, or an equal mix of both as she scribbled out his plot number. She didn’t move from the desk, but it didn’t matter.
Everyone was looking at her in stunned silence. My mom had to grab her phone to get the proper number, which involved returning to our seats where her purse was. Everyone turned to glare at the receptionist when they saw my poor mom had a child.
When she did return with her phone, a different woman was standing up front. She politely told my mom the plot number wasn’t necessary, apologized about the other person, and told her she could happily return to her seat if she likes.
Did I already mention my mother is stubborn when livid? The tears were still coming, but my mom had a blank expression, “You cannot file my paperwork without a second parent’s address. I will provide you with one,” and after a second of navigating her phone, confirmed what she wrote down was correct, and returned to our seats.
The other receptionist did not return while we were there. I also remember my mom being pleasantly surprised when she went over the bill for that. Got a hefty discount, like 60% off.”
17. Force Me To Take Off My Hat? Wait Until You See What's Under It
There’s always an exception to every rule.
“The car accident I was in was of the side impact variety, and it was brutal. This was in the days before airbags and seatbelt laws. One second I’m driving and the next I’m halfway out the passenger window watching b***d run off my head to pool in the glass of a previously closed window.
Another second ticks by, and I’m in the ER receiving thirteen crude stitches for eleven inches of my wide-open scalp. I lost more than two pints of b***d and a large patch of hair.
I also lost my favorite white fishnet t-shirt, but that’s a separate tragedy.
That Friday of a Labor Day weekend was how my name shows up in the newspaper list of “Labor Day Weekend Accidents.” Tuesday comes and I go to class at the local college.
Being a teenager gave me the gift of immortality. There I was, fully ambulatory, just four days after a serious car accident. For the sake of propriety, I’m wearing a hat to cover the fresh injury.
It was a white Panama hat with a bright 80s-style hatband. As this was 1983, everything was 80s style, but that’s a separate tragedy.
Hobbling along, I make it to Sociology just as class was beginning.
I take a seat at the back of the class and settle in.
The conversation went something like this:
“Excuse me? Could you remove your hat please?” The teacher had her own sense of propriety.
My hat didn’t fit with proper classroom attire.
“I was in a car accident,” I replied.
Did she hear my words, or was one of her rude students muttering another in a career-long list of excuses?
Likely the latter was the case.
“Take the hat off. You cannot wear that in my class,” indicated she was not happy with my hat. Not at all.
Well, okay then.
Off comes my hat.
Roughly a third of my hair had been shaved off. The wound was pink and puckered. The seam had a line of dried b***d in it. The wound began an inch beyond my missing hairline and continued back, branching into a ‘Y’ shape.
The surgeon’s instructions were to keep the wound clean, dry, and unbandaged. Luckily for all in attendance, my mother had washed my scalp the previous day. She used the word “gore” at some point to describe what was washing off.
Imagine you’re one of my classmates. Whatever you would say at that point would be something I heard from my classmates and friends.
“Ahhh, you can put your hat back on,” said the teacher.
Not before a little malicious compliance, I won’t.
“But I can’t wear hats in class,” I replied. “I mean, I can do it, but not if I’m breaking the rules.”
“Please put your hat on.”
“Okay. If you insist,” and the hat went back on my head.
My advice is not to engage in malicious compliance on the first day of class. Not in a course where the teacher gives essay questions. That was the only ‘C’ I received that semester, but that’s a separate tragedy.”
Another User Comments:
“How many separate tragedies do you have to have before your life is just basically one big tragedy?
Asking for a friend.” FamedLoser
16. Give Me A New Job Description With Lower Pay? Less Work For Me
“I applied for a job to install equipment for a large company that sells cleaning and sanitation chemicals and tools to every place you can imagine, they have a separate pest control branch and hospital supplier branch.
I applied to install their leased equipment but was immediately promoted to sales and service in a bait-and-hook scheme. It was 25% more hours, on-call 24 hours, some weekends, but they did the math, so the annual pay was the same.
They “couldn’t” give me a raise within the first 2 years but apparently could bend the promotion before 2 years rule. Whatever, I needed to get promoted to a salary position anyway.
I talked to my district manager; he agreed to let me work 5 more hours of overtime a week and sell new accounts.
Giving me more pay and working towards a promotion. I got many recognitions, met with global management to share my ideas, was on product development teams as a field tester, 6 of my ideas were rolled out nationally, and I was still second from the bottom of the chain.
Got promoted to a salary and commission sales and service role (40-hour weeks, no lease machines, no late-night calls), and used my sales skills to make 3-4k a month above my old salary just in commissions.
4 months in this role, they bring us all in and tell us they are removing all salary positions, and everyone was getting new titles with lower pay. They were going to reassess pay in 4 months.
I told my boss’s boss it wasn’t a 50-hour-a-week job; I can do it in 40. We agreed if I did it in 40 with the highest numbers in my district, they would adjust pay during reassessment.
I was now making less than I was hired 2/3 of my salary for the same job. I drained my savings to make it work. 4 months passed, and after 10 emails that I escalated until the manager of the entire west coast operations was included, did my boss tell me they had no intentions of adjusting anyone’s pay.
Fine. I am hourly now; I will be hourly now. Get paid for phone calls? I will clock in. Every. Single. Call. I get paid for commute? I will take the long, slow route. I get paid for answering emails?
My emails will be very detailed with all the product info I can find. You want me to talk to customers? Every customer wants a long conversation. Sales is out of my job description? I sell nothing, no new customers, no product suggestions unless asked, no extra tools (unless the customer is struggling; I’m not a monster).
Invoice issues? Above my pay grade, they can wait on hold with customer support. Customers can’t call our work phones directly? No requested service until I get a work order from customer support. Against state law to transport chemicals?
No chemical runs to customers that under order.
My customers need my attention, it’s not in my job description to order more than I use, and no one else stocks or organizes our shared storage.
The state law says we only work 5 out of every 7 days? Those 2 days my work phone is off. If a coworker on coverage needs a part ASAP? They should have restocked our shared storage because my perfectly stocked work truck is parked and locked. No one to restock storage?
I run out of stock on the weekend and storage is out? The customer will be down until Monday.
It takes me 10 minutes to fix what it takes other people more than an hour. Someday they will call me after 6 hours on an issue, and I will solve it in 3 minutes over the phone.
I am “working” 55 hours a week. Only 10 of that is actual work; 25 of that is driving and listening to podcasts, 20 is chatting or waiting for customers to notice I am there. My numbers are still the best in the district.
The hours and flexibility and benefits are good but still looking for a new job. I can only be bored to tears for so long.”
15. Get Petty About Your Precious Coconut That Hit My Car? Have Your Stupid Coconut Back, And Here's A Bill
All over a freaking tropical fruit!
“Our building and the neighboring building have a small wall between the two, and on either side of the wall, we have parking areas. Around 5 cars are parked on our side, and 3 on their side, but on their side, they also have a coconut tree that grows on the ground of that building, the tree leans over into the parking area of our building, and many a time the coconuts fall and sometimes they hit the cars parked below.
(We do not have a roof/shed above the car parking area even though it’s been discussed in the building. It’s a separate issue I won’t get into the details of; it’s just that they don’t want to spend the money on it.
Whenever a coconut does fall, the people of the neighboring building always come over to claim the coconut saying, “The tree is on our grounds hence the coconut is ours” and are very rude about it even though no one in our building bothers with taking the coconut nor wants to do anything with it.
The only problem we hold with the coconuts is that they damage our cars quite often, and we’ve asked the neighboring building to do something about their tree because the tree lies on their grounds, and we can’t do anything about it.
This time, it was my car’s turn. It was parked under the tree and at about 7 in the morning, one of the coconuts fell and hit the windshield of my car, completely destroying it, and denting the front hood of the car after bouncing off the windshield.
I heard the beeping noise from my car and immediately went to check on it, and lo and behold, I find the people of the neighboring building on their way to take the coconut, now I don’t really care about the coconut, nor did I want it, I probably would’ve thrown it away anyways… but they could’ve taken the coconut away before I reached, and I would’ve had no idea what happened to my car and how it happened, let alone explaining it to the people at the insurance.
(Though, thankfully we have CCTVs that would’ve shown me clearly what happened if I’d asked the society to show me the footage). I was extremely mad that they didn’t have any form of sympathy, and they had the audacity to be rude about it telling me that the coconut is theirs, and they don’t care what happened to the car, but an idea brewed in my mind.
Since I had CCTV footage of the coconut hitting the car, and the neighboring building loved to scream at the top of their lungs about how the tree is theirs and hence so are the fruits of it (yes coconuts are fruits), I just claimed the amount on them, considering the damage was caused by their property.
They were mad when they were sent a letter about the situation and on learning the fact that they had to pay for the damages caused, a couple of them immediately rushed to my home, essentially shouting at me for why I did it, and I simply said, “You can keep your coconuts all you want, but your coconut broke my car, and now you have to pay for it.” The society funds had to dish out approximately 200 bucks, (which is a lot in India by the way), and they weren’t happy about it at all.
Since then 2 coconuts have fallen from the tree (thankfully no cars were hurt those times), and I didn’t see anyone try to come and take the coconuts. They had to pay for trying to be petty about a 35-cent coconut (eh, I’d say 10-20 coconuts in the past maybe 3 years, so like $7 worth of coconuts).”
14. Want Us To Call You Every Hour Until Your Problem Is Fixed? You Got It!
“So I work at a pretty big tech company as a help desk agent and as any help desk employee, I’ve had my fair share of crazy customers, like this one who we shall call Karen.
We would mainly answer the phone and emails and then log in tickets to our system for handling all the issues customers would require us to solve. Each logged ticket will cause the customer to be billed the standard help desk fee and then it would add up depending on how long it takes, the parts needed, etc.
So one morning Karen calls in and asks about a ticket she had logged like two hours ago. I go and check the status and see it was a pretty standard account request for one of her employees and it was already being handled by the team that creates these particular accounts.
This account was for an outside system for which we only provide the accounts and they have their own support for problems. Due to synchronization after we create the account, it takes roughly 24 hours for it to be functional and this is quite well known for the managers who usually request them to be created.
I inform Karen that the account is being created right now and she should be getting a confirmation about it soon. I also remind her that it can take about 24 hours for it to be functional.
As soon as I said these things, her tone changed immediately and she informed me quite annoyingly that this was very urgent and it should be functional faster. We talk for a little while longer and I explain to her why exactly it takes this long, and finally, she seemed to understand, and we end the call.
About an hour later one of my colleagues sends me a message asking if I’ve talked to this lady before and tells me she’s calling again, angry and demanding that the account should be made faster.
Once again they explain the same things I did and they end the call. About another hour later I answer a call and it’s Karen again, even angrier and practically yelling that the account needs to be created now.
I check the ticket again and see it has been completed so the account should be working tomorrow. I tell this to Karen and she is not happy. She starts to yell all sorts of things and says that this is not how we should do things, and again I inform her that the system she needs the account for is not ours and this is something we can’t do anything about, but she won’t have it.
She then calmly informs me that if this is how we do things then she will be calling us every hour to waste our time until the account is done, I can almost hear the smirk on her face as she says this.
Now even though she was being extremely rude, I didn’t want to be a jerk and tried to inform her that every time she calls we are required to log in a ticket, and her company will be charged the standard help desk fee, but as I try to tell this, she just cuts me off and refuses to listen, so at this point, I say alright; call us if you want.
So then she proceeds to call us every hour for the rest of her workday, and the next morning, I get a few of her calls and just always repeat the same thing, “Account will be working within 24 hours.” And each time she calls me or one of my colleagues, we log in a ticket and move on.
Eventually, the calls stopped, presumably because the account was finally functional, and we didn’t hear from her again. I haven’t heard if she got into any trouble for it, but she must have generated quite a bill for her company over nothing.”
13. Want To Buy My Crappy House Above Market Value? Nobody's Stopping You!
Not much of an investor, I see.
“My parents and their neighbor bought homes in an up-and-coming part of Florida 20 years ago…talking 1/2 acre lots with 2500 square foot homes for like $130,000. Our neighbor’s home was a little smaller than my parents, no pool, and over the 20 years the only thing done to the house was a new roof.
Nothing else had been changed; everything was still the original – appliances, paint, ac unit, cabinets, tile, and carpet. I wish I could say she took care of it and never needed to change things, but that wasn’t the case….and the neighbor’s house looks 20 years old.
Well, she is a widow and the house is huge for just her, so she decided to sell and take advantage of the market. She listed it for $400,000. Despite her never having put a penny into it, the house goes on a bidding war, and the top bidder is an investor from California.
She offers to pay $30,000 over asking, pay the closing costs, and can do it the same day.
Cue malicious compliance.
The investor woman had two stipulations: our neighbor takes the house off the market immediately, and she turns over the key to her management company with the payment for the home held in escrow until the key was turned over and our neighbor’s side of the paperwork is done.
Now our neighbor was upfront with this woman and the state of the home and asked if she wanted to have her management company come look at it first.
The woman says “no, I’m renting the house and it doesn’t need to be painted, just pull it off the market!” This woman essentially bought the home for about $450,000 when it was all said and done.
So our neighbor immediately goes to the management company office with her realtor, signs her paperwork, hands over the key, and gets the check for the home.
A few days later, our neighbor gets a call from an investor lady.
She is irate! The house is in disarray. It needs a paint job asap. New appliances and flooring at the least. She demands that our neighbor paint the house. She won’t take ownership of the home until that is done, to which our neighbor responds to her, “It’s not my home anymore.
It was signed over to you, and the check was handed to me and cleared. That house is no longer my problem. Enjoy!”
This story all came about because yesterday my parents called our old neighbor: there was a for sale sign on the house again and we were confused. Our old neighbor promptly showed up and told us the story and we are all laughing hysterically because the woman has it listed for $430,000 – which anyone with eyes to tour it would never pay, and even if she did get it, she’d still be losing a crap ton of profit.
Who doesn’t love a story when greedy investors trying to inflate the market lose and lose big?”
12. Lie About A Gluten Allergy? I'm Sorry, I Can't Possibly Let You Order Some Of Our Menu Items
“I cook or wait tables depending on how long it takes me to get fed up with one or the other and I need a change.
We always have to be very conscious of allergies in food service as it can be life or death for some people for shellfish allergies, nut allergies, celiacs, etc.
Enter the gluten-free trend crowd.
While I recognize some people have a legit allergy, there are so many that are trying to be trendy.
The big difference is that a person with a true allergy has an already general idea of what they can and cannot have and will start the whole process off before ordering by letting you know what said allergy is, which we appreciate as it saves time.
No big deal. The trendy gluten-free peeps need to tell you three times throughout their order, and then always end up back-tracking after they find out that basically everything they desire to order either contains gluten or is potentially cross-contaminated.
I was waiting this time around and I started getting tired of hearing about it. We had a particular almost daily regular who would tell us every time about her gluten intolerance, tell all the people sitting near her about it, then proceed to order items that had gluten.
I was having a bad day. She comes in. Does her normal spiel about being allergic to gluten, I say “Yup.” Wasn’t sufficient enough attention for her. She emphasizes what it does to her delicate system because she’s allergic.
She orders the usual. Food is cooked and prepared in the fryers… which have had gluten-ridden food fried in them all day. I’m thoroughly annoyed now having to listen to her graphic details about her gut and the effects from gluten.
I, as usual, inform her the fryers are cooked in with items containing gluten. As she says the normal “Oh that’s fine.” I have an evil idea pop into my head. “Ma’am, you just said you’re allergic to gluten.
I cannot in good conscience put this restaurant or my job at risk by serving you food that you will have an allergic reaction to. I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to pick another item.”
She’s shocked. Starts backtracking. I stand firm. “No. I’m sorry, but I just can’t do it. If you get sick from the food because I was careless about your allergy then I could lose my job.
These are the items you can choose from today.”
Calls the manager over.
The manager backs me up after hearing the story. (The manager was tired of her too.)
The lady indignantly orders one of the items I listed to save face.
Obviously no tip, but I don’t care; it was worth it.
Still came back two days later miraculously cured of her gluten allergy.”
It sincerely irritates the jerk out of me when people don't care that fryers shouldn't be cross contaminated because I, weirdly, have no desire to die via suffocation from anaphylaxis.
11. Demand To Speak To My Higher-Up For A "Long Wait?" Here's An Even Longer Wait
“I was working at the postal station from heck. Had a piece of rolling equipment get caught in a piece of broken tile, and pop up then onto my toe.
Shattered the toenail. I was lucky not to have a broken toe from it, too. So I’m on “light duty,” which meant I had to work the service window where people come to pick up packages, signature-required mail, fill out change of address/hold mail forms, and stuff like that.
Remember: I have a foot injury. This means that getting around is NOT easy for me.
Have a customer come in about an hour before closing, and hand over two “Pick up your mail” forms for certified letters.
Y’all probably don’t realize this, but, in big-city facilities, we don’t have your certified mail sitting in a gold case all by itself, and postal workers staring wistfully at it wondering when we’ll see you.
No, we have your mail sorted out by the last number of your street address in trays with HUNDREDS of other certified letters just like yours. This means it can take quite a while to find your mail when you finally drag your butt in to pick it up.
So I go looking for these two letters. It was a recent enough thing that I checked the stand-up cubby we had for the “latest” certified to-pickups. Ugh. Not there. So I hobbled to the longer-term storage area, about 10 feet from the door.
I finally find both letters and go to the window. The customer tells me that he wants to talk to the postmaster because I took three minutes to get his mail, and that was unacceptable.
I tried to convince him to get the party more likely to be on the premises to handle his complaint (a supervisor), but nope, he’s adamant about speaking to the postmaster. Hint, people: The later in the day it is, the LESS likely the postmaster will be there.
But okay. You want the postmaster? You get the postmaster. I smile and tell him, “Sure. I’ll go get him now.” And I shut the dutch door.
With his mail still in my hand.
You thought three minutes was a long wait?
Ha! You just activated a union worker trap card, bud!
Now I did go to the postmaster’s office first, but, as usual, he wasn’t there. Still, I made a good-faith effort to look there. I didn’t see him on the floor, either, so I checked the dock (conveniently getting in a smoke while I was out there–nasty former habit).
I checked the breakroom (and got/drank a soda while I was there). Knocked on the men’s room door. No answer. Oops. That soda just worked its way through me. Need to use the ladies’ now.
I was about to check the parking lot to see if his car was even there… Oh, look. There’s the postmaster, coming back from an offsite meeting. I take the time to bring him up to speed on the customer’s complaint.
This guy knew me and smiled.
“How long have you kept him waiting now?”
“I think it’s been 20, 25 minutes. You can deal with him while I handle the paperwork.”
“This will be fun. You’re lucky I like you because you’re a hard worker, though.”
The customer was absolutely livid when the door finally opened again. He demanded that I be fired, right then and there. As if that’s how it works in a union job. My boss, to his credit, chewed out the customer for being such a jerk to an injured employee who had actually done a great job in taking only three minutes to find two letters amongst hundreds, in two separate locations.
He even took one of the trays over to the ledge, slammed it down, and said, “See how long it would take YOU to go through this to find not one but two letters, and then tell me three minutes is too long!”
Lesson to be learned: Union workers don’t have to take crap off of dirtbags, we won’t, so spare yourself a whole lotta grief and chill the heck out. It’s only mail, for crying out loud!”
10. Don't Care If I Take A Long Break? Don't Mind If I Do!
“Many years ago, I worked at a gas station.
It wasn’t a big, fancy station. No. It was a satellite of a grocery store. Nothing more than a tiny kiosk next to a dozen pumps.
My coworkers ranged from cool to worthless. This story is about one of the worthless ones. Let’s call her Sandy. Sandy was fairly new to our kiosk but not to the job, having transferred over from another gas station in the company.
Right out of the gate, this was a problem; she had her way of doing things and we had ours. Naturally, Sandy expected all of her new coworkers to change to suit her, not the other way around.
One day it was me and Sandy on the afternoon shift. There were only ever two employees (only enough space for two people in that shack of a gas station) so we covered each other’s breaks.
Normally, because I’m a team player, I would take my breaks in the little office in the back. If my coworkers needed me all they had to do was yell. But on that particular Friday, Sandy and I had a problem: she decided to take both of her breaks at once.
It wasn’t uncommon for us to take a forty-five-minute break instead of a half and a fifteen, but it was something we had to clear with our coworkers before doing. It was also against company policy, but we didn’t really give a crap about that.
An hour before rush hour, the busiest time of day with the largest concentration of crappy customers, she wanted to take her break. That’s fine. Nothing wrong. I told her I would take my half hour after hers, then we’d both run tills for the rush.
Half an hour came and went. She didn’t come back. Another half hour during which I should have been on break, still not back. After another fifteen minutes, she comes in and gets on till.
No apologies for taking a long break unannounced, or for coming back late from that long break. When I mentioned it she replied, “I don’t know why you’re getting so mad, all you ever do is sit in the back.
And I wouldn’t get upset with you if you took a long break.”
So I told her, “I’ll hold you to that.”
Then I walked out.
I bought a paper, went down the street to Edō, sat down with a big bowl of noodles and veggies, and took my sweet time.
All the nine to fivers on their way home from work were her problem. Exactly forty-five minutes after I left, I made darn sure it was to the minute, I walked back into the kiosk.
Sandy was not behind the till. My manager was.
Apparently, Sandy couldn’t handle the situation and started crying. I don’t know if it was me just walking out, the workload, or any particular customer that got to her.
My manager was called, drove into town, and took over until I came back. Let’s call her Tam. Tam wasn’t angry with me. Not anymore, at least. She was pretty livid when she showed up to relieve Sandy (the poor girl had to be sent home), but she had found a brief window in which to check the security cameras.
It turns out, Sandy told her that she had taken her half-hour break earlier, then I didn’t bother taking mine until the rush because I didn’t want to work. Tam decided to check that on the cameras and by the time I came back she already knew Sandy was lying to her.
I didn’t have to say a freaking thing in my own defense.
Sandy was punished for the long break and the lying but was not fired. However, on the rare occasion we were scheduled together afterward, she took her breaks when and for how long I told her to.
Good times.”
9. Don't Like My Shaved Head? I'll Stop Shaving Altogether
“Earlier last year, my family decided to throw me a surprise Sweet 16 birthday party which all of our extended family members were invited to.
Among those invited, was my aunt, who we’ll call Carol, who is known in our family to be super conservative, unlike her husband, who tends to be more open-minded than her (though to be quite frank the bar was on the floor).
Since it was my Sweet 16, I decided to try out something new in regards to my appearance I’ve always wanted to do but never quite got the chance to — that being shaving my head. Little note: my aunt has always admired and complimented my long hair, mostly due to the fact that it heavily resembled the way she wore her hair when she first met my uncle in the 70s, so you can only imagine the expression on her face when she saw me walk into the room with a buzzcut.
And so, over the course of the party, while I got many weird looks from my more conservative family members, none were as fierce as my aunt’s. She’d continuously make passive-aggressive remarks in regard to my new hair, or rather lack thereof.
I tried my best to laugh them off, but with the things she was saying slowly getting a lot lighter on the passive part and a lot heavier on the aggressive bit, it kept getting harder to do so.
When my birthday party eventually came to a close, as we were all saying our goodbyes, instead of bidding farewell like everyone else, Carol, now with her composure nowhere near in sight, starts berating both me and my parents for letting me shave my oh-so-precious hair off, saying how “a woman like me should never even as much as hold a razor anywhere near her hair!” Cue malicious compliance.
It took me all my willpower not to lash back out at her, but I somehow managed to hold myself back. And in the middle of her yelling, it’s like a light bulb lit up in my head.
And so, taking her advice, I swore to not shave any of my body hair until at least the next time I saw her, which was not long since Thanksgiving was not too far away.
And with that, the next 3-4 months, were not only a delight not having to worry about shaving but also strangely cathartic. I did everything in my power to make my leg and arm hair grow faster.
You could name any method for hair growth and I can guarantee I have tried it.
When Thanksgiving finally rolled around the corner, I made sure to pick out some clothes that revealed most of my arms and legs to make her even madder.
As I came up to meet Carol, the expression that washed up on her face can only be described as an unholy mix of both disgusted and horrified. Before I could even get within 2 feet of her, she quickly rushed to the bathroom, with her hands over her mouth.
After what seemed like an eternity of painfully fake retching sounds, she finally exited the bathroom and started loudly screaming at me about how I “look like a man” and how me “letting myself go” had literally made her sick to her stomach, also making sure to compare me to big hairy animals while she was at it.
Slowly, a crowd formed around us. Embarrassed by his wife, my uncle forcefully dragged Carol away by her hand and out the door, as everyone in the room froze up a bit.
Since then, my uncle has profusely apologized to me and my aunt has insisted on not appearing at any family gatherings if I were there.
And in the not-so-off chance Cousin L happens to be reading this, I’m so sorry you have to have such crappy parents, girl.”
8. Make Me Try To Sell To Old, Senile People? Good Luck
“I used to work at a large bank.
I was in their online customer service department.
Around the time I got hired, the bank I worked for purchased another old bank with a much older clientele. I was hired to help them navigate our website and merge their old usernames and whatnot into our new one as well as handle some banking.
I’m not kidding when I say that most people I talked to were probably 60 and older.
I sort of knew something was off from training when they started talking about cross-selling because I was not under the impression I was going to be selling anything.
But alas I was in college and needed a job. When I hit the floor I was able to easily meet our handle time metrics and whatnot so I made our manager look really good in a lot of ways but I essentially refused to cross-sell to these old people who had no idea what was going on and just needed help with the website.
These folks struggled to even know where to click on their address bar. I had to walk them through hitting shortcuts on their keyboard instead because they couldn’t navigate or click on an actual search bar that wasn’t some spammy search buddy bull crap.
So a few months in my manager starts to coach me and document my low sales. I never really revealed to him that I felt scummy trying to sell anything so I just didn’t do it, I just kind of gave him the runaround with “oh gee I’ll try harder.” It eventually gets to where he’s talking about writing me up.
So we’re talking and trying to strategize how I can do better and he told me he listened to a bunch of my calls and he noticed that I’m not giving the sales disclosure at the beginning of calls.
The sales disclosure is basically this sentence we are legally required to say and it has to have the terms “products and services” in it and we have to ask a yes or no question if we can try to sell to them.
Of course in training and coaching, they teach you various scummy ways to dance around it and make it so the customer doesn’t really hear it and just says okay. So I sign a document (PIP) during that coaching to commit to providing the sales disclosure and doing my best to sell things.
Here is where the malicious compliance comes in.
Every time I would provide the disclosure, I would do so slowly and clearly and ensure they understood that I was asking permission to sell to them.
Well, wouldn’t you know it everyone says no to that when they understand what you’re asking. The coaching got even funnier because I essentially put him in a position to where he had to tell me to be dishonest and coach me to do it the scummy way because I was meeting the expectation per the letter of the law and my PIP.
He knew that he couldn’t really do that so he just kind of danced around it and I just kept telling him “gee people keep saying no to my TSR.”
This went on for about 8 more months because he knew he couldn’t do anything about it.
Our director tried to constructively fire me about it in a conversation, she was trying to I guess get me to admit to not trying. I just asked them if I could have HR present for the conversation and they said no so I got up and left real polite-like then went back to work.
They really had no good reason to fire me it was pretty glorious. This was also about the time when the news started hitting on what they were doing as a company.
I lasted a few months after that and then ended up quitting for a better job with better morals and ethics.
I will never forget their faces of defeat and despair when they realized they couldn’t push me around every coaching. To this day I will tell people “5 million fake accounts!” if I see them at the atm.”
7. Want To Know Why I Left My Desk? I'll Tell You Why
And this is why you don’t mistreat your employees, especially while they’re pregnant.
“About 15 years ago, I worked in a large hospital for kids in the maintenance department.
Our manager, let’s call her Karen, was a major witch. No one on our team liked her and we outwardly showed no respect for her after her constant harassment of us in the 2 years she worked there.
She would call us on the maintenance radios and be rude or tell the guys they were being incompetent. It was beyond micromanagement but also rude on top of it. She expected the maintenance guys to come to do work at her house for free.
Or would tell some of the hospital vendors she would guarantee the hospital contract if they did work at her house for cheap. She used to brag about this to me. Karen and I were the only women in our department of about 25 people.
I was a mouthy 20-something-year-old and didn’t care for her attitude and regularly would say “yeah, sure, whatever” when she asked me to do things. I would do what she asked because it was my job but I would have made a noncommittal remark like that.
One time she asked me to come to her house and help her pull down dead trees in her backyard since she was having a pool installed. I said no, mainly cause I wouldn’t do it for someone I liked let alone her, and pretty soon after, she started treating me even worse than she did before.
She had been trying to get me in trouble since then. Such as CCing her buddy in HR on emails to me asking for the status of projects that I was working on and wanting my replies in writing.
Fast forward 6 months later. One of the maintenance guys and I were chatting in the office and I was 5 months pregnant with my first baby. She asked me to do something, I don’t remember what, and I said “Yeah.
Whatever, sure. I’ll do that in a few mins.” And I turn back around to talk to my coworker. She is standing behind me and I hear her whisper “I wish I could slap the crap out of you.” I can see my coworker saw her say it too and I made no comment but I was shocked. I acted like I didn’t hear her though.
She left the office a min later to do something.
I get up and walk down the hall to the employee health department cause I am fuming, and my heart was racing. Livid. Also 5 months pregnant.
The EH nurse has me lie down for a bit, took my vitals, and wrote up a formal report. And an hour later, she sent me back to my desk as an ok to continue working.
When I log back in I see an email from Karen, with HR cc’d asking where I had been for the last hour as she called the office phone a bunch of times and had abandoned my desk.
So I emailed her back. “I apologize for being away from my desk. When you said you’d ‘like to slap the crap out of me,’ I was so upset, I had to be calmed down and have my and my baby’s vitals checked at Employee Health, and they were concerned about my hostile working environment and wanted me to stay there for the full hour.” I made sure I BCC’d her buddy in HR and ALL of HR, her boss, and his boss to make sure everyone saw it.
I was summoned to HR about 30 minutes later. I knew Karen hadn’t seen my reply yet; this was in the early 2000s, and her computer was down in the office near me. They had me go home for the day and put me on admin leave for 3 extra days.
I came back to the office to see her desk had been emptied out, and we never saw her again.
Those guys in maintenance threw me the best baby shower ever 3 months later.”
6. Can I Go Any Slower, You Ask? Sure Can!
“A few years ago, by the way. Sometimes after my shifts, I walk down to a local grocery store to grab some snacks or lunches for the rest of the week.
This particular day I had messed up my knee badly, mainly because I tripped on ice. Ah, Canada winters. I’m visibly in pain and visibly limping. I have one thing in mind, get in get out get on the bus, and play Halo till 3 am.
That’s all I want. Karen though? She wanted The Flash.
Now here’s a note about me, not only am I big in height but also in size. It’s a bit of a sore spot because even though I learned to love myself when it’s picked on by strangers it ticks me the heck off.
Fun fact: Trying to disregard what people think about you is hard.
Anyways I’m limping in and going semi-slow, as I’m wearing boots, trudging through DEEP snow, and carrying my heavy bag, this speed demon in a white BMW whips through the parking lot after being stuck behind the grocery store delivery truck, almost hitting me (I was close to other cars so she almost hit them too) and kicking up snow that barely missed me.
I let out a loud “WHAT THE CRAP?” and then finish my lot walk and enter the store when this crazy lady teleported into the store. Now she’s behind me and without knowing she was the driver I went to open this security gate thing to be polite.
And then it begins.
Me: -begins to hold open gate-
Karen: UGHHHHH, move it fattie! Christ, so slow! Can you move any slower? -angry grumbles-
I was of course upset, like what the heck, lady?
I saw my buddy, and he was like, “Woah, you ok?” and I said I was fine and then moved on. I got my stuff and began to walk out when the Universe gifted me some revenge.
She was right behind me again. Now the funny thing about this store, there are 3 doors in the lobby, the outside > the inside door, then the entrance with the gate, and then the exit.
Just like the entrance, the exit is a bit of a squeeze, HA.
Slow, eh? I’ll show you slow. “I had to; my knee was killing me.” -smirk- Karen is going crazy. She can’t go around me, as they have cleaning carts for the night on the right, to the left side would mean squeeeeeeezing by me, and she obviously wasn’t gonna do that, having to almost touch the fat guy?
Ohhh no, we can’t do that. Let alone just say “excuse me.” Nah, too hard.
She RAN to the entrance door, take it, it’s not a far walk out; I was just taking my time.
She whips the gate open, but due to security, the entrance door doesn’t open from the other side, only to enter. Is that a safety violation? Eh, probably, but watching the speed demon try everything to get the door open was priceless.
And then in the lobby, I did it. I walked my speed before, which was a faster slow to her HORROR. She calls out, “WHAT THE HECK,” and I said, “Well, you asked me if I could go slower than slow.
I was just filling your request.” Her face was priceless. Her comments and bullying did crap to help her.
She eventually just went around the other side because as I was leaving the lot, she pulled out fast, running a red, and almost hitting another car.
Now you’re probably thinking, “What the heck was she buying,” and I don’t know. All I do know is it must’ve been candy because she was in this aisle with me. The only thing I’m surprised with is how her car is still intact as she drove faster than Lightning McQueen, in deep snow/ice.
Maybe next time just say, “Excuse me.” I would’ve been happy to move outta the way no problemo.
Also, side note: It was just us in the store. The store was DEAD, so I knew it was her BMW.
Also, because in this plaza all other stores close around 9, and this was closer to 10.”
5. Won't Let Part-Time Employees Carry Phones? Your Calls Won't Be Answered Then
“I worked at a grocery store for four years. At the time, I was three years into this job.
I was working part-time while going to school. I was working in the frozen department, which most people did not want to do. I had a coworker who we will call Karen. She was full-time and older than me.
She was awful, and everyone who knew her in-store hated her. Our manager and upper managers hated her and never wanted to deal with her.
Each department had a minimum of two phones. One was a wired phone on our desks, and the other was a mobile phone with a clip.
If our manager was in, he would have it. If not, the first person would grab it and pass it on when they left or took lunch. That was standard procedure till one day. I had held the phone as I was the first one in and had been answering calls as they had come in.
Karen comes in an hour after me. She clocks in and comes up to me:
“OP, I need the phone,” yelling with her hand outstretched.
“Okay, do you need to make a call?” I asked, wondering what she needed this early.
“No, I am supposed to have the phone,” she demands, her hand still out. I give it to her, confused.
“Okay, here. Why are you supposed to have it?” I ask, confused at the statement.
“I am full-time, and you are not. Full-timers are supposed to be the only ones who have the phones.” She replies, rolling her eyes at me— cue malicious compliance. On the next shift, I come in, and my manager is not in.
I don’t grab the phone. I leave it on the charger at our shared desk. I get to work and start my morning duties. I continue to work and talk with people. An hour and a half later Karen finally comes in late.
She demands where the phone is. I tell her it’s on the desk. She stomps off and grabs it. I continue to work for the next couple of hours. At some point, our store manager comes over to me while I am working in the aisle.
“Hey, OP, is your manager working today?”
“Hey, no, he is not. It’s Karen and I working today.”
“Okay, who has the phone? I keep calling it.” He asks, confused, as most of the time, calls get answered quickly.
“Karen has it.”
“Oh, why don’t you have it?” He asks, fully knowing that when our manager is not here, and I am, I have it as an answer and can give solutions.
“Karen told me that you had said only full-time employees are allowed to carry phones,” I replied.
“That’s true. You are full-time.”
“I am not full-time; I am part-time.” I remind him. He asks me to fill ice in our liquor store freezer. He also asked me where Karen was because she was not in our aisle.
I tell him she is supposed to be in the next aisle stocking items there. I walk towards the back to grab ice. I was not there when the store manager got to her, but she had left the phone on the table she was using to fill items and didn’t hear it ringing multiple times.
The store manager was livid and told her off for not answering and telling her she should not have the phone if she was going to leave it lying around. Ten minutes after speaking with the store manager, he came up to me again after I had gotten out of our freezer.
He gave me the phone and told me that I should probably keep it on me.”
4. Require Her To Order On Amazon? Okay, But Wait Until Things Take A Turn For The Worse
“My wife does procurement for a large US-headquartered organization with branches in a lot of other countries.
Her branch operates out of the Middle East. As you might imagine when it comes to working for a large international organization, there are a lot of rules that she’s obligated to follow when it comes to sourcing material, and there is a list of “preferred sellers” that the organization wants her to use if at all possible.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of those sellers are also US-based. Which is fine most of the time, but can be really inconvenient in a lot of ways given the distances involved with where she’s at. So, on occasion, she’ll stray from “the book” and look more locally if she knows it’s not going to cause a big issue and everyone will be happy in the end anyway.
Usually, she gets away with it because the powers that be understand why she does this. Usually.
The story: Recently, one newer department manager noticed that an order my wife had made on their behalf didn’t come from the “preferred seller” that they’d been expecting to come through.
In this case: Amazon. They chastised my wife for violating policy and insisted that, next time, she had to use Amazon for orders like this. Okay, fine. Yes, my wife was technically in the wrong, and a reprimand was technically the appropriate response; but my wife had a good reason for doing what she did…
…which the manager in question found out next year when they put in their next order!
You see, because of the distances involved and the large number of departments placing orders, we’re talking about multi-ton containers being sent overseas by ship.
It can take months for the departments to finally get what they ordered. Also, because of how the shipping and receiving are handled, Amazon is technically out of the loop from the moment the shipment is delivered to the freighter at the port that will be hauling it across the Atlantic.
So, from Amazon’s perspective, the order is considered “delivered” for the purposes of their return policy before the ship carrying the order even leaves the dock…and long before it ever arrives in the country my wife is based in.
From there, it can then take many more weeks for the order to clear customs, be received by her organization, unpacked, sorted, and finally distributed to the various departments who had made the orders. It’s fairly typical for this whole process to take about 90+ days to complete.
Well past Amazon’s 30-day return policy.
Now, my wife’s job is just to order whatever the various department heads tell her to and trust that they know what it is they’re ordering. Of course, sometimes there are mistakes with the order.
Either the department wrote down the wrong item, or the wrong size/quantity, or Amazon shipped the wrong thing. Mistakes happen. When you’re dealing with a dozen departments ordering tens of thousands of pounds of stuff at one go, they’re practically inevitable!
Usually, something like that is no big deal…until too much time has passed to return it to Amazon for a refund, and your budget is all tapped out for the year, and you really needed that item that you didn’t end up getting.
Which is what happened this year. The department manager in question accidentally ordered the wrong thing, and when they asked about getting it replaced, my wife had to (respectfully) inform the manager that, since it was ordered through Amazon, and not something more local (hint hint), it couldn’t be returned for a refund and there was no more wiggle room in their department’s budget for additional orders that year.
This story does have a happy ending though, as my wife was able to find another department in their organization that was actually in need of the misordered material and they performed a lateral budget transfer so that my wife could order what the manager actually needed…from a local supplier.”
Another User Comments:
“This is when you say to the employee in a private setting: ‘I am sorry for the reprimand, you were right, I was wrong. Next time, just tell me that “on paper, that looks good,” and I will follow your recommendation to the letter regardless of the policy.
By the way, here is a gift card.’ There are certain people in organizations that without a title can make or destroy your career, tread carefully…” Elmer_HomeroP
3. Just Sit On The Floor To Eat Since There Aren't Enough Seats? You Got It
They care so much about their students…
“Back in 2009 in a German gymnasium (similar to high school), we had some group act of malicious compliance.
The background: During the last 2 years of your studies, you can choose a lot of your courses according to your own preferences. While this is super nice for individual development, it means that you often have 1-2 lecture slots free and then again a few more lectures, etc. Basically, your timetable looks like Swiss cheese.
To compensate, the students of grades 12 and 13 had their own room to chill out in by tradition.
The setting: We were at the rift of a shift from 9 years to an 8-year curriculum, i.e. the next younger students would graduate at the same time as we did.
This caused some shortage in capacity in our school, among them that the extra room was taken since it was needed for classes. Inconvenient but understandable. We were told to just make use of the seating/available space throughout the school.
What we didn’t take well was that the cafeteria became too small as well. So during lunchtime, we regularly would not have sufficient space to sit and eat.
The school promised to make amends, but 3 months into the school year, the situation was still the same.
One of the deputy headmasters of our school was a real gift. He would generally slack off on his work, showed strong favoritism to whoever had the brownest nose, and was generally seen as one of the worst teachers the school offers.
We asked him during class one day about the current state of affairs and told him it’s unacceptable with winter coming in to have not enough space to eat.
The malicious compliance: His answer: ‘I am afraid there won’t be any change soon.
You will just have to cope with it. I have seen you lingering around, sitting on the floor often enough, seems like you have no problem with that. So why don’t you just sit on the floor to eat; there is sufficient space in the hallways?’
End of November, the floor is not only dirty but wet with snow, salt, and every other dirt people drag into the building from outside, and it only gets worse over the next months. Something needed to happen, and happen it did.
The next day, whenever we had free time in our schedule, we just sat down in the hallways right in front of the teachers’ common room and the office of the headmistress. Our colleagues asked us what we are doing, and we told them the story above, and within one day, we had an occupation of the teachers’ common room and the office of the headmistress running.
Taking his advice to just sit on the floor to eat. During lunch hour that made around 300 students in front of 2 doors. You can imagine how that made everyone mad.
Every teacher who asked was explained that we follow the advice of git-deputy, eating from the floor wherever space is available and that we think here is better than lingering in the way of our fellow students.
The fallout: Most teachers showed understanding of the action. Some didn’t; one got to the point where he stepped on some girl’s fingers while cursing about us. Those were very uncomfortable 10 minutes until he’d make his way through to the teachers’ room.
Tensions were running high. Teachers not getting into their common room that holds printers and other office supplies means lessons start late for everyone. On the 5th day, the headmistress informed us that they found a solution for the problem with insufficient space being available and that it would take effect 2 days later.
The git deputy headmaster sank even lower in the opinion of the staff, as everyone knew he should have looked after this issue and just did nothing for months. Before that, he was handled as a possible next headmaster.
Afterward, that was off the table.”
2. Only Want One Person On Register? If That's What You Want
“I (26F) work at my school’s dining hall, but currently we have reduced staff and hours, as the summer semester is slow. At the same time, we get contracts with summer, academic, and religious camps of various numbers, so we’re kept pleasantly busy.
At my job, I have my real manager, “June,” and our antagonist of the story, “Abby.” Abby is the head of the catering unit on-campus, but she also believes herself to be our manager.
The owner of the dining hall, “Bert,” was out of town this week on business, so June was left in charge.
This week, we had a religious music camp totaling over 650 teenagers, and there were only six or seven of us working dinner shift each day (I don’t know how many worked breakfast or lunch).
It took a day and a half for us to make a system of not only counting the kids accurately but also keeping food lines shorter so no one stays outside in the summer heat.
This required three of us to be at the register. One of us would organize and split the kids into two groups, and the other two would count their respective groups. At the end of the meal period, we’d add our numbers.
I was one of the counters, and with my partners, “Ruth, and “Lisa”, we were always on the nose with our numbers. It was a flawless system, the kids and camp staff were fed, and all was well in the world.
While all of this was going on, Abby was nowhere to be seen and doing her catering gigs outside of the dining hall.
Cue yesterday. We were thrown a massive curveball. I got a text from June hours before I was meant to clock in and was asked to -not- work at the register.
Initially, I thought nothing of it. Upon my arrival to the dining hall, I only saw Lisa at the register. I asked how she was, and she told me two things.
Bert was back in town, and yesterday morning, Abby jumped the chain of command, completely undermining June’s authority, took all the credit for making everything run smoothly this week, and reported to Bert that our system was a “waste of labor.”
“You don’t need three people counting kids! Allocate two of them elsewhere!” To our dismay, Bert took Abby’s side when protests arose. June and many of my colleagues who were present were absolutely livid for us and for the kids.
June, in her sassy wisdom, would let Abby have what she wanted, and we were told to comply: Lisa would count the kids by herself and I would cycle and serve the food line. Ruth already had the day off.
I failed to mention that at the same time we were going to serve dinner, there was a catering event upstairs with a bunch of fancy bigwigs.
As soon as the doors opened, the first of the kids ran inside.
With only one line, the campers had a single file from the food line, out the door, and hugged around the building for the next hour or so, when our system would take them half that.
I felt terrible for these folks because it was consistently over 90 degrees all week and humid as all get out.”
1. Only Accept A Discount If I Place An Order Over The Phone? Expect A Call From Me Then
“I only live 5 mins walk away from a local pizza place so I went in and ordered direct to takeaway. I didn’t call ahead as I didn’t see much point as I lived so close and I didn’t mind the extra couple of minutes.
While there I saw they were doing a special offer. 10% discount if you mentioned their promotion over the phone and then went in to collect takeaway.
“I know I haven’t called in first, but now I know you do a discount if you do, and to save us both the hassle of me calling you right now and for the fact I know the promotion exists, can I still get the 10% off anyway?”
“No. It’s for telephone orders only.”
“Sure, I get that, but I could literally just call you right now from my mobile and you’d give me the discount but that’ll be a bit weird to make me do that, so can I just get it anyway?”
“No. It’s for telephone orders only.”
This jobsworth attitude made me mad, so I was literally about to just forget about buying anything from there and go somewhere else, but as I got outside, I figured that no, I’d just stand outside and call the number on their door and order a pizza that way to get my discount.
The phone rang and the same guy picked it up:
“Can I order a pizza to collect with a 10% discount please?”
He recognizes my voice obviously as it’s just been 15 seconds since we were speaking inside.
He looks outside at me. I smile and wave. He looks angry that he has to give me my discount now.
He takes my order and says it will be 10 minutes.
During the next 10 minutes while waiting for my discounted pizza, someone else is about to come into the restaurant to order takeout.
I ask them if they have phoned ahead for the discount or not. They didn’t realize that was a thing. No problem buddy, I’ll do it for you. What do you want?
I call the same number again, same guy answers and hears my voice again, and looks straight at me again.
I smile and wave again and proceed to order this random stranger’s pizza order for them whilst maintaining eye contact with him.
“My friend would also like the 10% telephone discount.”
He looks like he’s gonna pop a b***d vessel but has no choice but to accept it.
After all, I didn’t enforce the rules, he did.
A week later, the telephone order discount is canceled completely, and it’s simply given if you have a menu, and there are menus at the entrance anyway, so you’d be crazy not to see it and use it.
This happened a while ago, so the promotion wasn’t to do with Google Ads or tracking info or storing numbers, etc. It was just a badly executed promo that forced you to call the very person standing in front of you already taking your order anyway if you wanted the discount.
The guy behind the counter wasn’t a kid with management breathing down his neck. He may have even been the owner or manager for all I know. It was a small place and not a chain, and if it wasn’t just him there doing everything, then it was only him and the chef.
So making me call him on the phone in front of him was him enforcing the stupid rule, I just complied with it.
I agree, I risked a spat on pizza. I don’t suggest angering people who make your food.
It was not something I was thinking of at the time though.”
Another User Comments:
“Really doubt the front desk guy cared if you get the discount. People always expect the minimum wage employees to bend the rules for them even though you have no idea if he’s gotten in trouble six times already for doing it.” Impossible_Tonight81
