People Share The Moment Of Revenge They Inflicted On Someone By Obeying Their Request

I’m all about logic and order, so when someone asks me to do something that I don’t think is correct or best, I have zero problems speaking my mind. Want me to sweep the floors before wiping down the countertops? Actually, let me wipe down the countertops first, so I can sweep up the crumbs that were collected on the countertops. Want to heat up a can of chili beans and make a batch of homemade cornbread? Obviously, get started on the cornbread first if you want everything to be finished at the same time and as fresh as possible by the time dinner rolls around.

But, believe me, there have been moments where I tried to put in my two cents, and the other person didn’t have the open mind to consider my point-of-view. It was their way or the highway, so to speak. At that point, all I can do is just comply and watch things fall apart. Not much you could do to change their mind anyway, right?

The following people have had a similar experience. Below, they share their juicy malicious compliance stories that will leave you with a big smirk.

24. Want “Your” Hand Sanitizer Back? I Hope You Like It Mixed With Ketchup

“So, I have this friend, sorta.

Let’s call her Karen even though she is the same age as me (a teenager).

When we were younger, I caught her a few times having stolen stuff from me and her friends. She was generally a stealing, lying ****.* But we sometimes got along, and our relationship is complicated, and she thinks we are fantastic friends, so I don’t tell her otherwise. (She also set me up with my current girlfriend, but that’s a different story.) I also have really good peripheral vision, and people often got mad when I could see them do stuff out of the corner of my eye that they thought I couldn’t.

So, I went shopping with my friends late last year, and my friend (not Karen) drags me into a certain shop for body products.

As it was one of the last shops we could go to, and I still had a decent amount of money left, I bought a lip balm and two small, scented (expensive as ****) bottles of hand sanitizer. I never use them, so the size of them didn’t bother me. It was just for random occasions when I needed them or wanted my hands to smell nice.

I got home, put them on my desk, and used them about three times the rest of the year. Then in about March, Karen came over and asked, “Hey, can I have one of these bottles of hand sanitizer?” and I tell her, “No, I bought them myself, and they are very expensive.” She looks and me, fake smiling, and says, “Oh, ok then,” and I swear I can see her grab one off of the desk very obviously as soon as I turn back to my computer.

Without looking at her, I say, “Put that bottle the **** back. I said no.”

Karen is surprised and quickly puts it back looking at me innocently saying, “What do you mean?” At this point, I look up and say, “You know I have good vision. Don’t try and take my stuff when I have told you no.” I then reached over and put the bottles in my desk draw and go back to what I was doing.

The next day, she comes over again, and her mom is with her. The mother starts getting mad at me, saying Karen told her I stole HER hand sanitizer and that I locked it in my desk. I told her I don’t have a lock on my desk and that I bought that hand sanitizer last year.

She was still mad and shouting at me to give her the hand sanitizer.

No one else was home as my family was all shopping or at school (I go to online school, and Karen is homeschooled), so no one could back me up or save me from her.

I finally get fed up, go inside, and grab one of the bottles of hand sanitizer and an old lotion tube I never threw away ’cause I’m messy. I screw off the cap of the lotion lid and squeeze the sanitizer into the bottle, sealing it back up and putting it in my desk. I put the bottle in my pocket and walk back to the door, “This’ll just take a moment. I forgot I put it in the kitchen.”

She nods, still mad, and Karen is smiling in success as I walk off again.

I reach the kitchen and grab a bottle of ketchup mixing it with chunky aloe-vera gel and awkwardly shove it into the hand sanitizer bottle. (This makes a sorta translucent pink gel that looks like a strawberry hand sanitizer as that was the scent for this one. The smell of the original hand sanitizer is very strong and it overpowers the ketchup, making it seem convincing.)

I come back and hand her the tiny bottle of ketchup and aloe-vera, looking directly at Karen and saying, “I’m so sorry I stole. I don’t know what came over me.”

They both looked smug and turn to leave, her parent saying, “She won’t be returning again. I don’t want you stealing more of her stuff,” and “You’re lucky we don’t press charges on you because you’re a kid.” I put on a sad face and say, “That’s a shame” before slamming the door in her stuck up face.

I hope she enjoys her “hand sanitizer.” Fetishcorn

23. Write-In ***** If I Have To? Give Me A Pin Then

“This took place in Turkey. This happened to a classmate of mine, and I was lucky enough to witness it.

A couple of years ago in high school, we were going to take a regular exam for a class I don’t remember. The exam was right after recess. Unlucky for us, the teacher that would supervise us during the exam was one of the worst teachers most of us have ever seen. This teacher was also a sub coming from another high school where teachers could abuse students as much as they liked. My high school had a much higher pay than hers, so she wanted to be a good sub and get hired as a full-time staff member.

Let’s call my friend Frank and my teacher Karen.

We sat down, attendance taken, and Karen gave us the green light to start the exam. Suddenly, Frank says, ‘D*mn it,’ which gets the attention of Karen, and the following conversation ensues:

Frank: Ma’am, my pencil is broken. (He was using a mechanical pencil.) Can I get one from a friend?

Karen: No, you can’t. I told everyone before the exam that I would not allow a pencil or eraser swapping. You should have listened. (She told us this during our recess time, so unless you came 6 to 7 minutes early, you wouldn’t have heard.)

Frank: It was working. It broke when I was solving the first question. Look, I even wrote my name with it.

Karen: I don’t care, not my problem.

Frank: Soooo, what am I supposed to do then?

Karen: I told you, I don’t care, write with ***** if you have to.

At this point, there is a small silence, and Karen has a small smile on her face, thinking she has won over a high school student and satisfied her ego.

At my high school, we had 2 vice principals, and one of them would check every exam room at the beginning of an exam to make sure everything is ok (attendance, missing exam sheets, etc). And we had glass walls, so you could see outside pretty easily. Frank looks over and spots the vice principal about to enter the classroom.

Frank: Ma’am, can I get up to take a pin from pinboard? (We had one in every classroom.)

Karen: What? Why?

Frank waits for a few seconds for the vice principal to enter to continue the next conversation.

Frank: You told me to write in ***** if I have to, and since you refuse to let me borrow a pencil from a friend, and I don’t want to get a zero on this exam, I would like to get a pin, so I can ***** a hole in my finger and write with my *****.

The vice-principal is shaken, looking horrified, and just frozen.

Vice Principal: What are you talking about, Frank?

Frank: Ma’am, my pencil broke during the first question, so I asked permission from Karen to borrow a pencil from my classmate, but she said I can’t. She doesn’t care and said that I can use my ***** if I want to. So, I wanted to use my ***** to write, so I wouldn’t get a zero on the exam.

The vice-principal looks at the class with a puzzled face as we all nodded our heads confirming Frank, and some even say, “He is right, ma’am.”

The vice-principal looks mad but won’t say anything during an exam in front of an entire class.

The vice Principal: Frank, take a pencil from your friend. Of course, you can’t use your ***** to write in any case. If anyone else needs, they can also borrow pencils or erasers.

The vice-principal storms off the class as Karen throws a death glare to Frank.

We learn a couple of weeks later that the vice-principal tore Karen a new one for being so stupid. Karen was overall a very bad teacher and had a ton of complaints about her within just a semester.

At the end, she was sent away 1 week before the semester ended. We were already done with the curriculum, so there was no missed material, and of course, she wasn’t hired as a full-time staff member.” Dawedef

Another User Comments:

“I actually bit a hole in my finger and did my entire scantron test with my ***** in 8th grade when the teacher told me the same thing.” Reddit user

22. You Want Me To Have A Physical Copy Of The Book? I’ll Head Over To The Printing Store Now

“During one of my semesters at college, I had some great malicious compliance/petty revenge.

I was taking my second semester of a mandatory government course with the same professor as I did during the first semester and during the first semester grew to somewhat dislike the professor.

Now in the class, the professor had just changed the required textbook to a new textbook that they had written, so to take the class, I would have to buy the book from the university store for like $200ish.

Not feeling like wasting all that money because it’s only for one semester of a core class that I will never use again, I tried to find the book online and happened to find a PDF version of the book which I downloaded and put on my tablet.

During the first day of class, the teacher said that he was requiring that you had a copy of the book and would be checking the next week. If you didn’t have it, you would lose points in the course.

So, the book check comes around, and he sees that I don’t have a physical copy of the book, and the conversation goes something like this:

Teacher: “Where is your book?”

Me: “I have a digital copy of it on my tablet. The syllabus didn’t say we need a physical copy of the book.”

Teacher: “I don’t allow digital copies of the book in my class. If you don’t go and get a physical copy of the book, I will have to mark you as not having the book for the check, and you will lose points for it.”

Me: “If I go and get a physical copy of the book now, will I get the mark?”

Teacher: “Yes.”

So, cue some malicious compliance. I take my bag and walk over to the student center which has the book store and a printing store.

I go to the printing store and ask for them to print out the whole book. They say it will take 10 mins and will cost about $25. Since it’s a bulk order, it is cheaper per page. I then go into the book store and buy a binder to keep the book in. After waiting for the print store to finish, they are also nice enough to put the newly printed book into the binder, free of charge.

I then return to class go back to my seat in the front and take out my new binder with the professor’s book printed out in it. After seeing me with my new binder, the teacher says:

Teacher: “That’s not what I told you to do.

I said you had to go buy a copy of the book from the store.”

Me: “All you said that I had to get a physical copy of the book to get the points for the check, and I have a physical copy of the book here. Ask any of the other students. You never said I had to buy it from the store.”

A couple of the students around me nod in agreement.

The teacher then freezes a bit, and I can tell that he is trying to find something wrong with it but eventually gives up and gives me my points. The worst part is that after the book check, we literally never had to open the book; everything was in the slides that he gave us, so the only reason he made the book mandatory was to boost his sales.” Fallen_Kingdoms

Another User Comments:

“I took a class that required a book that was 10 years old and was still over $100 used.

I found a used copy online for $75, took it to Kinko’s and had the binding cut off, scanned the book at my job on campus, and somehow, my classmates ended up with digital copies. This school was in a lower-income area. How do schools expect people from poor families to afford this stuff?” tamlabama

21. Hate Combat Boots? Want Me To Wear White Shoes? White Combat Boots It Is

“Back when I was in nursing school, we were supposed to wear black, non-porous, close-toed footwear with non-skid soles for our clinical rotations that weren’t Crocs. Most of my fellow female students wore classic nursing clogs like Daskos and Sanitas. I tried wearing clogs like this in the past and had rolled my ankles too many times to recall, so I decided to not go that route for shoes.

I’m a military spouse, a vet myself, and have aforementioned sh*tty ankles, so my footwear of choice was a pair of black leather tactical combat boots. As a show of support – and to make sure I always looked sharp at clinical – my hubby always shined up and edge dressed my boots every evening before clinical the next morning. The boots always looked professional, they were comfy as ****; I could bump my toes into beds without breaking a toe; and I could wear them all day without having back pain, foot pain, or rolling an ankle. The same could not be said for my classmates wearing more traditional shoes like clogs.

During the first week of my first semester, I had an old-school nurse as my clinical instructor.

I say old-school because she believed female nurses should still be wearing crisp, white uniforms with the stupid starched hats and that our profession lost prestige when we transitioned to scrubs. This instructor got such a bee in her bonnet about my boots and decided that my boots were out of regulation that she threatened to take it up to the director and have me tossed from clinical thus failing the program.

There was nothing in the handbook specifically stating I couldn’t wear my boots since it just stated ‘footwear’ which was black, well-maintained, non-skid, and non-porous. Check, check, check, check. Furthermore, the pair of boots that I wore were meant to be worn by EMT’s, so they were waterproof, bloodborne pathogen resistant, puncture-proof, oil proof, non-skid, and had reinforced toes.

They were just as expensive as Dansko clogs and could handle lots more abuse. I knew I was in the clear, and so I decided to keep on wearing them.

The day after the instructor commented on the inappropriateness of my boots, she did a uniform/shoe inspection to make sure we were appropriately attired. I, of course, was wearing my nicely polished combat boots. She failed me for the day based on my boots, so I politely objected, stating that my boots fell within the definitions of acceptable footwear in the handbook. She literally marched me to the director’s office like I was a kid caught stealing cookies and demanded I get tossed for the boots, failure to follow program rules, and disrespect because I objected to her failing me.

The program director, upon a further close reading of the program regs, determined there was nothing that was wrong with the boots; they adhered to the standards set forth by the program and they were honestly safer than most of the shoes the other students were wearing because they were waterproof, puncture-proof, non-skid, and had reinforced toes. She rescinded my fail and allowed me back in clinical. After that, I heard not a peep about my boots from any of the faculty for the rest of my program.

Fast forward to graduation…

I had been my wearing combat boots since I started and had no intention of stopping, especially since many of the vets that I cared for during clinical always reacted positively to them.

Our nursing pinning ceremony – the event where we receive our nursing school pins and are officially recognized as nurses – has an all-white dress code. White uniforms, starched white hats, white close-toed footwear. The word ‘footwear’ is key: the dress code did not state shoes specifically, and I knew this.

The same b*tchy, old bat nurse sees me in the hall and makes it a point to tell me that I’ll have to get some ‘real’ white nursing shoes to wear to pinning since I can’t obviously wear my black combat boots because we needed to have white footwear. I politely smiled, nodded, said that I’d have white footwear, and went on my merry way…

…and then wore the all-white Doc Martin combat boots my infantryman husband bought me as a graduation gift to pinning.

The instructor stopped me after the ceremony and complimented me on actually getting nursing shoes… At which point I pulled up the leg of my white scrubs and showed her my boots. The look on her face was priceless.” krichcomix

20. Won’t Let Us Wear Jackets Over Our Uniforms? We’ll Wear Them Underneath

“The high school I went to was academically successful but also a very strict school. It was so strict that we weren’t even allowed to wear socks other than white plain ones. Considering that it was a private school and everybody was there by their own choice, nobody really had a problem with that.

One of the rules was, the school uniform we are wearing had to be visible. Now, this rule normally doesn’t stand out compared to some of the other insane rules, but one winter season, our school decided to save some money by decreasing the heating; they started to barely heat the buildings.

As students, we were freezing, but when we took this up with the principal, she said there was nothing she could do about it. I would like to add that she has an air conditioner in her room, and she heats the room to a degree high enough that students started to hang out near her room.

So, understandably, we started to wear our jackets during lessons. Our teachers were okay with this since they were also wearing really thick clothing themselves. But when principal saw so many of us breaking the “rules,” she went berserk on us and made it very clear that our school uniforms have to be visible.

After freezing the whole day, I came up with my malicious idea.

Yes, indeed, there was a rule that stated that uniforms have to visible, but there is actually no rule saying that we can’t wear jackets or anything of that kind. So, wearing the school uniform on top of a jacket was technically okay, and I decided to do exactly that. I was successfully able to convince some of my friends to do the same as well.

We were looking ridiculous, and we were aware of that, but we were warm, and we thought it was a cool thing that we were having a stance. When the teacher entered our classroom, he wanted us to stop joking around and wear our uniforms normally. But we defended ourselves by trying to explain, “We are actually following the rules,” and “We have no other way to keep us warm, and we won’t stop until there is an alternative solution.”

The teacher decided to go with it, and when our classmates saw that we weren’t forced to take the jackets off, they decided to join us.

Next lesson, we were with the same teacher, and I guess during break time, the principal heard some people were wearing jackets, so she decided to make a surprise visit to our class. When she entered our class, she was so shocked that she couldn’t say anything for at least 10 seconds. What she saw were 30+ puffy students wearing their school uniforms on top of their jackets.

When she came to her senses, she turned to our teacher and asked why we were like this and why he didn’t do anything about it. Our teacher explained the situation and told her that we are not really breaking any rules, so he didn’t see a reason to stop us, and he thought it was actually nice that students were having a peaceful protest.

The principal said that this would be discussed later and left the room.

We continued to wear our clothes like this until the end of the day, and by the time we were in the last lesson, the principal announced that until further notice, we were allowed the wear a jacket on top of our uniform.

After about two months later, they announced their own “uniform jacket,” and we were forced to buy and wear that, but at least we didn’t freeze those two months.” Liakans

19. Want Me To Clean The Fryer Right Before Lunch Rush? Sure, But Customers Won’t Be Too Happy

“Quick Set-up:

As my current job begins to start back operation, my memory brought me back to my previous years as a long-suffering line cook.

For those of you who have worked this job, you know it is simultaneously the best and worst job in the world. The people are great, but if it wasn’t for the low pay, long hours, working conditions, stress… anyway!

I was in management training at this time, and this was used constantly to coerce me into doing many downright dangerous things such as in this story. But this time, it bit them in the rear.

The Story:

On this particular Friday, I was working what we called “salad side,” which meant I was in control of the salads, pizza oven, and fryer. While it could be a lot to juggle during busy hours, I had managed to get into a pretty good groove through the morning shift.

With no orders in the window, no tables on the floor but a bar regular, the day’s prep all finished, and the area cleaned and restocked, I was looking at a good thirty-minute break between my shifts. (We didn’t get one scheduled nor were you guaranteed a meal on a double shift; you only got one if you finished on time.)

I figured that I, for once, had a good chance at a break. After checking with the other line cook on duty, I let the General Manager or GM know I was ready to go on break and to check my part of the kitchen. From now on, she will be referred to as Lazy Daisy because that is what she was, lazy.

She is the source of many terrible events in this building, and her nickname used here comes from these. She walks and immediately goes to the deep fryer which had been forgotten about by the previous night’s crew as is tradition.

Lazy Daisy: “Why hasn’t this been cleaned out?”

Me: “Because it’s in the middle of the day. We can only clean it out at the end of the night shift, and the night cook didn’t do it last night like it is scheduled. I can do it after we close tonight, though.”

The oil was too viscous in the morning when I arrived, and the sickly pump could not cycle the thick oil through the “gunk trap” properly. Therefore, the oil must be heated up first, but it has to be allowed to cool down enough to safely cycle the oil.

Even if we tried anyway, the time spent cleaning the fryer prevented a lot of essential prep work to be done before opening and then you had to hope the fryer would be ready before opening.

While this may not be a problem with some fryers, this old girl has seen better days and took forever to get started. Often, the opening manager coming in at 8 am had to turn it on to make sure it was alive for the 11 am opening. The current roster managers usually refused to allow it to be taken offline during normal hours as they didn’t want to have to deal with the “but my nuggets” problems, so I didn’t think to come to her about it.

No idea what possessed her to want it done now of all times.

Lazy Daisy: “Quit being lazy and swap out the oil and clean this fryer out. It’s disgusting. This is not the attitude I want in future management!”

Me: “And good future management would know not to change out fryer oil that is currently sitting at almost 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). I could lose a hand doing that! It will take a while to cool and clean.”

Lazy Daisy: “If you don’t change the oil and clean it up right now, I will have a talk with [area director] and discuss this promotion of yours.”

She then proceeded to strut back to the office to ignore her job and eat her lunch. This was doubly insulting as I have not had a chance to have my own lunch now.

I sat there for a moment, kind of just seething until the other line cook came over and said, “Don’t. It’s not safe. Mucho caliente.” I nodded in agreement trying to figure out what to do. I have ignored her in the past on these kinds of things, but it never ended up with me on top.

We stood there for a moment silently trying to figure out what to do. He was a good man and very concerned for my safety and was adamant I not even try since I had a bit of an injury reputation. That’s when light bulbs popped up in my head. Oh, I’ll make sure the fryer is clean alright, and I’ll make sure that oil is replaced.

Me: “You know, the rush starts not too long from now. And since my night shift starts in a few minutes, no need to it do it quickly.”

The other line cook stood there for a moment looking at me like I was crazy, then smiled, eyes closed, shaking his head at me as if to say, You are an idiot, and you are gonna hurt yourself.’ He then shouted out. “Heard. Servers, 86 fried!” (him letting the servers know we couldn’t do fried items)

I put no effort into doing the next steps swiftly. I cut the heat then headed out to the back dock and grabbed this metal tube on wheels we used to transport the old grease. While the grease typically was not insanely hot when transporting it out, it was still at a mean temperature and needed a lot of precautions as it would quickly heat up the metal.

I won’t bore you with the steps required of changing and cycling grease, but know that several times hot speckles of oil popped onto my face and arms. It was painful, but I knew this sacrifice will be worth it.

As I am perfecting the art of gunk poking, several tables walked into the door including a 12 top (12 person table) of mostly little kids. I was able to see them because the majority of the kitchen was visible from the dining room and vice versa because of the open-concept design of the restaurant. One server’s section groaned because the night shift was still several minutes away from arriving, and she hadn’t even finished looking at her snaps. Oh, how fortuitous.

Lazy Daisy began to stir in her office, so I knew I had to rush this next step. I pulled the gunk trap out, slid in the wheeled grease tube, and began to drain it, making extra sure the flow wasn’t strong enough to splash and burn my feet off. Since it was only a two-slot fryer, this happened very quickly, just quickly enough that she arrived as the last drop went into the tube. The distant childish chorus calling out, “I want cheese sticks!” could be heard in the background.

Lazy Daisy: “What is taking so long! We have customers now, and the grease isn’t swapped out. Why did you waste so much time cleaning!”

I simply shrugged as the night shift began to walk in.

“It takes time to clean it out with it being so hot. I had to be extra careful. You demanded I clean it, and I haven’t even had time to wipe it with the towel yet. But it’s still too hot. I would need to wait.”

I wasn’t lying, the metal was still extremely hot, and she knew that. As if on cue, I heard a ticket print, and despite my pretty bad eyesight, I could see plain as day what was on the ticket. Three orders of the best mozzarella sticks this side of the Balcones. I guess the server was too busy playing on her phone to hear the other line cook call 86. Oh well, that is not my problem.

Lazy Daisy turned and looked at the ticket then gave me a death glare. “How long?”

I shrugged again. “Usually takes a bit. The left fryer is still acting up, but I can crank up the right. Still gonna take a bit with the new grease.”

Lazy Daisy puts her hand to her forehead frustrated. “Just put the old grease back in.”

Because of the rapidly rising heat of the wheeled grease tube and lack of hand grips beside the one next to the opening and the significant number of obstacles in the cramped kitchen, it was now impossible to put the grease back in without severe risk to anyone nearby, and she knew that.

Me: “No can do. If I try, the grease will be spilling everywhere, and I will probably have to go to the hospital if I try.

Even if it doesn’t spill, I will still have burned hands. And do you really want all these guests seeing me pour grease from this dirty, grease encrusted tube?”

Lazy Daisy had this look of absolute defeat, and she marched over to deal with the table as I dumped the cold, thick new grease into the fryer then poured the old grease into the grease bin on the back dock.

The Fallout:

The left fryer took forever to heat back up and wasn’t ready until well after the rush was in full swing. The right side was much quicker but still took quite a while anyway. Aging and broken equipment was common in this building, and commercial grease fryers are not often prized for their turn on the speed.

The parents of the little kid army were complete and total Karens and began shouting obscenities at Lazy Daisy which could easily be heard over the growing bustle of the restaurant and the snickering of the line cooks.

The other morning, the line cook even found an excuse to stay a few extra minutes to watch before he headed out for the night. Lazy Daisy then spent a good part of the night going from table to table explaining that there were no fried items as servers never pay attention to any ’86’ call no matter how many times it is repeated. (And as a current server, I admit to doing this far too often to be this judgmental.) This only infuriated and stressed her out even more.

Once the right side fryer had finally heated up, she spent even more of the night explaining why all the chicken parms, eggplant parms, nuggets, wings, fries, mozzarella sticks, etc. were running so far behind. After all, we only had half the usual frying capacity. She ended up having to buy a lot of food for the tables and stay late to “put out fires” as the other manager Lucy was terrible with tables, all of which was in perfect view of me. Thank you, open concept kitchen.

After close, I got a stern talking-to from Lazy Daisy and Lucy, but they knew I had won this round and knew that Lazy Daisy was the one who demanded I clean the fryer so soon before the night began.

I never ended up eating lunch that day, but before I turned off the fryer for the night, I made sure to sneak out with one quick item: a batch of five delicious mozzarella sticks.” Fournone

18. Won’t Let Me Use The Classroom’s Outlet To Charge My Phone? I’ll Figure Out An Alternative

Gotta do what you gotta do.

“In college, I needed to be able to charge my phone in order to take pictures of the board. I had a Razr V3 at the time. Cameras on phones were still quite new, but it was better than trying to copy the contents of the board to paper at the rate the teacher liked to go.

Though this course was held in a computer lab, we weren’t allowed to use the PCs at that point as they were still being configured, though their USB ports worked fine.

That said, we weren’t allowed to use the outlets, computers (even for charging), or anything else. It was policy to allow cell phones to be used for note-taking via cameras, but my ancient little Razr only lasted an hour or so before the battery died when in camera mode.

This particular instructor was sour and generally annoyed about the existence of tools that let his students take notes effectively as he took apparent pleasure in watching students panic and trying to take down notes as fast as he could copy his own to the board. I outright refused to play that game, and my phone was the only option left to me.

The “professor” was the one denying the use of USB ports/wall outlets, and while I would have loved a USB power bank, they didn’t exist yet – at least not that I was aware of.

What I did have, however, was a hand-crank USB charger that I had borrowed from my dad. He had bought a few of them for an emergency kit and had given me one to use in the dorm should an emergency occur that involved extended power loss.

Now, while the rest of the class wasn’t in on what I planned to do, I freely distributed notes in the form of pictures I had taken. Note-taking in that teacher’s class was infamously terrible, so I was generally popular for sharing so openly.

In the next class period, I sat right up front, so the early-digital-camera could actually capture images well enough to read.

I had been told that while the phone was permitted, any form of charging that used the classroom’s resources was not, so I brought my own.

Halfway through the class period, in the middle of a lecture, I pulled out the crank, set it up on my desk, and halfway through a sentence…

“…eeeEEEeeEEEeeEEEeeeEEEeeeEEEEEEEEE”

The professor winced and turned around. I was just sitting there, cranking away. My phone was pinned between two enormous textbooks to keep it in place and aimed at the board. My desk was a mess of cables and plug adapters that were needed to convert hand-crank to USB power.

After a few moments of just staring at me, he asked, “Can… I help you with something?” I just shook my head and informed him that I was good and that I just needed to try to keep my phone charged, so I could keep taking notes.

Most of the other students just giggled.

The teacher looked around, but no one objected. Most of us just smiled up at him.

Magically, the power outlets and USB ports alike suddenly became available.” cheeseguy3412

17. Want Us To Constantly Update You? Trust Us, We Will

“When I was an intern doing my general surgery rotation, I started having problems with a man I will call Dr. Dino, an anesthesiologist that had been around in our hospital since the Jurassic period and refused to retire for some unknown reason.

For context, I did my practices in a small-town hospital that didn’t do a lot of surgical procedures, and about 80% of those were low-level urgencies (appendicitis and cholecystitis), thus the surgeons and anesthesiologists did 24-hour shifts in 2-3 day intervals.

What was the problem then? Dr. Dino hated doing his work. The only way he would not complain about surgeries as if they were done before 10 am and if he received a 1-hour notice. In any other scenario, he would start complaining that us, the interns (basically the main “administrative” workforce in that place), were too lazy, too slow, and spent our time doing nothing.

The one thing he hated the most was waking up at night as he had this crazy theory that every night procedure was done late only because an intern had screwed up during the day. He called us the worst group he ever had (I later found out he said the same of every new group of interns) and sent dozens of complaints to our general coordinator who, in turn, would reprimand us constantly.

One day, he reached our dean’s office because, according to him, I have delayed a patient’s procedure for 10 hours because I was not paying attention to the ER referrals. While it was true that the patient had arrived in the early morning, he had been left in observation by the ER unit doctors. They were only able to reevaluate him in the afternoon (7 pm) because they were full of work that day, and that was the moment I got their referral. Taking into account the time it took me to check his medical record, present it to the surgeon, and do the paperwork, and for the nurses to take him to the OR, the guy was starting his surgery at 9 pm.

The only thing that saved me from being expelled was the timestamps on the medical record that proved I was right. When Dr. Dino saw he didn’t win the round by getting me in trouble, he forced our coordinator to implement a rule that stated we had to report to Dr. Dino every possible surgical patient’s process so that he could check if we were doing our job right.

We were all so tired of this grandpa’s ******** that we decided that the best way to get back at him was obeying him to the inch. After that day, we would take any stomachache with a pain scale > 7 and a mild abdominal defense as a possible case and did an hourly update until the patient was intervened or was given a different diagnosis by one of the doctors.

We also stopped waiting for referrals and actively searched for the cases in the ER at any free time we had. Another detail was that we were only allowed to use the “official” unit’s cellphones (Nokia 2000 types that could barely make calls), meaning no text messages and no silencing, because any of our reports could be a real emergency.

The result of our system? He was receiving an average of 30-50 calls day and night with our updates, meaning he got interrupted more and slept less than before. After 4-5 shifts like this, he lifted his stupid rule, and we never heard another one of his complaints.” Fako5045

16. We Can’t Leave Until Everything Is Done? Can’t Wait For Overtime To Be On My Next Paycheck!

“This was over 12 years ago.

The workers in these industries have always been heroes in my book.

About 2 years into my previous career, I had gotten tired of working customer service (cashiering), partly because you’re constantly being watched, and other departments hate on you because “you don’t know how tough my department is. You have it so easy up here.” (Physically, yes, mentally/emotionally/working all random shifts/dealing with Karens/knowing item codes/knowing & enforcing company policy, etc… big no.)

So, there’s an opening in the produce department, and I jump on it. Being based on seniority, I easily get the job.

At first, things are pretty straight forward. I get trained to be the opener of the department. Other than having to be to work at 4 AM, stack bins of watermelons outside in 100+ (F) degree heat, and constantly having to lift 50-pound boxes of various, awkwardly shaped vegetable boxes, the concepts aren’t difficult.

Keep the product full and appealing, and don’t forget to rotate!

Then things begin to change. Corporate is tightening the labor budget because sales aren’t where they want them. Labor is getting tighter and tighter each week. Naturally, as labor declines, we can’t get stock out fast enough, or we run out of time to order sufficiently, and sales dip. Round and round it goes.

After a while, we go from having a manager, full opener, a mid-shift (between 4-8 hours depending on the time of the month), sometimes a second half-shift (usually a rookie or someone from a different dept to help out), and a full closer (28-36 labor hours per day)… to having a manager and two full closers (24 labor hours per day) every day, no matter how busy or slow.

On top of that, the manager doesn’t touch much of the product because they come in early in the morning, and when we leave for the night, everything has to be full. Now, this makes very little sense to me because that means all the fresh product sits out all night (some is refrigerated/watered). So, we have to pull things like strawberries that are extremely perishable just for her (the manager) to put them back out in the morning.

This is a big warehouse-type store that’s infamous for its great product quality, not Costco or Sam’s Club big but same idea. As time goes on, we fall more and more behind. We are struggling to keep up. Now she is irate because things are not as full as they used to be.

“You can’t leave until everything is finished,” she told us.

Every night, all the displays must be full, the load has to be broken down (we get 6-12 pallets of fresh product daily), the backroom has to be swept, all the product in the backroom condensed, and any extra cleaning or other duties she’s assigned that day. Oh, and she loads up all the 6-wheelers we use to bring out product with stuff we don’t need because she never leaves the backroom before we get there, so we start out behind.

Months of this, I’m racking up so much overtime, it’s not funny. I’m talking an average of 1-2 hours of overtime per day, 5 days a week. Same for my partner. We almost always work side-by-side (shift-wise, not literally), but he makes more, and they don’t like how expensive he is.

The only bright side for me is my partner has seniority by about 15 years, so she blames him for everything. However, she won’t tell me directly if I’m doing anything wrong. She’ll leave a nasty note for me to find later before she leaves for the day, but that’s it.

Any sane person would realize this is not possible to do by ourselves. It doesn’t matter! The day after we both put in 11-hour shifts, she scolds us on how could the two of us put in 22 hours combined and still not get everything done. We explain everything we had to do, but it falls on deaf ears, and I’m starting to become checked out mentally. So, she tells us, “You have to leave on time!”

So, every night, we’re faced with a choice: do we stay and actually finish, or do we leave on time? Doesn’t matter.

We can’t win. If we leave on time, we didn’t get everything done. A couple of times, a supervisor (her boss) came in and saw things not full, and she got in trouble. But if we stay, that’s overtime, and we all know how triggering that is to management.

Eventually, I’m expecting my first kid, so I get a second job that complements this one in industry and allows me to service 24-hour locations, meaning I can do it immediately after my shift ends (or after a power nap in the car). I’m pretty exhausted and losing patience after a few more months of this (backroom produce coolers are awesome places to vent/cool off, by the way!), but as I said in my last post, I love a challenge.

Careful what you wish for!

The results: eventually, we get a new store manager. While this didn’t improve corporate policy, this guy turns out to be the best manager the company had ever seen (literally won Manager of the Year and got promoted to District Supervisor). He fights corporate on their labor policy and proves that the store is more profitable when he spends more labor to make it more appealing and offer superior customer service.

The produce manager got forced to transfer stores because my partner had complained to the union about her unreasonable demands and targeting him with harassment since she always blamed him. He was also Mexican (legal, in case you were wondering) and over 40, so two legally protected classes.

Years later, I was visiting her new store on a training assignment, and she had also been demoted to customer service (oh, the irony!) where I believe she still is today.

Once my kid is born, the new store manager let me take all my paid time off. And we all lived happily ever after… almost. I did get promoted in the customer service department a few months later, but that only led to more stories for another day.

I think this may be something of a double malicious compliance, but it’s a no-win because you can’t comply with both. This is probably the most satisfying ending to all my stories, in my opinion.” Oneillirishman

15. Mom Told Me Not To Come Back, So I Did Just That

Be careful how you word things.

“This happened when I was 15.

My mom was (let’s be real, she probably still is) a mentally, emotionally, and physically abusive narcissist.

Some highlights are when she was teaching my twin sister and me to read at the age of 4 or so. It was around 2 am, and my sister was having trouble learning, so my mother’s solution was to beat her with a sandal every time she got a flashcard wrong. The same thing happened when my mother had me transcribe an essay she had written to my handwriting when I was 7. Every time I started a letter from the wrong position (like starting a capital M from the bottom line) she would beat me with one of her Birkenstocks.

This too happened later at night, so when I got too delirious for the exhaustion and pain, she would drag me, by the neck, and literally throw me into a cold shower to wake me up, so we could more easily continue the waking nightmare.

When I was 13, I told her to wanted to live with my dad (they were divorced), and she told me she didn’t care what I did after I turned 18. I later figured out that this was because the child support stopped at age 18.

Fast forward to age 15. Our relationship was understandably strained. We had had guests, and she liked to use guests as a way of controlling our behavior through shame. It’s easier to be an angsty teenager when your grown-up friends from church aren’t watching and judging everything you do.

This makes it easier for her to pretend to be a firm but loving mother all while slipping in sideways comments like velvet daggers.

Well, I decided I wasn’t going to subject myself to the whole thing and spent the day outside in the woods nearby (we lived in the mountains at the time, so it was less than 100 feet from the house). When I saw our guests had left, I went to go back inside. My mother, perhaps unhappy at being denied a day-long emotional abuse routine, told me I wasn’t welcome and that I should leave.

My 15-year-old brain heard her words and knew that she only meant for a little while, but it also recognized that she failed to specify any timeframe at all.

So, I hiked a couple of miles to a friend’s house and asked if I could spend a couple of days there. When my friend’s dad found out why I was there, he was p*ssed and said I could stay as long as I needed.

I didn’t go home that evening or the next. My mom became concerned and contacted law enforcement (LE) to report me missing. This is a big deal for several reasons. We lived in the mountains on a national park, so it was a very real possibility that I had been attacked by a wild animal, become injured while hiking, drowned, or been kidnapped. Nobody knew of my mother’s abusive tendencies or the squalor and neglect my sister and I lived in.

Most importantly the law enforcement was the local park rangers with which she worked daily.

LE immediately contacted my dad’s side of the family to see if I had turned up there or contacted them. They promptly freaked the **** out and came to my house with lawyers on standby. LE then hired dogs to track my scent and then everyone freaked out because the dogs tracked me to a nearby river where my trail died because the dogs couldn’t pick up any more scent.

Over the next couple of days, there were people going in and out of my house: Rangers, lawyers my family, etc. And several noticed the overpowering scent of cleaning chemicals, but only the lawyer considered why a ‘clean’ house would reek of chemicals.

LE started to canvas the nearby woods and ‘neighborhood.’ My friend’s dad came to me and asked if there was somewhere else I could stay. He told me that he wouldn’t kick me out and didn’t want to have to lie to the police or let the dogs on his property. My friend and I figured we’d just go camping for a week or so, but instead, I looked up my dad’s side of the family and called, and they picked me up right away.

Understandably, everyone had questions. When I told them what was happening the lawyers, horrified, pounced. A judge issued an emergency change of custody and prevented her from gaining custody until she underwent a psych eval and therapy (which my mother would never allow).

The rangers, equally horrified, completely shunned my mother, and she eventually lost her job. Since, she was only allowed to live on the park because she worked there, so she was kicked out of her house. My friend’s father and the trackers were members of the local community and churches, and they, too, shunned my mother.

She lost her job, her house, her church, and her friends all because she told me to leave and I did.” justaddtheslashS

Another User Comments:

“I am glad you escaped. Your sister is safe too I assume?” geithman

Reply:

“Yeah. The emergency change of custody was for the both of us. She is still dealing with the consequences of our childhood. I love her to death, but she still has the emotional maturity of a 13-year-old.

It gets worse around my mother.” justaddtheslashS

14. Technically, I’m Still In Dress Code

“I worked at a big-box electronics store and was a model employee. I was transferred to a store in the new town I would be living in to attend university backed by high praise from management.

The dress code was followed in the spirit of the agreement at my old store with very few issues. The new store with freshly trained management, however, was radically different. They would make us line up and pull our pant legs up to enforce the dress code of black socks, even though you couldn’t see any socks under our dress pants. You would be written up and sent home if you ‘failed to uphold professionalism and broke your terms of employment.’

During the sock check on my first day, which commenced after a 2-minute long store dance and chant/song, I was publically reprimanded for not following the dress code due to my nice suede high top sneakers having a white patch of fabric as well as a small white stripe in the middle of the black sole that was completely unnoticeable underneath my dress pants.

I was lectured on maintaining a professional appearance at my minimum wage job and was strongly encouraged to get shiny black shoes or face termination.

I thanked my manager for his feedback and promised that as soon as I cashed my first paycheck, I would buy a pair of shoes matching his description. That bought me 2 weeks of begrudging acceptance and displeased sock checks.

After my grace period ended, I searched through 3 second-hand stores to find the perfect pair, and then like a gift from the spiteful gods themselves, I found them. They were perfect. Terrible, shiny, black fake leather high top sneakers with a quilted pattern. They were truly the shoe equivalent of jeggings: a dress shoe but infinitely worse.

They were tacky, ratty by design, made squeaking farting noises when I walked, and fit his description perfectly. They were hideous.

The next day, I proudly lifted up my pant legs for the sock check. My co-workers were barely containing laughter and unable to hide their smirks. The manager was speechless and looked like a cat in water. Before he recovered, I pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper containing his written expectations that I nicely asked for with his smarmy signature at the bottom.

He didn’t give up there. He was determined to win the war he started despite losing the first battle. The warnings came in quick succession, and I was enjoying myself way too much. He couldn’t nail me for my shoes, so he complained about my supplied uniform shirt being too short and gave me a larger size, which was equally short but large enough to fit 2 of me in it.

He complained about my dress pants being too tight (i.e., well-fitting), so I took the liberty of wearing a snug, handbook approved, pencil skirt. Did I need to have my phone on my person but out of sight? Good thing I’m allowed clip on belt pouches. I need my shirt tucked in, great. I need my hair pulled back? No problemo.

My final handbook approved form was magnificent. A high waisted tight pencil skirt with a black crocodile print belt (sometimes placed low on my hips instead of my waistband) adorned with the largest phone holster available, an XL shirt tucked in on my small-sized self, sheer black tights, mid-calf black dress socks, my long hair in pigtails, and topped off with my terrible, horrible, perfectly compliant musical shoes.

I was truly a sight to behold.

If I knew he would be on shift, I would sometimes skip into work in my old, unacceptable, and non-compliant uniform and head straight to the bathroom to change.

**** you, Mitch.” HelloSchrodi

13. Jerk Aunt Gets Dishwasher Installed Incorrectly On Purpose

You said you wanted the dishwasher installed, and that’s exactly what you got… with a twist.

“So, a little backstory:

My dad’s older sister (my aunt) is a hard person to nail down. Sometimes she is the sweetest person you’ve ever met, but other times, she is a total Karen.

Well, a few months back, her husband (my uncle) passed away (RIP), and it was a total shock to everyone. Then right after, the world stopped, leaving her with only my cousin, which has brought out much more of her Karen side.

The story:

So, with everything starting to reopen after pandemic lockdown and it being ok to have small gatherings again, my dad and I went down to visit my aunt. She had gotten a new dishwasher, and my dad nearly flipped when he found out she was going to pay someone a ridiculous amount of money. (I don’t remember the exact amount, but it was a few hundred more than when my mom got hers installed.) So, we drove down to her house, so my dad could install it for free.

We get there, and the fun begins right away. My aunt complains about where I parked. (It was next to her car. I drove because my car is newer than my dad’s.) So, I moved.

Then she complained about parking there because the guy she had paid to cut her lawn was coming, so I moved again. (All this time, she isn’t telling me where she wants me to park either. She’s just telling me I picked bad places despite her enormous driveway.) After two or three more times of playing Simon Says, I end up on the other side of her car, which she decides is perfect.

So, we go in, and I greet my cousin who I haven’t seen for about a year due to her being in college. (She’s awesome and not entitled at all.) She and I sit around and chat for a while, and my dad gets to work on the dishwasher.

At first, my aunt was super nice offering me snacks, trying to make my dad sit down and have coffee, etc. But dad wanted to get the job done because he lives 2 hours away, and I live 2 hours north of him but was staying with him for the weekend which was how I got roped into this.

My aunt starts going on about how she is so happy to finally have a dishwasher that will be flat against the counter, starts questioning if my dad is doing it right, and overall slowly turns from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde.

Then she comes in and interrupts my cousin and I’s conversation to ask me about my job and stuff while only half listening when I answer her questions.

I knew she was only half listening because I’d talk about something, and then immediately after I’d stop talking, she would ask me a question about what I just told her, so it was a lot of repeating myself. Then she starts in on my looks, how I’ve gained weight, how my hair would be so much prettier if I straightened it and brushed it properly (my hair is straight and long, and I brush it just fine; it’s just a little frizzy sometimes), and so on.

I’m self-conscious about my looks, especially because my cousin is a pageant queen. (Explains a lot about my aunt, huh?) And I’m not exactly skinny; I’m squishy but not fat. So, instantly my self-esteem is going down, and my cousin steps into the rescue and starts changing the subject to lunch.

My aunt is distracted and instantly tells us we are ordering Chinese food (knowing I hate the Chinese place that she always orders from, and my dad only eats Chinese food on my birthday).

She goes in telling my cousin to get lunch specials. My cousin explains that due to them only doing curbside that they’re not doing lunch specials. My aunt doesn’t like this answer and tells my cousin to check their website. This starts a whole argument where my cousin has to check not only their website but their Facebook page AND has to call them and ask about lunch specials just to appease my aunt who even went as far as to demand my cousin ask them to “make an exception.”

I tell her it’s fine because that place typically had lunch specials with shellfish in them, which I’m allergic too.

I’ve told my aunt this a thousand times, and every time is like groundhogs day, and the same conversation always ensues.

“Are you sure? You ate it when you were little. Could it have been something else you reacted too? What about lobster? Are you sure it’s all shellfish?”

Yeah, I hate that conversation. So, we decided what to order, and shocker, my aunt got shellfish. They make these crab things that look exactly like their chicken fingers, so immediately that’s out for me. I ordered fried rice and beef teriyaki for me and my dad. My cousin goes to get it and comes back. My aunt immediately dumps most everything on a plate including the chicken fingers and the fried crab things together ON TOP of the beef teriyaki, so I can’t tell which is which.

I ended up eating most of the fried rice which, of course, I heard about from my aunt.

At this point through lunch, my aunt is laying into my cousin about everything that’s “bothering her” that day. Her attitude, how lazy she is, her boyfriend, and how lazy he is (in front of me and my dad!). I tried to change the subject, but it always looped around to my cousin. My dad was p*ssed, and when we finished lunch, my cousin wrapped up the leftovers and said she was taking them to her boyfriend because he was doing summer work and hadn’t eaten today. She then looked at me and invited me along. I don’t think I’ve ever run out the door so fast in my life, and I felt bad for ditching my dad.

Then this happened while we were gone, so I heard it second hand…

My aunt then laid into my dad about the dishwasher again, and my dad had the horrible realization that he was missing a hose that my aunt forgot to buy separately, so now my dad had to go to the store with my aunt. The entire way there, she complained about my cousin, my other aunt in Florida, my dad’s attitude, and how my brother never comes with us for visits. (He can’t stand aunt.)

They get to the store, and my dad thinks he knows where the part is, but my aunt demands help from the cashier. She goes full-blown Karen, being rude to this poor girl who is just a cashier and doesn’t know much about the stuff they sell, and my aunt berated her almost the entire time calling her names even I won’t repeat to keep this clean, but they sounded similar to “Cupid dumb bass.”

My dad is stunned to silence as he witnesses this, and just as this girl is about to cry, he finally finds his voice and cuts in, stepping between the girl and my aunt, hands the girl a ten, thanks to her for her help, and tells her she can let them be now.

The girl practically runs for the hills at this point, and my dad turns and lays into my aunt now.

Dad: What is your problem?!

Aunt: What?

Dad: Why are you being so mean to everyone!?

Aunt: W-well I’m not meaning to be. My husband did just died after all.

Dad: [Aunt’s name], you were a witch (not a witch but a word sounding similar) before that, so don’t pull that on me!

My dad then walks off and finds the part, he buys it with my aunt being strangely quiet the entire time, and my dad is even careful not to go to the same cashier that helped them. My aunt drove back to the house after like a maniac and yelled at my dad, which he says he tuned out.

When they got back to the house, my cousin and I had also just gotten back, and my aunt began yelling about how my dad embarrassed her. My dad had enough at this point, and they started arguing. My cousin and I escaped to the den to watch Disney movies.

My aunt uttered the famous words, “Just finish the dishwasher!”

Insert evil laugh as my dad remembers her bragging about how her dishwasher will be flat against the counter.

My dad agrees and goes about installing the dishwasher, except he puts the brackets in backward on purpose, so when he is done an hour or two later, it sticks out of the counter by about an inch (not enough to walk into and hurt yourself but enough to really irritate my aunt).

She starts yelling at my dad that he did it wrong, and my dad shrugs and says that if we don’t leave now, we will probably hit rush hour traffic so he grabs me while my aunt is still complaining, and we run for the car. My cousin texted me on the way home saying my aunt hadn’t stopped grumbling about it since we had left, and she thought it was hilarious.

Please don’t be a Karen, guys, particularly not to my dad. He’s an ******* in all the best ways. So, it really bugs her THAT much.” localanimenerd

12. Want Me To Pick Up All My Stuff? Sure, I’ll Get All Of It

“The relationship between me and my mother is really bad and has always been.

Here’s some backstory:

My mother is very narcissistic, so every fight between us has always been my or my father’s fault. Last year, I cut ties with her, but it hasn’t been that easy. I have also a sister who is still in connection with her. Their relationship is a big part of my mine and my mother’s bad connection. But enough of that now.

I’ve collected some stuff from my mom’s place before; I didn’t want the rest of my stuff to be there anymore since I now live at my dad’s place now. I called Julia, my sister, to go through my stuff, which she did. I was going to pick the stuff later that evening. (It was Thursday.)

Because of her and my mom’s good relationship, Julia wanted to confirm that it was okay with my mom.

That didn’t go so well. My mom flipped completely on Julia because I still had the key to her place. I ended the call with Julia, so they could sort the fight. Julia got really emotional because my mom yelled at her because she was angry at me.

After midnight, I called Julia, and my mom had already gone to sleep. We talked about the situation, and she told me that I had to get ALL my stuff from there and return the key to my mom’s new partner. (If I wanted some stuff, I would have to get all of it.) After that, I decided to call my dad about that, and he said that we will get the stuff later with a trailer.

So, it’s Sunday now, and Julia was at my mom’s place alone, so we went to get the stuff. My mom told Julia to say to me that I had to get the stuff when my mom’s new partner was home because I couldn’t give the key (which I still had) to Julia. My mom’s partner wasn’t around, but we still went to get the stuff. (It’s my stuff, and I should be allowed to get it.)

My mom really meant “all my stuff” as in a huge box of my belongings, but we took it all: my desk, shelves, school books, nightstand, notice board, dishes, old toys, the box with my stuff, AND a huge part of my baby pictures and keepsakes.

My mom will be very p*ssed and sad, but honestly, I don’t care anymore because she has hurt me mentally countless of times. I also left the key on the table. I didn’t give it to my sister. ;)” didImakeit

11. Sure, You Can Change Things Around Here, But Don’t Be Surprised When Things Go Very Wrong

“I work in a fairly large level 1 trauma hospital on the east coast. My main job is moving patients to their testing areas or procedures. (Take Mr. Smith to x-ray, Ms. Grey to pre-OP, you get the gist.) Now, what I was shown during my hiring is if you hold up an operation, things get expensive.

I brought a patient 20 minutes late for their test, and my manager told me that those 20 minutes had cost the hospital over $35,000 in time lost (2 doctors, 1 anesthesiologist, and 3 nurses – big money).

Now, every job we do is timed from the moment we accept, put in progress, and complete, all done with a little in-house phone system. We have codes that delay those times for a massive range of things. Everything from drawing *****, getting meds, and the patient is not in their room, is on a list for us to use. When we start we are told that if anything slows us down, we put in the codes. Also, if the job was delayed for more than 5 minutes, we were to cancel it.

None of us did that. If it was going to take longer to put the code in than it was to do the action, it wasn’t worth it. And if it took a nurse a few extra moments to put in a new IV, no one would bat an eye.

Well, after this incident, we had a department meeting, and we were told by our top manager that “our times have suffered recently. From now on, if the job is delayed 5 minutes, you MUST CANCEL IT. Anyone who doesn’t will be written up for insubordination.” Now, in my job, insubordination is very serious. You can be on last chance with one of them.

Before this, our times were great. We had all been here long enough to know how to work our system, so we gave the nurses time and still kept ours low. However, our department had just hired about a dozen new people, effectively doubling our shift and, of course, making our times worse because they didn’t know how to yet.

Queue compliance.

In one shift, I must have canceled at least 15 jobs. They were put right back in and were finished within half an hour usually, but it still cost us time. And every one of my coworkers did the same. Within 24 hours, I heard my manager talking with some other supervisors. He had gotten over 145 emails from nurses and complaints from patients!

My next shift, he called us all back in and told us “Canceling the jobs will now only be done with your supervisor’s approval. We will go by each situation and see if we can give you more time as needed.”

I still work here, and I still think if my 20-minute delay cost $35,000 how much the hours we set the ORs back cost.

Don’t fix what isn’t broke.” Firestorm1995

10. Want Me To Save My Money, So I Can Spoil You? Okay, But Don’t Expect Much

“So, I am a pretty average, 19-year-old gay furry male. I have a job and get paid a steady paycheck which is kinda delayed nowadays, of course, but this is more of a story of a long term thing.

My dad is a very protective parent, don’t get me wrong, I love my dad and all he’s done for me, but sometimes he can be very abrasive and unreasonable. I have plenty of stories of him and his girlfriend’s semi entitlement if you guys wanna hear them.

My dad mostly shows his entitlement when it comes to money. I used to own a joint bank account when I was younger, and anytime I bought something that wasn’t food or clothes, he would yell at me about it.

Even if it wasn’t a big purchase and was less than $30, I’d still get in trouble where he would repeatedly tell me not to spend all my money and to save it.

Here’s the kicker, he forces me to use my money for unnecessary things, buying food for everyone (like overpriced takeout), getting my hair done every other week, buying expensive clothes, you name it. Then when I have none left, he gets angry and says I need to stop spending all my money until finally, I had enough, and the malicious compliance came in.

Around my 18th birthday, I took myself out of the joint bank account and opened my own at a different bank. My next paycheck came in, and as usual, I was told by my dad: “(My name), don’t spend all your money.”

I nodded and said I wouldn’t dream of it.

That’s when I would steadily spend it all on stuff I actually needed or wanted instead of buying what he wanted me to buy until I had nothing but $1 left in my checking. Now, I know what your thinking, “(My name), wouldn’t you be hurting yourself financially?”

Nope! Because my dad owed me at least $600 for all the things I bought for him, and he was supposed to pay me back when he got paid, he had the money for ages, just wanted to milk me some more. Later in the month, My dad walked up to me while I was in the kitchen, and the following conversation ensued.

“(My name), did you spend all your money?” My dad asked in a tone that sounded like he knew what my response would be I smugly replied with, “Nope, I have some money left to spend” “Oh?” My dad asked genuinely surprised, “How much?”

That’s when I pulled out my phone and showed him my checking account.

He saw the 1$ and went ballistic, saying how I was irresponsible and never listened to him. I just acted innocent and said:

“But I was just doing what you told me to do. You said not to spend ALL my money, so I didn’t spend all of it.”

That’s when my dad realized what was going on. Before taking a frustrated walk back to his room, while I continued to enjoy my morning coffee. I eventually got him to pay me back, and he never asked me to buy stuff for him or anyone else unless I wanted to ever again.” SnivyPootis

9. Want Me To Take Care Of Every Patient No Matter How Long It Takes? I’m On It

“Backstory: I got hired for an IV pharmacy tech position back in January of last year.

It started off pretty nice; well-rounded team to help get me up to speed, pharmacists were lovely, and the General Manager (GM=my boss) was nothing but good to me at the time. My basic job description was to fill IV’s for patients to leave on delivery runs, clean IV pumps, compound medications, check out of dates, and clean the IV room. Our team had to make sure the IV medications were leaving on time for deliveries (which were 2 at the time — one for the afternoon, and one for late-night). My GM’s motto was to “Always put the patient 1st, no matter the circumstances.” (This comes into play later-on.)

During the months I was working there, the IV lead tech (let’s call her Emily) had fully trained me and placed me on EARLY morning shifts (Mon-Fri at 3:30a), which turned out to be one of the most relaxed shifts I’ve ever worked in my life.

Basically, I would fill a few IV medications for patients during the time frame before Emily would come in at 8 am, and I’d leave at 12 pm, therefore having the rest of the day to myself. Emily and I started to click very well and had a great workflow in place for the other members to come in for the evenings.

May comes along, and our IV team (which was 4 people including myself) started to disband one by one within a 2-week spread. Emily informed me that she was also putting in her notice shortly after the first member did (within 2 days of one another), so it got pretty scary at first. Our GM called me personally into his office and offered me the Lead IV tech role.

What went off in my head at that time was, “Really? Me? 3 months in, and being offered a lead spot?” I was overwhelmed with joy and got a significant raise to go along with it once I accepted the offer. During Emily’s 2 weeks’ notice, she showed and taught me everything she knew about her role and the major keys/points on what the bosses are looking for, etc.

The day after Emily left, I was in charge. However, the minor setback, it was only a team of 2 people now. Knowing that my cushy 4 am shift was eliminated, the remaining team member (let’s call her Diane) and I talked about a schedule and worked it out perfectly! Diane volunteered to work Sat-Wed (all 8-hour shifts), and I would work Mon-Fri.

The major difference was, that Thurs-Fri was 9 am-8 pm shifts, with nobody to cover for the entire day. The GM and I had a discussion about this and said he would personally find 2 more people to replace the ones who left and get things back to normal.

May to July was one of the WORST times I’ve ever worked in my life. Instead of working 9-8 on Thursday/Friday, I was working 9 am-11 pm, so about 12-13 hour shifts on both of those days. Surprisingly, during this entire ordeal, Diane and I worked very well together and were able to send out all of the IV’s that were ordered on time without missing any. Keep in mind, since day 1 of working here, we NEVER had an IV that went out late for deliveries nor missed any patients.

Around mid-July, I got fed up with waiting for my GM to hire 2 new people for my team. I finally went into his office, explained the situation, and my reasoning of frustration, only to be told that it was “MY responsibility to look for new team members” when he said that he’d personally look for me. I was completely dumbfounded by this, and it finally set into me that this place wasn’t the place I expected it to be. You know, like one of those…very nice and reasonable at first, then turns into straight **** after a few months? Yeah, it keeps getting worse from here. I talked to Diane about it, and she explained to me that this was the reason why Emily left the company.

(Uh-oh.)

The middle of August comes around, and we finally hired 2 more people to my team, and they were amazing! Once all trained, come September, and things were starting to get back to normal. I was back to 40 hour weeks, Diane and I finally got some quality of life again. Win-win right? NOPE. Early September, GM called me back into his office and did not like the fact I was working 48 hour weeks before our staff went back to normal. The GM said, “Kofaze, my payroll was almost in the negative during those months thanks to you. We can’t have you working overtime like that anymore.”

I explained that it was only 2 of us working, 2 people down, the IV’s were still getting out on time, we put the “Patient 1st” just like you said.

I also asked why he didn’t tell me this while we were short-staffed at the time, that this could have been easily avoided and would have completely understood the situation. GM scoffed and made a snarky remark, “Well you’re a leader, so I shouldn’t have to tell you to not work overtime. How about you use your time more wisely?”

What the ****? I was just making sure every patient was taken care of, no matter the circumstances, and following his command. This is also the first time he has ever mentioned payroll and overtime to me, so I was generally upset about all of it. After this, I did not work any more OT.

November came around, and oh boy it couldn’t have been any worse.

I had to let go of one of my members due to excessive no show/no call, and Diane was finally putting in her notice because she was getting her dream job across the country. Note that this AGAIN happened within a 2-week span. I was a little sad on the inside, but also couldn’t have been happier that Diane was following her dream. Back to a 2 person crew again, uh-oh. During this period, I was very lucky that the newest IV tech (let’s call her Jasmine) agreed to the working the same shift as Diane’s for the time being and told her that things would go back to normal soon.

It was sneaking up on flu and the cold season, and it gets much busier in the healthcare world around that time.

I was still working 40 hours a week, yet I am still by myself on Thu-Fri, just like a few months ago when I worked 11-hour shifts. One day, GM randomly called me into his office and snarled, “Kofaze, IV medications weren’t made for a run. Please explain why.” I told him that you specifically told me to not work any overtime like back in the day because it hurts your payroll, so I was just following your orders and trying to use my time wisely.

I could tell he was extremely furious and just told me to go back to work. He sent me an e-mail specifically stating the following: “Kofaze, the patients ALWAYS comes 1st. I do not care how long it takes you, but I want every single IV patient taken care of before you leave work.

This is where you need to STEP UP and be a LEADER.” I showed this to Jasmine, and her jaw dropped so far that you could walk over it and couldn’t believe that he would say that to me via e-mail.

Malicious compliance time!!!

Every day after he sent me the e-mail, I made sure that EVERY single IV patient was taken care of, therefore working about 12-14 hours shifts 5 days a week. During this madness, many of the pharmacists and other staff were concerned about my health, but I specifically told them the same words the GM spewed out at me. The better part about it all, it was the start of a new pay period, which lasts two weeks long.

(I think you know where I’m headed with this.) While all of that was going on, I have already applied to another job and was waiting on the thumbs up when to start.

About 3 weeks go by, and guess who calls me? The GM asked to see me in his office IMMEDIATELY. I could tell by the look on his face of what he was going to tell me. He was holding my pay-stub, saying that his payroll was completely shot, that he now has to cut hours of other workers to meet it for the monthly quota, and why I would work 132 hours in a 2-week span, knowing it would hurt his payroll?

I had the biggest grin on my face when I showed him the e-mail and used his own words against him, “Sir, you told me to make sure every single patient was taken care of before I left work, so I specifically followed your orders.” The GM’s face turned beet red with anger, knowing that there was nothing he could do about this because it would come back on him due to a paper trail with specifics.

After this conversation, to put a cherry on a cake, I also put in my two-week notice and told him that I have taken an offer with another company. The next day, Jasmine also put in her notice because she was completely unhappy with this entire situation, therefore having zero people left in the department.

Months have gone by, and I love it here at my new line of work. I spoke with an ex-co-worker a couple of weeks ago and told me that the IV department has still not recovered since my departure. They have consistent trouble keeping more than two people and have had to utilize other locations to help with deliveries due to severe understaffing, costing them THOUSANDS of dollars in the process.” kofaze

8. Okay, Tons Of Nacho Trays It Is

I’m down for extra nachos.

“This story comes as a result of a combination of me trying to get promoted, my social anxiety, me being a smarta*s, with just a hint of trying to spite another supervisor.

I was a supervisor at a movie theater a few years back. I took over a regular non-supervisor shift in concessions, so there was already another supervisor working with me. This supervisor and I(we’ll call him Adam) were on pretty good terms. We get told by a senior manager (we’ll call him Kevin) to fill two rolling racks with premade trays that we put nachos in.

Filling them is simple enough: unfold trays, place them on aluminum baking sheets, so they’re ready to be filled, and leave one slot empty between sheets. This part is really important because when we put nachos in the trays, we need the space, so the chips don’t break after we fill them.

So Adam and I fill the racks as we normally would and call it a good.

After this, we roll them in back because we don’t need them right now.

Adam gets sent home around 2 that day (we were slow as heck), and I take over the stand as a supervisor. About fifteen minutes later, Kevin calls me in the back. Before I continue, let’s be clear that with so many managers, two senior managers, several supervisors, and about 60 employees, there is definitely some favoritism going on. Adam was on excellent terms with Kevin, and they talked regularly like they were friends. On a good day, I was on okay terms with Kevin. He didn’t hate me, and he was pretty fair with me for the most part, but he wasn’t necessarily fond of me either.

Our overall professional relationship was pretty rocky. Overall, though, I still think he was a good guy.

Anyway, not the point. The point is, he calls me in back to tell me (just me, he made no mention of Adam) that he distinctly told me that he wanted those racks full, apparently more full than we normally make them. I would have loved to tell him that that’s what we normally do and that Adam said it was good. But, I was trying to get promoted at the time, so I didn’t want to challenge my senior manager. Plus, my anxiety wouldn’t allow it.

So, the first thing I did after getting done with Kevin was to consolidate all the nacho trays as best as I could.

After that, we had one full rack and one virtually empty rack. So, then I started assembling more trays and filling more sheets. This is interspersed with me trying to get daily jobs done, hopping on register to help out customers, and giving people breaks.

So, about an hour and a half after this, I used up all the clean trays we had. However, the rack still wasn’t completely filled per Kevin’s instructions. I didn’t want to bug Kevin with it because he had other stuff to do. I also didn’t know if he wouldn’t accept this as being done.

Something important to note before moving on: we used the baking sheets for a lot of things. We used them to dump out batches of popcorn that we had accidentally burnt.

We used them for the first batch of the day, so people didn’t get sick off of the cleaning chemicals and last batch of the night, so we could close out more quickly. We also used them to place and pre count frozen items, so we didn’t use the counters. There were other things I’m forgetting about, but you get the idea.

Then in my desire to show motivation, relieve my anxiety, and just be a smarta** all provided me with an epiphany, almost as though it were a sign from God Himself: I had used all of the clean sheets. There were still some dirty ones that I had not used but could easily be cleaned. Very easily in fact!

I then proceed to clean all of our dirty trays so as to fill the rest of this rack.

During this time, the closing supervisor (Katie) comes in. Katie and I used to have a very good working relationship. But in some months prior to this point, we had falling out. We were still polite to each other, but the damage had been done.

So, after briefing her on what she needs to know (who on mid-shift has had breaks, which movies are busy, etc.) I tell her about Kevin’s directive regarding the nachos, and she vehemently disagrees. She makes the argument that if I use all of the baking sheets, we won’t have any for the rest of the week for all the other stuff we needed them for. After going back and forth with her a bit, consulting a third supervisor, and bringing up the fact that Kevin outranks both of us, she says the magic words:

“Fine, do what you want.

I don’t care.”

What I wanted was to not get b*tched at by Kevin again. So, I use the rest of the baking sheets for the nacho trays. At this point, we now have none left for anything. About an hour later, I see Kevin and tell him that I finished the nacho trays. He just says thanks and continues about his day.

So, of course, given the relative importance of having trays, this creates problems for the next few days. Concessions struggle to come up with baking sheets for when we need them, usually only having two free at any given point that they have to be washed immediately after use. It also took until Friday (this all happened on a Monday) to sell out of the number of nachos we needed to have more than two useable baking sheets.

Oh, you’re wondering why we didn’t just remove the empty trays from the racks; it was because the managers only brought us the rack with full nacho trays.

At the supervisor meeting with senior managers two weeks later, Katie mentioned that using every single baking sheet was a bad idea and that it ought not to be done again. It didn’t take her urging by any means, but it was never done again.” poizunman206

7. Sure, We’ll Show Up On Senior Skip Day… After We Come Back From Golf

“My dad and I were talking about our respective days in high school, and he shared how he and his buddies got back at their grouchy, old math teacher, Mrs. Schaffer.

According to Dad, Mrs. Schaffer was the best teacher he had ever had, and he and his buddies gave her endless grief, including using the phone in the classroom to pull a prank on another one of their pals.

However, she took things way too seriously. She was stern, strict, and was the kind of person who could never take a joke. Everything had to be done exactly right.

Of course, Dad and his buddies being teenagers, they saw her as someone who could use livening up and gained reputations as class clowns. He told me that Mrs. Schaffer probably thought he and his friends were going to be criminal masterminds or something.

Every year at this high school, they’d have Senior Skip Day, which every senior looked forward to because, hey, it’s a day away from school. Mrs. Schaffer, in her grouchiness, detested Senior Skip Day and decided to ruin everyone’s fun during my dad’s senior year. To this day, Dad swears that she picked that year because of the shenanigans he and his pals got into.

She announced that there would be a test on this day. Not only that, but anyone who skipped the test because of Senior Skip Day would get a zero, which would affect their grade average.

Dad, who had a scholarship lined up at his dream school, was mad. If he missed the test, his grade average would be affected, risking his scholarship. However, he had been waiting every day for four years for Senior Skip Day.

So, he and his buddies came up with a plan and give Mrs. Schaffer the most grief she had ever had in her entire life.

Senior Skip Day rolls around. Dad and his buddies went to play golf early in the day as their test was scheduled in the afternoon.

Once they finished their game, they hurried to the school, not even bothering to change out of their golfing clothes….

However, this became a big problem, one Dad admitted he and his friends didn’t think of. For those who don’t know anything about golf, golf shoes have little cleats (spikes) on the soles to help grip on rough terrain… However, wearing them and walking on tile floors is a bad idea.

One of them was smart and took off his cleats…but the rest of them were stubborn and insisted on trying to get to Mrs. Schaffer’s room in their cleats…which was on the second floor and on the other side of the building. They were slipping, sliding around, grabbing the walls, and laughing so hard.

Everyone poked their heads out of the classrooms and were confused at the sight of these four guys trying to walk to their classroom in their golf cleats.

Somehow, they managed to get down the hallway and up the stairs without breaking their necks and made it to Mrs. Schaffer’s room. There was now a new problem. While the hallways had tiles, the classrooms themselves had wood floors, which resulted in the cleats getting stuck.

They were clomping around, making a racket trying to get to their desks. Everyone else in the classroom looked up and laughed so hard…everyone that is except Mrs. Schaffer. She was beet red and looking like she was going to drop dead of a heart attack at the sight of these four idiots (as my dad put it) clomping into the room, dressed for a round of golf and laughing as if they had heard the best joke in the world.

Mrs. Schaffer yelled “What are you doing?!?!?!?!?” and pointed to the once perfect wooden floor…which now had holes in them.

Dad, who had calmed down enough, shrugged his shoulders and said, “We had time between rounds of golf to take the test…so here we are.”

Mrs. Schaffer, realizing that they did show up to take the test as she told them (and that her own ploy to get back at them had backfired), calmly told them to take their seats and gave their tests to them, glowering at them the whole time. When they were done, they clomped back out before slipping and sliding around to catch their next tee time.

At least Mrs. Schaffer was fair…Dad passed the test and kept his scholarship.

To this day…those holes are still in the wooden floors.” AQuietBorderline

6. Want Me To Prove That I Can’t Come Into Work? Okay, You Asked For It

“Backstory: this is 2008. I had been working for a local fast-food chain for a few years and had been a really dependable employee.

I always came in early and filled in for other employees when they were sick or had a vacation, mostly when they were sick, though. This is important because a lot of employees were abusing the policy, causing Head Manager to require physical proof that you were sick. But since it’s a small town, you could get a doctor’s note pretty easily. So, if she didn’t believe you, she would ask for additional proof.

Of course, I was young and stupid. And I really didn’t know the law at the time.

For a while, I had been suffering from a cyst that had been growing on top of my butt for a few months, and this was starting to really affect my work since it would make it harder to walk as the day went on. Nice Manager had noticed this and confronted me about it. I told her what was going on. I was waiting for my vacation in a few weeks to check it out. This didn’t go over too well with her. So, she confronted my mother about it when she came by for her evening sweet tea. Like I said, small town.

Everyone knows everyone.

I was admitted for surgery the following day. That just so happened to be one of two days off I had. Doctors ended up removing a golf ball-sized cyst from me. I was also released later that day and was given very strict orders not to do any lifting for the entire time I had the stitches in, and I was to be out of work for three weeks.

The next day, I needed to go to work and hand in my doctor’s note and collect my paycheck since it was payday. My mother had to take me since I was on pain killers and unable to sit much less drive. I hobbled into the building, in a pretty good amount of pain since any movement from the waist down hurt, and then asked to see Head Manager.

She yelled from the back for me to come to her office. I could tell she was not in a good mood from her tone. I slowly make my way to her office. Once I get there, she hands me my check, and I hand her my doctor’s excuse. She reads it and flips.

Head Manager: What do you mean you are out for three weeks?

Me: It was a really big cyst, and the doctor said I had to take it easy. (I’m getting kinda irritated and light-headed at this point due to the pain and the meds.)

Head Manager: Well, you look like you can move around pretty well right now. I even have you on the schedule to work tomorrow.

Me: I’m sorry, but I really can’t do that.

Head Manager: Prove to me that you can’t!

Me: Trust me, you don’t want to….

Head Manager: I said prove it!

Me: Ok. (I then proceed to turn around, bend over, and pull my shorts down, revealing a large blood-stained gauze.)

I hear Head Manager gasp in shock.

Head Manager: Oh my God, okay. I believe you. Go home! (She said that as I was pulling my shorts up.)

I turned and looked at her before leaving, and she was white as a ghost.

Later that night, I got a knock at my door. It was Nice Manager. She had come by to check on me and tell me about how Head Manager ran to the bathroom after I left and threw up. We both shared a good laugh after that.

Head Manager was replaced by Nice Manager two months later after the district manager fired her for some reason I never learned.

Also, yes, I know it was irresponsible of me to let something like that go for months. As I said, I was young and stupid at the time.” Hyperattack42

Another User  Comments:

“Reminds me of a story from when I was in JROTC.

It was a uniform day, which is when all the ROTC cadets wear their uniforms to school for inspection. Unfortunately, I had been bitten by a spider right on my belt line and had a really bad reaction to it. There’s no way I would have been able to wear a belt, much less a uniform. So, I wore my regular jeans with an ROTC tee shirt.

This did not go over well with the cadet who was in charge of uniform inspections, who just so happened to have a huge chip on his shoulder, and also didn’t like me one bit.

“Why aren’t you in uniform?” he smirked.

I explained the situation. He ridiculed me for it. I asked him if he wanted to see it. He chuckled and said, “Sure, why not?”

I pulled up my shirt and pulled back the gauze, revealing a huge red mark with a pus-filled center and a string of pus stretching out to the gauze pad, just for good measure.

He barely managed to get out a, “You’re excused!” before turning away and retching.” RallyX26

5. Want Me To Identify Myself When Answering The Phone? You’ll Never Forget It

“This story is about a training manager I had the displeasure of working with at my old job.

To bring you up to speed, I’m a former employee of a popular U.S. chain restaurant that may or may not feature a wide variety of flavored pancakes. The location I used to work at was a training store for new managers and those working towards their general manager certification.

We often had a revolving door of new faces. They would spend a finite period of time at that location before leaving to become the general managers of their own stores. Usually, the MITs (managers in training), were polite, wonderful. and ambitious people. Most of the time, upon completing training, we were sad to see them go. Most of the time.

Every so often, we would get arrogant and condescending individuals who clearly thought their **** didn’t stink.

This post is about one such individual. Meet “Vanessa:” a former waitress, previously employed by the company, who had been rehired for the manager training program and also happened to be one of “Hope’s,” my former GM’s, lackeys. I already knew that dealing with her was going to be quite difficult just based on the way she treated people. Being high on her horse and a personal friend of Hope were two additional strikes that weren’t in my favor. To get a better idea, of what these two ladies were like, just imagine the witches from Macbeth.

Vanessa had a way of conversing with subordinates like she was doing them some great service by letting them hear her speak. Egotistical to a fault, if she thought the interaction was a waste of her time, she would walk away while the person speaking to her was in mid-sentence.

Even the most even-tempered of my former coworkers did not like her. Because of my anxiety, I sometimes stutter when I get nervous. She had the audacity to mock my stutter.

During nights, we often ran on a skeleton crew. It was after one particularly rough night shift, she casually approached me in an atypical jovial manner.

Vanessa: “OP, nice hustle tonight.”

I was guarded because she was being unusually nice.

Me: “Thanks, Vanessa. You feeling okay? You’re never this nice.”

I was able to get away with being a little bit sassier with her because she wasn’t my actual boss. She sneered at my passive-aggressiveness and disregarded my comment.

Vanessa [smarmy]: “You move so fast because your fairy wings help you fly.”

I froze. Surely Vanessa hadn’t meant that in a homophobic manner.

She immediately gave a half-hearted chuckle as if challenging me to go to Hope with a complaint. Vanessa knew an accusation of discrimination, especially one based on ****** orientation, would result in an immediate removal (translation: termination) from the manager training program.

Vanessa [nonchalant]: “I was kidding. Don’t look so serious.”

I was still trying to process how this 40-something woman had so easily taken on the role of the evil high school cheerleader and was, in effect, daring me to go to the principal.

Me [catty]: “Sure you were. It wasn’t funny. I would hate to think what Hope would do if I happened to bring up that you were making inappropriate jokes about my orientation.”

Vanessa’s eyes turned to dagger slits. Given Hope’s hands-off approach to dealing with conflict in her store and her friendship with Vanessa, I knew she wouldn’t have done anything about my potential complaint.

I instead chose to give her some food for thought.

Me: “Let’s be real, Vanessa, you’re intelligent, so intelligent that you know how to cover your true feelings with jest. As for your job position that you’re working for, you have the skills and knowledge needed to be a general manager. You’re a hard worker, you’re organized, you know the procedure, and have everything it takes to make a great leader.”

Vanessa basked in my compliment like I was rightfully kissing her entitled butt.

Vanessa [smug grin]: “Thank you.”

Me: “I’m not done. You have everything it takes to make a great leader, except likability. If your high-and-mighty attitude is any indication, you’ll have a hard time holding on to employees. There’s an old saying that goes: a leader with no followers is just a person taking a walk by themselves.

You’d do well to remember that.”

Vanessa’s jaw dropped.

Me: “Goodnight.”

With a flippant shift of my eyebrows, I turned around and left. It should come as no surprise that working alongside her after this was very tense, and I was relieved when she left shortly thereafter to run her own store.

About a month later, on a Sunday afternoon during the post-church service rush, the restaurant phone rang, and, as usual, all my coworkers ignored it. I answered.

Me: “Thank you for calling the (restaurant). How may I help you?”

Vanessa [admonishingly]: “Who is this? OP? You’re supposed to identify yourself when you answer the phone.”

Me: “Fine.”

Cue the malicious compliance. I hung up. The brief silence from being subjected to her gratingly-nasal voice was a welcomed reprieve.

The phone immediately rang again. I answered.

Me [sickeningly-sweet]: “Thank you for calling the (restaurant). This is the employee who was just reamed a new one by the GM at the (blank) store. How may I help you?”

Vanessa [peeved]: “Very funny. I need to speak to Hope.”

I brought the phone to the office and knocked. Hope admitted me and took the receiver.

Hope: “Hope, speaking. How may I help you?”

I can only imagine what Vanessa said as she gave Hope an earful. Watching Hope’s expression change as she listened to Vanessa rail on was priceless. Even she couldn’t keep a straight face and cracked an out-of-character genuine smile. Hope dismissed me with a wave.

In case any of you are wondering, no, I didn’t get reprimanded for throwing shade at Vanessa.

You may also be curious to know, she didn’t last long as general manager of the location she ended up running. The ‘official’ story is, she voluntarily stepped down after less than four years of being in charge. Unsurprisingly, during her tenure as GM, the turnover rate increased tenfold. As the saying goes: people don’t quit their jobs. They quit their bosses.” horrorflickguy

4. You’d Rather Pay Me To Fix Broken Chairs Than Buy New Ones? Okay, But It’ll Cost More

How did they not think this through?!

“I worked for a number of years as a senior computer technician for a very large and well-known technology company.

The room that repairs take place had a lot of restrictions and precautions. One such consideration was for ESD (Electrostatic Discharges).

You couldn’t wear any fabrics that might cause static. The mat that repairs were done on was ground, and every technician had a grounded wrist strap. All of the tools complied and so did the chairs.

The main focus of this compliance is the chairs.

Over time, the cushions on the chairs were cracked. There was a ring along the base to put your feet that was constantly loose or wobbling, the gas shock on a few chairs was shot, and there was a trailing chain piece attached to the base to ground the chair that was commonly missing. If this piece was missing, the chair was no longer ESD safe and could no longer be in the room.

For whatever reason, the person who is supposed to take care of repairing or replacing the chairs just wasn’t doing it.

I finally got tired of this and stepped in. I emailed the department in charge and asked what needed to be done to replace a few chairs.

The response I received was, I am not allowed to order new chairs; it is not in the budget. I can, however, order the parts required to repair the chairs. I was then sent an order form listing all of the parts that I was authorized to order. I explained all of the issues with the chairs and how it would be more cost-effective to simply replace the chairs. No, I was not allowed, and I must order the parts if I want the chairs repaired.

You can guess where this is going. Five chairs needed replacing, so let’s order us some parts and build 5 new chairs.

I’m pretty sure the cost of all the parts and the shipping totaled more than just buying whole new chairs. On top of that, I was paid to disassemble the old chairs to salvage parts and then build the new chairs.

Also, I could only do one chair at a time since the others were needed in the repair room. (All of them were still in use except for the ones with the broken trailing chain.)

In the end, they spent a lot more money on my time to disassemble and reassemble these chairs than just ordering complete new chairs.” Clueguy

3. We Can Take Phone Calls But Only If They’re On Speaker? Sure Thing

“Back in my college days, I was taking an Ancient History class with a notoriously grouchy professor that we will just call Prof.

He was super old school and a ripe sack of horse apples. He hated technology and insisted on using an analog projector with actual film slides because they were “more reliable,” despite the fact that he regularly had to replace the bulbs, sometimes in the middle of a lecture.

Just so you can understand how awful this guy was, we once had to write a three-page essay on why a certain breed of ancient dogs (I think it was a Basenji) was the “superior breed of K9.” Oh, and he just so happened to have two Basenjis. We literally were writing papers on why his dogs were cool and why he was so cool for owning them…

Anyway, this a**hat was a creep, and he hated phones in his class, particularly texting.

We had to physically turn off our phones in front of him unless it was an “absolute emergency.” And even then, it had to be a phone call as, again, he had a righteous fury reserved for texts. It was tornado season in my state, and we had several tornado warnings for the area. At the time, I was engaged, and I had a lot of friends and future in-laws in the area. So, before class, I told several of them to call or text me when their area was safe just for my own peace of mind.

No biggie. I honestly thought Prof wouldn’t have an issue with me keeping my phone on since, ya know, massive, mobile, swirling, natural disasters were roaming the city.

I should have never doubted the depths of his sliminess, but he should have never doubted the depths of my pettiness. I told him that I had family and a fiancée and asked if I could keep my phone on my desk just in case. He has this awful goblin-esque scowl on his face and says, “If you want to take calls during a lecture and interrupt my class, you can do it for the whole class to hear.” By this, he means speakerphone.

He had said the same thing before with other people, and most of them just turned off their phones. I’m a boat rocker though. I’ll stir a pot of **** like my life depends on it. Naturally, I cheerily agree and thank him profusely as I text several friends before class begins, telling them to call me at certain times with “the most ridiculous emergencies they can conceive, but keep them plausible.”

We aren’t five minutes into the lecture before I get a call from my cousin.

As the ring tone cuts through the classroom, the professor rolls his eyes and gestures for me to answer it.

“The ‘naders sucked up the entire chicken coop,” says the voice in quivering tones as if the caller is on the brink of tears. I finish the call and wish him and his fictional farm well.

Ten minutes pass, and I get another call from a friend, “The results just came in. It’s definitely erectile dysfunction, emphasis on dysfunction.” Brownie points to him for getting creative. I don’t think the professor could hear the contents of the calls from his podium, but the surrounding students could, which results in either face of pure confusion or holding back cackles.

Another call like this rings in, and I am told to take any future calls out in the hallway.

I spend essentially the entire period sitting down at my desk, getting a call, walking out in the hallway, consoling the caller for whatever absurd malady has befallen them, and walking back to my desk. Luckily, I always sat right next to the door. I don’t think I could have gotten away with this if I had to walk across the entire classroom.

Afterward, Prof let us keep our phones on our desks to check them for emergencies. We still couldn’t text, but it was a step in the right direction.” Ghettoceratops

2. Tell Me I Can Leave To Get Food? I’ll Travel 3 Hours Home To Get Food

“Little backstory. I’m a US Coastie and for the past year or so. I’ve been riding the struggle bus with depression and some anxiety.

It’s a great vicious circle. With therapy and support, I’ve gotten better at managing it.

Until recently, I got fed up with being a scapegoat and had a good solid unmanly cry. Tears, sobbing, the whole nine. It was great – hadn’t cried like that in over 10 years. It was very liberating. The only problem was that it was in front of my Coast Guard crew. They got scared. The mellow, even-keeled guy over there doesn’t emotion, let alone cry.

Supervisors were called, a trip to the ER was had. Meanwhile, I’m good – hadn’t felt this good in months, a weight off my shoulders. My boss made the call to let me have some time off, which I was ok with until last Monday when I got a call from one of our bigger base’s medical clinic saying I was going to do some inpatient therapy.

The nearest hospital accepting was 3 hours away but close to Big Base. Cool, whatever. I just want to go back to work. If this gets me back after two weeks off, I’ll do it.

What I didn’t know was that I was checked into the psychiatric ward. Little me with minor depression stuck in a ward with schizophrenics and other serious mental health disorders. I woke up the first morning to a shouting match about someone claiming to be Princess Diana’s daughter.

Lucky for me, the doctor assigned to be saw I didn’t need to be here, and he pushed to get me discharged as soon as possible. Still, paperwork is a *****, and I was stuck there for 3 days. Let’s just say I wasn’t bored watching my fellow patients.

My boss had dropped me off, so I was waiting for him to pick me up Friday afternoon. While waiting, I get a call from Big Coast Guard saying I wasn’t going home just yet and wanted to have me stay in barracks on Big Base for the weekend before appointments on base on Monday (today).

I was furious, being locked away for no reason for three days with people that claimed they were God. I boiled. After this ********, I still wasn’t going home… until the Med officer said that I wasn’t being confined to Base. Cue malicious compliance. Verbatim, he said, “You can leave for food and the like.”

So, I checked into my barracks room, showered (yeah, I didn’t get to shower in the psych ward), and walked out as I took a train and a Lyft back to my apartment 3 hours away from Big Base.

This morning, I drove back and checked in with the clinic. The med officer that talked with me earlier met me, and we talked. He made the mistake of asking how my weekend was. I told the truth. I hiked, got laid, grilled, and played video games at my apartment. That last bit took him back. He got very upset at me for running away. That was until I reminded him that he said I wasn’t confined to base, and I could leave for food. I just felt like having dinner off base, at my house, 3 hours away. He sighed, and now I have to follow up appointments on the phone, appointments I can attend from my couch, without pants.” safetypants

1. I Followed The Labor Laws To The Exact Letter

“I got hired on to my first job when I was 17.

It was something of a fast food/coffee shop blend, and in my region, there are more of these chains than there are Starbucks chains. After a 10 minute interview and some paperwork, I was hired on. I would later find out that minors were the preferred hires at this location since it was likely their first job, and they might in turn be unfamiliar with labor laws.

My mother makes a decent income going to worksites and dealing with on-site injuries, labor rights infractions, and so on. Her job is to make workplaces safer and spare them potential lawsuits. Through the stories she shared and the online handbook I devoured about labor rights in my region, I had a decent picture of how ethical workplaces operate.

As it turns out, my new workplace was not so ethical.

Your breaks were considered more of a privilege than a right, and you could be pulled out of your break to help upfront at any time with no opportunity to make up that break time later. I earned a great deal of scorn from my manager by asking for a 30-minute break on my 7-hour shift instead of a 15 minute one. Here, you are legally entitled to 30 minutes for every 5 hours worked.

There were so many weird, corner-cutting things going on that could create a disaster scenario in terms of safety. Climbing on whatever is available instead of using the ladder (the ladder was broken), poor food safety, and the occasional fire in the toaster oven, because new hires weren’t instructed on how to use it safely.

Not much instruction on how to use the corrosive cleaners, and if you had to clean the oven in the back kitchen, you were lucky if you received an unused mask or PPE that wasn’t damaged. Burns, rashes, sprained ankles and cuts were not uncommon.

I badly burned my arm with hot coffee and immediately went to treat it, then asked for the right forms to fill out to report on my injury. I was scolded for leaving the front end, told there were no forms, and informed that no one reports on burns, anyway. “If we reported every burn or slip and fall in a coffee shop, we’d never get through all the paperwork.” The burn blistered with time and eventually required some prescription antibiotic cream from my physician.

I was fed up but intimidated at the thought of trying to formally report these people for safety and labor violations. Everyone else seemed to accept what was going on. I was trying to save money to move out, and in my head, the odds of getting hired elsewhere seemed slim.

I decided to do something unconventional. I thought I was the first to come up with it at the time, but I would later find out that my plan was a classic worker’s protest tactic. I was going to work-to-rule: Follow every policy to the exact letter, which would inevitably slow things down and create obstacles to efficiency.

It started with the cappuccino machine and the iced drink machine. The cappuccino machine is to be cleaned once daily, and the iced drink machine is to be changed weekly.

These are both lengthy processes that leave the machines out of commission for a while. No one did it regularly, and we had an issue in the past where we got complaints about the taste of the iced drinks, only to pop the top off the machine and discover some kind of filmy, moldy growth on the surface. It seemed like a good place to start.

I took great care to drain them and give the detachable parts a long soak and a thorough scrub. This angered customers who wanted their drinks right away. I’d been there for a while at this point and instructed anyone I trained not to hesitate to get the manager if their customer has an issue they can’t resolve.

And so it went that every shift involved me, cleaning some machine, and my manager, placating impatient customers.

We had this pre-prepared specialty tea that almost never got ordered, but nonetheless, it was policy to change the pot of tea every 30 minutes for freshness. No one did this; the tea would sit for hours. I decided this tea needed special attention and made sure I was changing it regularly. The result was that we went through our stock faster than we ever had before, we frequently ran out, and the stock orders had to be changed to accommodate a greater supply of the tea.

I took care to check our freshness dates on the prepackaged foods. If it was expired, it was trashed.

This pained me as I don’t like to waste food, but we had a strict policy on the freshness of product. I tried to wiggle on this, only throwing it out if it was 3+ days over. Nonetheless, the result was empty display cases, low stock, and a need to (again) adjust stock to accommodate the food supply needs that come into play when the policy is actually being followed.

I was assigned the sandwich and soup station, perhaps in an effort to keep me away from other things. However, it was a wonderful new territory to work-to-rule. I changed gloves after every order, as the handbook indicated we should. I took care to clean out all the receptacles before putting new toppings in them.

The handbook indicated we were supposed to cool vats of soup in ice baths to bring them to a safe temperature before storing them in the fridge. I made sure it was done, which was inconvenient to management when they could have had me working on something else before the shift was over.

I kept abiding by the rules, rigidly, and to their fullest extent. Management was incredibly p*ssed off and communicated as much when I wasn’t around. However, I had turned 18 by this point. I could now legally work past a certain time, supervise the teenage employees, and close the store. Until they hired someone else who could work the hours I was working, it was something of a pickle for them.

I also offered no hostility or indication I was being spiteful. If you were on the outside looking in, you might see me as an employee who did the jobs no one else wanted to do. It wouldn’t have been easy to call me out to higher-ups. My coworkers, despite the inconveniences-by-proxy they probably had to put up with, didn’t seem to mind. They were interested to see how it would play out and told me as much.

I decided to quit after a conversation with the store owner herself. She indicated that she wasn’t fond of, “Kids who think they know how to run a business she’s been running for years” and had some other choice words for me. I told her on the spot, “Oh, I understand completely.

I’ll submit my written notice for you tomorrow.”

My resignation letter wasn’t just a resignation letter. The first few lines were as much. What followed was a list of safety infractions and labor law violations with dates and examples attached. It was incomplete since I only started recording these a few months in, yet it managed to be pretty extensive. I said something along the lines of, “I trust you will address these problems in a timely manner.” There was a quiet implication in some of my other language that the Better Business Bureau, health inspector and associated safety organizations in my region would be happy to help them out.

I gave two weeks’ notice in the interests of my coworkers, who would have had to take extra shifts if I left abruptly.

I was scheduled for 5 of the 14 days. They wanted me out, and they wanted me out as soon as they could get me out.

I didn’t return to this location for several months, even though I lived fairly close to it. I eventually got curious and went back to check things out. The place looked very different. You walked in, and it just felt cleaner. The employees looked happier, though I didn’t see any familiar faces. The location had come under new ownership and had been completely turned around. I have no idea if I played a role in the store changing hands, or getting fixed up. I only know that for several months, I was a relentless pain in the a** for quietly, obediently following the rules, and I left a letter in my wake that created unease.” antipatico_6

The outcome of these stories makes it apparent just how important it is to listen.

And by listen, I don’t mean just auditorily taking in what someone has to say but actually considering want they’re saying. They might just have a better, more correct, or fairer perspective.

Have you ever committed malicious compliance, or has someone taken it on you? Share it with us!