People Pump Us Up With Their Malicious Compliance Revenge Stories
18. Want To Switch Sections With Me? You Won't Like The Results
Let’s just say she didn’t make as much that night.
“A couple of years ago, I was waiting tables at this restaurant in Jersey.
This story took place during our slow season, and it was pretty competitive between all the servers. Every server wanted the better section and the bigger tables since our overall tips were lower than usual. We didn’t pool tips.
It got pretty cutthroat at times. I was doing okay financially so I wasn’t as money-hungry as everyone else.
I personally get time anxiety so I hate being late for things. So if my shift starts at 5, I’m walking into work at 4:45 to get settled, then clocking in at 5 to get to work.
My coworker Kayla however had a different attitude. She would walk into work at 5:00 on the dot and clock in and then head right to the bathroom to put on her makeup which took her about 15 minutes. On most days it was slow enough that it wasn’t an issue but it still wasn’t right.
Call me old fashioned but when your shift starts at 5, you should start working at 5 and not apply makeup while on the clock while you have other duties to take care of. I’ve never had to deal with putting on makeup but it just seemed to me that she should’ve taken more time while getting ready instead of coming to work to put it on.
I always let it slide because I’m non-confrontational but it bothered other co-workers however management never got around to addressing it.
One day I walked in at my usual time and as I clocked in at 5 I saw Kayla clock in as well and scurry off to the bathroom.
I roll my eyes and walk over to the host station where there are two people waiting. The host asked if Kayla was here yet because she was up for her first table in the rotation. I told her she was getting ready in the bathroom.
The host rolled her eyes and went to tell her she was going to get sat. (We all knew she was putting on her makeup, we weren’t going to hassle her if she was on the toilet.) I didn’t hear the exact back-and-forth they had, but it took longer than I had expected. The last thing I heard Kayla say was ‘Just switch my section I’ll take the next one, I don’t care’.
So the host sauntered back to me with a grin saying, ‘You’re up for this table, want to help me set it up?’ I’m confused. Set it up? It’s only two people? “Oh no, it’s a party of 14.
This is Mr. MoneyBags’ niece and nephew. The rest of the family is on their way.” For context, Mr. MoneyBags (not his real name obviously, but it would’ve been awesome if it was) was a very wealthy and well-known man in our area.
He made his fortune in landscaping and then moved on to real estate. And believe it or not, he was one of the few affluent people in our area that wasn’t an entitled jerk.
The host and I set up the table in record time just as the rest of the party arrived. Everyone began to sit down as I greeted everyone, and just as luck would have it, I gave Mr. MoneyBags a handshake as I locked eyes with a dolled-up Kayla as she entered the dining room and realized what she did to herself.
For the next two hours, I waited on my 14-top table as Kayla waited on two-tops. She actually had a table not tip at all (which is awful and I don’t condone, but in this particular situation, oh well).
And of course, she kicked herself again when she looked over at my table’s check and saw the fat tip I was getting off my big table. Oh well. Get ready for work before work not at work.”
17. Print Your Resume Even Though It Has Typos? My Pleasure
As a manager of a family-owned business, I can’t tell you how common this is.
“Many years ago, I worked at Kinko’s (now FedEx Office). I often worked graveyard shifts and had to deal with lots of people early in the morning who “hadn’t had their coffee yet”.
For some context, overnight was the time when long machine runs were printed and tedious finishing work was done. Being the only one working until 6 am when the morning crew started to trickle in, I was often in the middle of something when the customer came in and it would take me a second to get to the counter to help them.
One morning around 5 am, I am in the back doing some binding work. I hear the door alarm and had just put a perfect binding in the heater. This takes about 15 to 20 seconds to melt the glue and bind the pages.
I (ME) yell from the back, “I’ll be right out.”
Witchy Customer (WC) yells back, “I’m in a hurry.”
I finish the binding and get up to the counter.
ME: Sorry about the wait. What can I do for you?
WC: Can I see your resume paper selection?
Our resume papers were literally sitting six inches away from her on the counter, in a little bound book that had “RESUME PAPER” printed in big bold letters. I slide the book over in front of her and open it up.
As she flips through it she proceeds to complain about the color and texture of every paper before asking me the price.
ME: 15 cents per copy, plus 7 cents if you want to print on the second side.
WC: That’s expensive don’t you have any better paper for that price?
ME: Sorry, that’s our full selection of resume papers. The only other options are plain white copy paper, Astrobrights (neon-colored), or card stock. Are you going to need this double-sided or single-sided?
I could see that she had in front of her a two-page resume, which is usually printed single-sided.
WC: Which one is cheaper?
ME: Double-sided will be cheaper. But for resumes, our customers usually prefer single-sided.
WC: Just give me 50 copies double-sided on the sandstone.
I confirm her selection and head back to the copier to complete her order.
I print out a proof and as a matter of quality assurance, I give it a once over to confirm we’re not getting any fuser marks, random spots, streaks, etc. I notice that her job title on her most recent job was something like “Copyweiter.” I assumed she meant copywriter and confirmed as much by reading a bit of the description.
ME: Ma’am, I noticed your previous job title is…
WC: (interrupting) I’d appreciate it if you didn’t snoop on my personal information.
ME: I apologize, I just noticed a ty…
WC: Please just print my order.
ME: (malicious compliance kicking in) Ok.
I printed the entire stack of 50 resumes and was squaring them up when I noticed “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet…” in the last paragraph on the page. At this point, I had to tell her – right?
As I’m walking over to the counter to show her the missed filler text she yells,
WC: WILL YOU PLEASE NOT CRIMP THE PAGES? I NEED TO HAND THOSE OUT.
So I make it to the counter gently placing her copies in a bag and rang her out.
She did come back later to complain, but my manager assured her that we don’t make it a practice to proofread customer’s documents as that’s their responsibility.”
16. He's Not Sharpening The Drill Bits Correctly? Fine, Have It Your Way
“I feel like WW2’s chock of military stories is one of those bottomless veins of gold, where you discover more, the more you dig. This story comes to us from my grandfather, from whom I inherit my love of pranks, most of my sense of humor, and probably my deep appreciation for schadenfreude – like many of his stories, I heard this one as a kid many times, usually in front of a fire with snow falling outside, and always accompanied by an eye roll and a tart comment or two from my long-suffering grandmother.
Gramps was a master machinist, going into the war, and he had quite a bit more experience than most people with engines and engineering. He was one of those guys that would look at just about anything mechanical with both reverence and a critical eye for making it better, and his knack for success inspired the Army Air Corps to snatch him up and plop him back down in the Midwest as a crew chief.
My understanding – and, I don’t have any military experience here, but this is what I’ve been told – is that the senior NCO in charge of the maintenance, repair, upkeep, and general functioning of a squadron is the guy that actually owned those planes.
From what Gramps always said, his attitude was that he loaned the pilots his planes, and they were expected to bring them back in roughly the same condition as they were in when they went up. When they were on the ground, the aircraft and everything used to maintain them were part of his kingdom.
One fine day, a very new, fresh-out-of-the-box Lieutenant, still with that New Officer Smell, introduced himself to Gramps and the other guys in the unit, as they were sitting in the back of one of the maintenance bays, sharpening up a big double set of drill bits that’d been getting more use than usual….and by introduced, I mean came in shouting about how they were doing it all wrong.
He knew all about what they were doing, of course, and so just knew that the drill-bit sharpening they were doing was actually going to ruin the bits and waste war resources, and did they want the ****** to win??? He showed them all the right way to do it and wasn’t going to take any lip.
My grandfather was not the sort of guy that was able to keep his mouth shut, which is probably another reason they put him in charge of mechanical things that tended not to get uppity with him (I also inherited this congenital condition, but that’s a separate tragedy entirely).
He protested that the Lieutenant’s direction actually was incorrect, and got about 2/3 of the way into what he was about to say before the officer decided that he’d had enough back-talk, and gave him weekend night-shift guard duty. Gramps eyeballed him a bit, and would always say at this point in the story that he felt compelled to obey the Lieutenant because he was just so….shiny, so he smiled and said, “Yes, sir,” shut his mouth, and that was that.
This was well before the Army had put tons of resources into things that weren’t war-critical – the “airbase” Gramps was stationed at was essentially a dirt/grass airfield, with hangars plopped down, and utterly without any pretense at pavement anywhere in sight.
Consequently, the main traffic artery right behind the hangars, and which one had to go down when entering or leaving the base at all, was parallel to the airstrip and was the sort of thick, gooey, sticky, oobleck-mud that one gets in Nebraska when it’s been raining a lot and people have been driving Army jeeps over the same patch of ground repeatedly.
About halfway down, in the middle where the traffic had been heaviest, there was what Gramps described as a “puddle”, and which he later clarified was nearly three hundred feet long, thirty feet wide, totally unavoidable, and which would swallow up the unwary interloper who didn’t keep going – go too fast, or too slow, and you’re screwed one way or the other.
Go through slowly and don’t stop, and you’d probably be okay.
Gramps positioned himself on Saturday night with his rifle and, grimly determined to protect this Nebraska airbase in the middle of freaking nowhere from the Huns, waited about two-thirds of the way down this Charybdis-like vortex, and waited. Lt Shiny, along with a lot of the other guys on the base, really liked taking his weekend pass in town, because there were girls there, which any self-respecting soldier knew was an opportunity one did not lightly pass up (and which was the reason that Gramps had been assigned weekend sentry duty, as just an extra little ********).
Pretty soon, Lt Shiny came trundling back to base…and not in an Army Jeep. Oh no. His family evidently had wealth, or pull, or something, because he had an actual nice car to get around in, with those big swoopy fenders and the floorboards just outside the doors on both sides.
He was playing it safe, Gramps said, by not driving down the middle of the road masquerading as a muddy pond – he was going along the side where it wasn’t quite as deep and he was less likely to get stuck….but that also meant that the driver’s side of the car was almost overhanging the deepest part of the mud.
You can probably see where this is going.
The duty of a sentry, of course, is to stop anyone they don’t recognize from being on the base or near anything vital, and while Gramps knew perfectly well that Lt Shiny was where he was supposed to be, he also knew that there was no way in heck during war-time he was going to get questioned about it…so he advanced, just as Lt Shiny got abreast of a particularly bad spot and hollered “HALT!!!!” in his best Drill Instructor voice.
It got the message across, and the car stopped immediately (danger, Will Robinson…).
The window rolls down… The top of Lt Shiny’s head pokes out, and he yells back, “Lt Shiny, sentry, returning from off-base pass.”
Gramps yelled back, from about 30′ away, “Advance and be recognized,” meaning, of course, I can’t see you clearly where you are, come to where I can see you.
Or else.
Frustrated, Lt. Shiny opened the door (dangerously close to the surface of the awaiting mud) and leaned out so the light caught him. He was in uniform, of course, all duded up as Gramps said, and wearing decidedly non-regulation boots with his uniform that came up to his knees and were polished to the sort of shiny finish that NASA uses on telescope mirrors today.
He yelled back again who he was, and was obviously frustrated and hoping he hadn’t just gotten stuck….but he also hadn’t gotten any closer as he’d been commanded to by the very armed sentry that had just challenged him, and on some level, he knew it.
Next steps….racking a round into the chamber as a warning, and a repeated command. “Advance…and be recognized.”
Desperate, but knowing there was no way out of this other than forward, Lt Shiny stood on the floorboards of the car, now just level with the surface and starting to inch closer to it slowly, and declared himself again, and was greeted with a loaded weapon pointed at him, and a repeated command to advance and be recognized.
I asked Gramps once what would have happened if he’d actually shot Lt Shiny, and he always said he was pretty sure he’d have been court-martialed at the least, but gosh darn it if he wasn’t determined to make a point about this….and so, Lieutenant Shiny finally stepped off the sideboards of his car, sank immediately to his knees with muddy goo slopping over the top of his boots, and sadly advanced. Gramps let him get two steps forward, before shouldering his weapon again and snapping him the smartest of salutes.
“Sir, thank you. You may proceed.” Lt. Shiny sadly got back into his car and valiantly tried to get it moving again, to no avail. Mud was everywhere, inside and out, mud flying everywhere as his wheels spun….and eventually, he gave up and trudged off to his barracks.
By morning, they ended up having to use two jeeps and a come-along to yank that car out of the mud. Gramps said that he got talked to briefly by someone above Lt. Shiny and basically told don’t do that again, but he said nothing much further came of it.
Oddly enough, the subject of sharpening drill bits never came up again, and Lt Shiny was always very careful about staying out of the maintenance bay unless he was going to be taking an aircraft up.”
15. Beg Me For Help With A Little Bee Sting? I'll Call 911
“In college, I worked at the front desk for a dorm. Most of the time it was a chill job. I worked nights and just had to help the occasional intoxicated student after they lost their keys.
However, once a year we had to deal with the worst of the worst – move out. Anyone that’s ever experienced move-out day knows the absolute crap show it is.
During move-out, the supervisors scheduled double the people at the front desk, so I had to work during the day.
Our front desk was in the main community space for the dorms. Out front of the space was a super small lane that led to the parking garage. Everyone that needed to get to the parking garage had to use this lane.
My whole shift was going fairly well, just small complaints about moving bins and our “lack of resources” for the summer heat. So far so good – or so I thought.
Up walks this family – a mom, dad, and daughter that were clearly annoyed. My three other coworkers were busy, so it was up to me to help this family.
Me: “Hi, what can I help you with?”
Mom (in a snippy tone): “I was stung by a bee. I need some medical assistance.”
Now, as a student worker, the last thing I was allowed to do was provide medical care of any kind – couldn’t even hand out a bandaid.
Knowing I can’t help, I reply: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that! As a desk worker, I’m not able to provide medical assistance but—“
The daughter cuts me off impatiently: “You don’t even have a first aid kit?
Can’t you just give us something to help?”
I would’ve assumed they were worried about the mom’s health, but at this point, they sounded more upset that they weren’t getting their way.
Me: “We don’t have first aid kits because I’m not allowed to administer aid.
If you’d like to get help, I would recommend walking over to health services.”
Daughter (sounding progressively more entitled and annoyed): “You want us to walk ALL the way over to health services?”
At this point, all I wanted was for them to leave, but I couldn’t say that.
Me: “There’s also an urgent care and hospital right off campus if you’re worried about a reaction.”
Mom: “I’m not driving all the way over to a hospital I just need help now. Can you call someone for help or something?”
Cue the malicious compliance. Normally I would call our non-emergency number for assistance, but this family CLEARLY wanted quality care.
Me: “Would you like me to call 911? I can see if they’ll help.”
Mom: “Yes! Do something!”
So, I call 911.
The operator asks about the emergency, and I explain it’s a bee sting.
Operator: “Are they allergic?”
I ask the mom and she says “Well, no but it’s hurting.”
Operator: “Do they have tweezers they could use to pull out the stinger?”
I ask the family and to this, the daughter snaps, “Why would we have tweezers? Of course, we don’t have tweezers! What kind of question is that!”
I relayed the message to the operator and let her know the family specifically requested medical care.
She sighed, clearly annoyed by this non-emergency, and let me know she sent help. At this point, my line is getting incredibly long, so I ask the family to step to the side.
When I tell them help is on the way, the mom asks, “What are they sending?”
Me: “I don’t know.”
Mom: “Well I hope it’s not a fire truck. That would be so embarrassing for just a bee sting.”
A few minutes go by, and I can tell the mom is starting to realize she may have overreacted. She tries to tell her family they can just leave, but the dad and daughter reminded her they are already sending someone.
As they wait, up comes a MASSIVE fire truck, sirens blaring. All the other families at the front desk (which is a lot because this family held up the line) turn to see what’s going on. The mom is absolutely MORTIFIED. She is looking around, trying to hide behind her family – it’s hilarious.
She meets emergency services outside, so they don’t make a big scene in front of the other families. The best part? The fire truck had to stop in the teeny tiny lane out front of our community center – completely blocking the way into the parking garage.
This means a line of cars was building up while she got her bee sting treated. With each car joining the line she looked more and more embarrassed. Once she was treated they came back in to get to the daughter’s dorm.
They walked quickly and avoided eye contact, clearly embarrassed by the overreaction.
I hope they’ve learned to stop with the impatience and entitlement. As much as I hate calling 911 for trivial things, it was worth it to see the look of sheer humiliation on the mom’s face.
And I like to think the operator was looking out for me in fulfilling my malicious compliances to the highest degree.”
14. Throw All The Garbage Cans Away? I'll Do Exactly That
You should’ve clarified that you wanted the contents inside the trash cans thrown away, not the cans themselves.
“I work as the lead maintenance technician at a very large industrial facility (dam).
I have three bosses: a Regional Manager that oversees several other facilities, a Plant Manager that is responsible for the dam I work at, and an Assistant Plant Manager who I answer directly to.
I am not in a supervisory role, but having about a decade more seniority and experience, I generally take the lead when making repairs or conducting maintenance.
Our Regional Manager isn’t a bad guy, but he does have a tendency to take his job, and his position, VERY seriously. He is the Regional Manager, gosh darn it. It’s his way or the highway. “Respect mah autho-rit-aaaahh!” If he’s in a good mood, he’s actually OK to work around.
But if he’s in a bad mood…..he has the unfortunate tendency to take it out on the nearest target he can vent his frustration on.
So a coworker and I were in my shop one morning when the door flew open, and the Regional Manager came storming in with a hair up his butt.
Between veteran, unflappable me, or The New Guy (The New Guy had been working for two years, but he was in his early 20s and the least senior so….”The New Guy”)…
…he picked the New Guy. He got right in The New Guy’s face and began screaming about every gosh darned garbage can in the entire facility being full.
Nobody had emptied the garbage. Freaking waste disposal would be there in a couple of hours, and not one gosh-darned garbage can had been emptied into the freaking dumpster.
He got right up into The New Guy’s face and coldly told him, “I want you to go through this entire facility and throw every gosh darned garbage can into the dumpster.”
Do you see where this was going?
The New Guy reaffirmed the instructions he was given. “You want me to throw all the garbage cans away?”
The Regional Manager snidely confirmed his instructions, “Did I stutter? Every single one,” and stormed out of the shop.
The New Guy and I looked at each other. I could only shrug. I know what I would’ve done in this scenario, but the choice was his. I wasn’t about to influence his decision. He’s the one that would face the consequences.
But, yes. He did what I would’ve done and, screw the consequences, maliciously complied with the specific instructions he was given, EXACTLY.
By the time waste disposal arrived, there was not one single garbage can, waste paper basket, trash bin, or any other container that could possibly hold refuse to be found on the entire facility that had not been jammed into the dumpster entirely and compacted in the back of the waste disposal truck as it drove away.
I repeatedly encountered confused questioning from other coworkers for the time it took everyone to find out. “What the heck happened to all the garbage cans?” or “Where the crap are all the waste baskets?” for the next day or two as trash piled up in corners and behind doors.
I dunno. Regional Manager said to get rid of them.
“Why the crap would he do that?”
I dunno. But I’ll testify in court that I witnessed the order. Regional Manager told The New Guy to “throw all the garbage cans away”.
The New Guy even confirmed it. I saw it myself.
The New Guy did get called into the office and did get his butt ROYALLY reamed for “malicious compliance”, but there was never any formal reprisal or documentation. Our purchase department just spent a bunch of bucks on new garbage cans and wastebaskets.
Regional Manager hasn’t really changed much other than developing a really keen awareness regarding the specifics of his instructions.
Nothing really groundbreaking. Just thought I’d share an instance of malicious compliance I found rather amusing.”
13. Claim You Can Handle The Spice? You'll Be Sorry
“I used to work for a vegan falafel joint that served it kebab style with different condiments and toppings. Think Subway. The branch I worked at was really supposed to be a takeout place, but you can come in and we’d had a couple of seats right in front of the counter behind some glass.
As such, the place was tiny and easily felt cramped. This is important later.
I was working an early shift that day, and I had to come in at 9:30 to start my 10:00 shift, which wasn’t too bad. But still.
Around 9:50, in come two ladies who were clearly tourists. Not uncommon around the area, as it was the nightlife district. We got a lot of stragglers coming from the night before. They go to seat themselves in front of the counter.
Now, those 30 minutes before the shift was crucial for me. I got in the zone and had a method to the madness of how my boss and I prepared for the start of the day. It was a two-person job, and my boss heard them as they came in.
I spoke English, so he expected me to deal with them. As they’re about to get seated I say, “I’m so sorry, we don’t open until 10:00.”
They give me the biggest stink eye, and ask, “Well, yeah.
But can’t we just wait here until you’re ready?” Lady, I haven’t even swept yet the floor you’re standing on, so no. “Again, we’re not done preparing yet, so I’m going to have to ask you to wait outside.” Exasperated, they say something to each other in French.
Now I’ve studied French for 5 years and interned in Paris before, so I caught that they said, “That’s absurd. These guys are witches.”
When I finally let them in, they have that “Ugh, finally” look on their face.
I go about their business and ask them what toppings they want. They scan the display and their eyes land on one pan. My boss and I are somewhat of a spicy guy so we keep Jolokia peppers for those who like the extra kick.
Remember I mentioned the area was for the nightlife district but also it was sandwiched by the engineers on the other side, as such, we got a fair bit of Indians. They wanted that Jolokia pepper. The name was “chilli chilli bell bell” because the way we sautéed it in its own juices makes your tongue and brain go ding ding ding!
I tell them that ok, now hold on, it’s very spicy. They give me that “ugh” look again and then say to each other (in French, “nul”) “Useless”. Ok witch, game on. I whip out my best Parisienne which I know is from the same area as theirs (Moroccan-Parisienne, commonly spoken in the 4ème district) “Attention, mesdames, these peppers are very hot.
Peut-être un peu trop piquant.” They realize I understood what they said before, instantly change gears and reply, “Oh that’s no problem, we’re used to it.” With a smile, I say, “Absolutely!” And start loading both of theirs with 5-6 of these peppers.
For context, we’re only allowed to put one or two for customers. Even I can only handle 3. My boss is at the back pretending to not see, but he knows absolutely what I’m doing.
I hand over this pepper-stuffed monstrosity to them, clean up the counter a bit, and fix myself a cup of tea.
I watch them take the first bite and see their eyes widen with horror at the mistake they’ve just done. I sip at my tea so as to not make it obvious that I’m grinning from ear to ear.
At this point, my boss is laughing his butt off behind the kitchen windows. I watch them sweat and fume right in front of my eyes and refill their water. In the end, they were champs and finished it all, but not without putting up a good fight.
That’s what you get for calling us witches. I guess revenge is a dish best served hot!”
12. Wait Across From The Bus Stop Instead Of Right Next To It? I Can Do That
“I used to work at a childcare center for almost 5 years and we’d sometimes have school-aged children where we’d have to take them to the bus stop in the morning and then pick them up from the bus stop in the afternoon.
Now during the time of the incident, we only had to take one child from the bus stop who we will call T. I was assigned bus duty by my boss as I was always on top of it and made sure to quickly go to the bus stop to get T and another teacher would take T to the bus stop in the mornings.
We were told by the boss that the bus stop was right across the street from our center which was between a house and a church. We’d wait by the tree which was by the church parking lot as that was the bus stop so we’d wait there.
Well, the boss didn’t want us doing that anymore and said that we weren’t supposed to wait there and wanted us to wait at OUR CENTER’S PARKING LOT by the curb. Not only that, but my boss would not let any of the teachers leave to take T to the bus stop in the mornings as it was “too early” despite us having to leave at 8:15 since the bus would arrive at 8:20.
So we also had to take T at 8:20.
Cue malicious compliance: we start waiting for the bus by our parking lot like my boss requested, but after a couple of weeks or so it had been met with complaints such as T refusing to let us hold her hand to cross the street to get to the school bus, the bus arriving early, causing T to miss the bus and another teacher had to drive her to school which angered T’s mother, and T crossing the street by herself to get to the center whenever the bus arrived early in the afternoon.
My boss was constantly getting angry with us as to why we aren’t paying attention to the time or being quick with getting T, but I said “you told us to wait by the curb and that we can’t arrive early.
We have also told you many times how T was trying to cross the street by herself and that several people in the neighborhood told T’s mom about it.” She has also missed the bus twice in a row.
Boss realized her mistake and took back the bus stop rule and said that we were allowed to wait at the bus stop and to make sure we arrive 5 minutes early and not a minute later.”
11. Think I Need A Break? Okay, But Things Will Take A Turn For The Worse
“I worked for a company many years ago before I got into my current career. I worked at this company for 8 years, starting at 16 in high school.
I worked my butt off daily and quickly climbed into a position of management and was very well-liked and well-respected by anyone above me or below me. During my last year of employment, I had a new boss. We’ll call her Mary.
She wasn’t my main boss, she was the position beneath him. She and I got along really well but there were many instances of her stepping on my toes. One of my main duties that were exclusively my responsibility was maintaining the sales floor.
I communicated with vendors and with buyers, kept track of all products being distributed to our store, and planned accordingly. I planned all (creative, might I add) displays in the store and maintained them, ordered all needed products for displays, and handled all holiday distributions/displays/orders, etc.
October rolls around and I start developing my holiday plan. Mary keeps a close eye on my plans and asks lots of questions but she doesn’t get in my way. Thanksgiving is over and we’re halfway done. My plan was a success so far and I am on track with the amount of product I’ve been bringing in/the amount of product left on the sales floor based on the previous year’s numbers and how much we’re projected to sell off everything.
It’s a couple of weeks until Christmas and I’m in the middle of pulling last year’s numbers to start my BIG Christmas order. Mary comes in and sees what I’m doing and says “OP, don’t worry about that, I’m going to have Amy write the order.” I’m immediately confused and annoyed and ask her why she thinks it’s a good idea to have Amy (the store receiver) write the order when I am the person who has been doing it the entire time and has been working all the product and I know what’s been moving and what hasn’t.
She gives me a nonsense answer, something like “You’ve been doing so much and I just want to take some of the stress off of you.” Instead of explaining to her that this move will, in fact, increase my stress exponentially, I just close out of my tabs on the computer and smile and say “okay then, thanks!”
Amy writes the order and after we get it in, I can tell by looking at the pallets that it’s going to be a crap show. For example, wayyyy too much of a random product we don’t need and aren’t going to sell through until next holiday season, at least. Also not nearly enough of our fast movers and not enough to maintain current displays.
Here comes my malicious compliance… instead of breaking down these pallets into the designated area of the back room in an organized and intentional manner, like I have done with all of my previous orders every single year, I just leave it on the pallets, wrapped in shrink wrap.
The product stays like that for days and I continue to ignore it. Eventually, someone (maybe Amy? Doubt it though) breaks it all down and there’s stuff all over the place and you can’t find anything you need without moving stuff around.
Next, I allowed all of my holiday displays to go to crap. Normally, I would’ve ordered to maintain them, but nooo Mary wants to give me a break, so I let them burn. Mary and our big boss take note of this and scramble to figure things out themselves.
Next, we’re completely out of essentials that Amy didn’t order enough of and now it’s too late and too close to the holiday for the warehouse to send us any more. Mary and the big boss are dealing with angry customers who are taking their business elsewhere.
Finally, the holidays are over and our back room is FULL of stuff that is going to stay back here for quite a long time. All stuff left over from Amy’s crappy order. Am I going to palletize and inventory and periodically work all that product?
Nope cause Mary thinks I need a break.”
10. Bully Me For My Hair? Fine, I'll Tie It, But You Have Another Thing Coming For You
“About 8 years ago, I used to work as a store assistant in a UK-based chain of electronics stores. The old store manager who hired me was lovely, but the new manager who replaced him, Sally, was a jerk who loved going on a power trip.
Not only did she have no technical knowledge to actually help customers, but she would also have favorites and personally pick on people she did not like. The people were the assistant manager that she was trying to push out, a colleague who was neurodivergent, and myself (I suspect the reason she didn’t like me was because she was obese and permanently on some sort of fad diet whilst I had a weirdly high metabolism and sometimes ate McDonald’s for lunch).
She shirked her responsibilities at work constantly to go on her phone (none of us were allowed our phones on the shop floor), took multiple breaks, and even went out to get her nails re-done during her shift because she chipped one on a shelf…
Onto the story, the main excuse she used to pick on me was that my hair was “untidy” (my hair was dry, wavy, and has a naturally coarse texture – thanks Mom). I had a shower each morning, clean uniform, and brushed my hair before work, which is all that I was willing to do for a minimum wage job.
After receiving two “uniform warnings” for my “untidy and unhygienic” natural hair, the third warning resulted in a “performance review meeting” aka try not to get fired. I was very depressed at the time and did not have the energy nor resources to find another job, plus I liked my colleagues, who were onto her bullcrap, so I didn’t want to leave at the time.
The assistant manager briefed me on what would happen during the meeting and told me that he will need to ask me some pre-assigned questions and Sally would need to transcribe everything said down into my personnel file. Cue malicious compliance.
Sally had these long fake nails that made it difficult for her to type. The meeting was meant to last 20 minutes max. The night before, I prepared everything I was going to say about how my hair was naturally wavy and coarse, with strong hints about racial discrimination thrown in (I’m SE Asian), humourous anecdotes about how difficult my hair has been to manage, and my entire hygiene routine in step-by-step detail.
I even brought my hairbrush with me. I answered all questions in protracted detail using the full extent of the English language (and thesaurus.com) and watched her struggle to keep up with the dialogue and ask us to slow down in order to type everything.
After over an hour of this and me running out of material and adding colorful flourishes, she called for a break. The assistant manager pulled me aside at the break and told me she was furious. We resumed the meeting after the break and she proposed that I tie my hair into a ponytail going forward, which I agreed to as she was red in the face from anger and I was struggling to maintain my straight face at that point.
I never got another uniform warning after that. The assistant manager and I reported her to HR, resulting in the store being audited twice in 3 months. A few months later, I left. A couple of years later, the company went bust. Sally is still a store manager but somewhere else.
I’m now a risk manager with bright purple hair at an employer that pays well and doesn’t care about my hair, only my quality of work.”
Another User Comments:
“I’ve never understood that mentality that looking/dressing a certain way makes you better at a job.
We’ve had many public examples of people dressed in expensive clothing and overall presentation that are complete crap at their jobs or as a person yet they are still considered the standard for excellence.
I’ve known and worked with heavily tattooed and long-haired guys that looked like extras from biker movies that were not only far more intelligent than Mr. Three-Piece but were polite and considerate as well.
Well played on the malicious compliance. I would have loved to watch her get madder and madder as you went along.” StuBidasol
9. Refuse To Let Me Start Closing Duties Early So I Can Leave On Time? I Guess I'll Just Stay Late
Between mopping and sweeping the store, sanitizing all countertops and tables, prepping food for the next day, counting the drawer, and so on, it can take a good hour or two to close, trust me!
“I work at a fast food store, and during the holidays hours had been cut for slow business. I work the closing shifts, and I’m usually by myself when dealing with rushes or when it comes to closing down the store.
So I have been trying to preclose when I come in for my shift. This may include restocking and changing use-by dates. Or cleaning out the toppings and placing them in a tub then replacing them back into the fridge.
Sometimes it gets messy since I’m the only one there but I try my best to do it when there’s no one in front of me. With the exception of a few.
One day I come in and my shift leader tells me I can’t preclose any later than 9:00 (we close at 10:15) but for one person alone to clean the entire front is insane.
I’d never leave. My manager printed out an entire sheet and you had to go through the entire list before actually starting to close. And even if you finish everything on the list if it wasn’t 9:00 you still couldn’t preclose.
Here’s the malicious compliance; my coworker is the one who taught me the method of pre-closing, so we can get out at 10:45 instead of 12. I refuse to do anything but what was in front of me. My job was to serve the customers.
Not to be prepping food. Or cooking the food. So I didn’t help out at other stations like I used to. I made sure my station was prim and proper. Glass shield so clean it looked like it wasn’t even there.
When there was a rush I took my time with each customer and really got to know them as some were regulars. But because I am the only one in the front I usually rush to kill my line. So no I’m not all smiles and conversation as we got lectured on.
Because I did this, I didn’t get to start closing until after closing time. Which meant I didn’t leave til 12:30.
So because you wouldn’t let me stick to my preclosing routine, which got me out faster and cost you less.
I’m milking every minute to abide by your rules.
And since I didn’t help with other stations in my downtime. I, who is supposed to be the last station standing (besides dishes who finish around the same time I do), am still seeing sections that need cleaning because we also didn’t have enough people at night.
My manager the other day stayed the closing shift with us. My shift leader told me that my manager asked her why I left so late the other day. But when he worked the closing shift he understood why I left so late.
Because that day we were sort of swamped. And I made sure he saw me following his rules step by step. He left later than I did that day and I left at 12:45.”
8. Can't Follow The Rules? Don't Cry To Me When You Get Fired
“I work in a union shop, and I’ve been a shop steward for most of my 25+ year career.
In that time, I’ve seen some crap, both figurative and literal, and every single time I’ve ever been unwary enough about how fate works to utter the words, “Now I’ve seen everything,” the universe will inevitably hand me its beer and say Watch This.
Stewards, despite the general perception of us, aren’t there to defend employees who are accused of misconduct – we’re there to defend the collective bargaining agreement, meaning if you’ve well and truly screwed yourself and your future with the agency we both work for, my role is primarily helping you determine which of your options for leaving you’re going to exercise.
I’ve been at this rodeo for a long time, and management and I generally have a pretty good understanding of how things are going to go.
Enter Jackie. Jackie was one of those unbelievably toxic peaked-in-high-school-cheerleader types, with just enough understanding of what our employer does, how it’s required to behave within federal guidelines, and what its obligations are when you utter certain mystical phrases like “I need an accommodation,” or “discrimination based on a protected class.” To be clear, those things are not just law, they’re also morally right to be concerned about, and so my employer actually bends over backward and does backflips to be certain that they’re going above and beyond the minimum.
Jackie was not a minority in any sense – she was female, but in a workplace that’s 80% female, that doesn’t quite count. She may well have been disabled, but that was undiagnosed, I think, and I’m inclined to think her claims of it, much like most of the rest of the things she said, were complete fabrications.
The point at which I got involved was at the tail-end of over a year’s worth of actions by Jackie, in which it rapidly became apparent that her manager was, in fact, an excellent candidate for canonization. I got referred to her when one of my other union friends contacted me and said, “Hey, Jackie so and so just got put on administrative leave, and it’s total nonsense, can you help?” I get referrals like this a lot both because I’ve been around forever, and because I have a pretty good track record for ensuring that people accused of crap they haven’t actually done get treated fairly, so nothing stuck out to me as odd.
I contacted her, and she had absolutely no idea why management would put her on admin leave, without any warning, and confiscate all of her agency-issued devices, access, and instruct her that she was not to have any contact at all with anyone she worked with during work hours.
This immediately sent up a whole host of red flags – for one thing, I know the senior HR guy that is the HR analyst’s boss who’s involved, having been down the road of difficult-situation-but-this-is-what-we-can-do negotiations with him many, many times over the years.
I don’t always agree with him, but he’s fair, and usually, we can come to some sort of middle ground – at any rate, he would never suspend someone out of the blue without a really, really good reason. She knows what she’s done.
She has to…..so I gave her my usual spiel of Things To Do And Things You Should Not Do:
Don’t tell me, or our employer, things that aren’t true. Especially if you think it’ll make you look bad if you don’t.
Don’t talk to your coworkers. Don’t talk to your friends about this, particularly because you live in a town of under 2000 people, everyone knows everything about everyone else.
Do not talk with management, or HR, without me present. Period.
When they do start asking questions, keep answers simple, to the point, and short, and do not give lengthy explanations – tell them what they want to know and otherwise shut the heck up.
I have been here and done this many times. I know this process very well. I can’t tell you what they’re going to do, but I can tell you what I think they’re going to do, and I’m usually either right or pretty close to being right.
I have been surprised.
Nearly three weeks went by of radio silence from the Agency, other than a bland sort of “We want to talk with Jackie about the utilization of work assignments, tasks, and equipment,” email that tells you almost nothing while still being literally true.
Finally, it was go-time for a meeting, and I did something I haven’t done in a really long time – I physically drove to Jackie’s worksite instead of attending online, over an hour and a half each way. What the heck, the weather was nice.
We met ahead of going in, and I asked her if she remembered the rules I gave her at the beginning. She said she did. I asked her if she’d been following them, and she said she’d been very careful to.
Swell. In we go.
During the meeting, it was almost immediately obvious to me from the questions they started asking that Jackie was in serious, serious crap. Not, like, written warning, or pay reduction….no, they were going to go for termination, and she was probably going to be very lucky if they decided not to refer it to the DA for criminal prosecution.
An abbreviated summary, of just the high points:
Jackie had hundreds of confidential documents and electronic files in her personal possession, many of which fall squarely under HIPAA. She had emailed these out of the government system to one of the four or five personal email addresses she maintains.
Her explanation for this was…questionable.
Jackie had logged overtime without permission. A lot. And, on one memorable date, when she was vacationing in Europe with her family at the time – she said she’d called in to attend a meeting, but didn’t have an answer why that meeting had apparently been 11 1/2 hours long and nobody remembered her attending by phone.
Jackie had audio recordings of disabled and elderly people with whom she was working, that she had taken without their consent or knowledge. A lot of them.
Jackie’s overall work product and system activity reliably showed that she was logging in at the start of her day (from home), and she worked some in the afternoon…but there were hours and hours of time when her computer was idle.
She explained this as participating in union activity, which I knew was nonsense, because…
Jackie is not a steward. Jackie has no idea what the collective bargaining agreement actually says about much of anything beyond “stewards can do whatever they want, and management can’t say crap” which is….uninformed, shall we say.
At any rate – steward activity must be recorded and time-coded as such. Jackie has never attended steward training and so didn’t know this. Apparently, nobody ever told her that.
There’s more. There’s so, so much more, but in the interests of brevity, I will summarize the next four months of my dealing with this woman by pointing back to the cardinal rules I gave her, and simply say…she broke every single one of them.
A lot. When it finally got to the dismissal hearing that comes before the “you’re fired, get out” letter, she told me going in that she wanted to run things because she had some stuff she wanted to cover that she thought I probably wouldn’t be a) comfortable doing (true, because it was irrelevant), b) didn’t know much about (again, true, because she’d invented details, story, and witnesses as participants), and c) she felt like I wasn’t really on her side in this to begin with (not quite true – she was a member, so my job is representation here).
Me: “I really don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ve done a lot of these, you should let me handle it.”
Jackie: “No. I know what I’m doing, and I talked with my attorney about this a lot. You can’t stop me.”
Me: “You’re right. I can’t. But this isn’t going to go the way you think it will.”
Jackie: “I know I’m right. They can’t do this to me.”
Me: “This isn’t a good idea…but okay. It’s your show.”
In we went and sat down.
The senior HR guy I mentioned earlier was there, and he gave me a funny look when I sat back, laptop closed, and said nothing – dismissal meetings are actually our meeting, and we get to run them from start to finish – they’re there to listen.
She started talking…and I have to give them credit, they took notes, listened to the things she said, and kept straight faces the entire time. It went exactly as I figured it would – just the things they’d asked her about in the first of the several meetings I attended with Jackie had covered terminable offenses on at least four or five different subjects, independent of one another.
At the end, when she finally wound down, they all turned to me (Jackie included) and asked if I had anything I wanted to cover or that I thought may have been missed.
“Nope,” I said. “I think she covered everything already, I don’t have anything to add.”
That afternoon, I got the union copy of her dismissal notice. Generally, they are open to at least discussing the option of the worker resigning, and giving them a neutral reference going forward, but that wasn’t in the cards. The last I heard of Jackie, the Department of Justice was involved with her and her husband, and I’m reasonably confident that it didn’t go well for her either.
I do know that she will never work for the government again, as the letter was pretty explicit about what information they would release to any government agency asking for a reference. So it goes – they followed the collective bargaining agreement, terminating her with ample Just Cause.”
7. Make Her Cook Twice A Week? Hot Dogs And Mac N Cheese It Is... Every Time
I think I barfed a little in my mouth.
“I learned to cook when I was pretty young (elementary age) because of family issues. I’m not a chef: I cook home-style, without super expensive/exotic ingredients, and with the intent to feed a number of people. But I’ve always paid attention when other people cook, read cookbooks, and generally tried to be better at it.
I’m also a guy.
None of the women I’ve been in serious relationships with in my life had any idea of how to cook. I don’t care; they were all professionals and smart but didn’t grow up in environments that taught them to cook.
But it became an issue in my first serious relationship.
She was in a doctoral psychology program and also did work-study. I was in an undergraduate STEM program full-time and worked full-time. I easily put in twenty hours a week more of work than she did, but it didn’t bother me.
What did bother me was cooking dinner for the two of us every night during breaks.
So I made her an offer: I’ll cook twice for every time you cook, which meant she had to cook twice a week (we went out to a restaurant together once a week) and I cooked four times per week.
If any dinner offers came up, it came out of her share (coincidental since one of her nights was when we usually got invited to eat with one of our families).
There was a lot of conflict at first, and I didn’t get it.
I thought she was trying to get out of our agreement (I also did most of the housework and shopping and I felt taken advantage of) because we ended up having take-out on her nights the first few weeks. Since we had a common budget, that didn’t feel fair, and I told her that.
So on the first night that she was going to cook, I stayed around just in case she needed help. We were both in our mid-20s at the time. Finally, she broke down crying in the kitchen. She was going to make mac ‘n cheese and hot dogs, but she didn’t know how to boil hot dogs (no microwave for us back then).
More than that, she didn’t know how to boil water.
I felt a mix of feeling really bad for the situation and inwardly wanting to… well, laughing wouldn’t have been very nice. So I showed her how to put water in a pan, put it on the stove, and wait until it boiled.
The malicious compliance? It wasn’t on my side…
We were together for another four years or so after that. We continued our agreement on sharing the housework over that period (e.g. me doing the vast majority of it while working ten or twenty hours more per week than she did).
Once she mastered the basics of store-bought mac ‘n cheese (boil the noodles, melt butter in a pan, add the prepackaged seasoning, etc.), she never felt the urgency to move on, to grow as an aspiring chef. We had mac ‘n cheese and boiled hot dogs for 4 years x 52 weeks x average of 1.7 times per week = some 350 more times after that.
If I asked if she might consider cooking something else “this week”, she’d say she’d be happy too… except she was really in the mood for hot dogs and mac ‘n cheese, so maybe next week?
My friends started joking (privately, with me) about how wasteful just throwing out all of that dirty hot dog water was, and how many other things she could make with it… dirty hot dog water soup, iced dirty hot dog water cocktails, etc. One friend had Dirty Hot Dog Water shirts made and gave them to us as Christmas gifts.
I was a little mortified… but my other half didn’t get it, thank goodness. One of my friends ended up going the stand-up comedian route, dropping out of school to do it. He ended up pretty successful (staff writer for a popular syndicated show).
And he made dirty hot dog water jokes constantly whenever he got back to town, and some of them made their way onto the program he wrote for. One time he came back and did a headline act at the club he got started at on open mic night.
He got us a dozen tickets, and our group of friends (and my other half) got premium placement at a table front and center in the club. He did his whole act on dirty hot dog water. Our table was howling in laughter, and every single person in the club was silent (including my other half) until they started booing.
Ironically, later in life, I discovered what we were really wasting was the pasta water. I’ve always just thrown it out after cooking noodles. But really, use it anywhere you need water in a recipe and it makes sense – especially homemade spaghetti sauce!”
Another User Comments:
“”We had mac ‘n cheese and boiled hot dogs for 4 years x 52 weeks x average of 1.7 times per week = some 350 more times after that.”
I would have cooked and eaten HER at that point.” SpiderKnife
6. Think You Know Your Rights So Well? Let's See How Court Goes For You
“My ex and I were 3 months into separation, as I kept suggesting divorce agreements, trying to find what she would accept other than “take her back and return to being a doormat for her.” I have a good head for legal documents and understood very early that as much as I would prefer to just burn everything down and disappear, legally it was very likely I was going to be paying alimony, and she was entitled to a fair share of everything.
But in a no-fault state with no gender preferences, it did mean a fair share. It was clear that legally I would not get approval for an agreement heavily biased in her favor.
So I kept reworking and sending possible divisions.
Every few days for months. She would object to anything that put any responsibility on her, anything that left something of value out of her hands. Any time I asked her what terms she would be ok with, she would just derail the conversation to something else.
Not long into this, I realized that I would need a paper trail, so everything went to email only.
Through all of this, I had recognized too that a court would order spousal support, so there wasn’t any point in just cutting her off financially.
Not a total doormat at this point though. I had moved my direct deposit to a solo account and kept up her weekly financial flow, and kept paying the bills. But my final offer in this period was the heavily unbalanced offer of splitting the cars one to each, me taking all the debt including her student loans, paying her $3-4k a month for a year so she could get her feet under her, and she gets all the “stuff”.
I walk away with my car, my dogs, some tools, and some clothes. No go. “Not good enough for her”.
And so we get to the meat of the story for the MC.
3 months in, I finally get her to agree to a mediator since I’m getting nowhere.
She shows up to the initial meeting, the first time we have seen each other in a while, the 2nd time since splitting. She was staying with her sister. The mediator starts out with the rules of mediation, and the agreements to sign.
I sign easily, she balks but signs it finally. One of the relevant terms is that we agree to not file any other legal paperwork. We would come to an agreement and the mediator would file the final court papers on both of our behalf to get the divorce ordered.
The mediator starts asking basic questions. And every question, to either of us, results in my ex launching into an irrelevant topic attempting emotional manipulation of me or him. I quickly resolve to grey-rock her directly and only direct my interactions to the mediator.
I do my best to ignore her off-topic ramblings and reply to the mediator when she briefly crossed relevancy like someone falling from a tree and briefly being stopped by various branches on the way down.
The peak was when she literally crawled on top of the big table to stick her face in mine to “force me” to see her and engage in her ranting.
The mediator called it quits at that point. He reminded her of the rules she agreed to, gave us homework to fill out, and had us schedule the next meeting with his clerk, 2 weeks out.
3 days later I get served with a summons to court for a hearing over spousal support.
The summons shows the claim my ex made that all I had received from her in 3 months was $130. Oh boy. Not true at all. Not to mention in violation of the mediator terms.
I end up on a conference call with the ex and the mediator as he tells her that she needs to withdraw the complaint or mediation can’t continue.
She adamantly insists that she knows her rights. So the mediator ends his involvement, cuts us refund checks minus time worked so far, and exits stage left.
I prepare for the hearing. I print out 3 months of bank statements and highlight every transfer to her.
Every bill paid on her behalf. Every atm withdraw by her card. Over 100 toll bills I received from her just driving through express lane tolls so I got the elevated license plate fee mailed to me.
$13,000 and change. “You missed a couple of zeros in your complaint,” I thought.
My final stack of paper was rather thick. So I made and printed an excel spreadsheet summary for the cover sheet. I also looked up the spousal support rules again. It is 40% of the difference between the income going from the higher paid to the lower paid.
Some little wiggle room, but that’s it. Simple. She was currently getting up to 72% of my pay once you factored her bills in. This court hearing was a good thing. Not as good as a mediator and fast resolution, but I wasn’t likely to end up screwed more here.
Not to mention I had some daydreams of her finding out what lying on court documents might do.
The court date rolls around. I show up to court, waiting in the hall outside the family law section. She shows up and plops herself next to me to start going off on me again.
I try to ignore her. Then to keep from engaging, I start a written transcript of her ranting using the back cover of my paperwork folder. Finally, she realized what I’m doing and ends the ranting with: “oh, I guess you are writing what I’m saying so you can make your friends hate me.” (They needed no encouragement).
She huffs a few seats away and is quiet the rest of the time we waited.
The court officer (not a judge, just someone authorized to handle it since it is a simple and clear legal process) finally comes to get us, and we head in.
The officer starts the legal speeches, yadda yadda, then asks my ex if she has anything to add to the complaint. She launches into a rollercoaster speech proclaiming all my bad faults (some of which were real), how mean I was to try to divorce her, and how I obviously didn’t need any of the money I made “because he is just going to live somewhere simple and cheap anyway.” Yeah, her words.
The court officer returns to the present like someone climbing down from the kitchen table after seeing a rat run by. And she asks me if I have anything I’d like to say. She can see the stack of paper and eyeballs it as she is talking.
I hand over the stack, tell the officer that the summary sheet on top should help clear up the financial points in question, and just verbally start going through the items. At each one, my ex interrupts to give a reason why that item shouldn’t count.
Every. Single. One. The officer keeps asking her to stop interrupting but to no avail.
We finally finish the list.
The officer is shaking her head slightly and says: “Mr. Yen, this court process is to ensure that both parties are doing the right thing.
So all of the” and gestures to encompass the stack of paper, “needs to stop right now. We will garnish your paychecks for the amount specified by law and send that to her instead.”
I know it’s a win. I knew it was going to be.
She didn’t. She sat there all smug as we get into the calculations. I asked for a couple of adjustments, to keep the amount of her car payment since I cosigned and I wanted to be sure the bill was paid.
I expected that she would refuse or overspend on other stuff and be unable to pay it. I didn’t want to give her the power to trash my credit. The officer agreed. I then asked to keep the insurance payment amount too, for much the same reason.
Also agreed by the officer. My ex continued to be smug. I know she was thrilled at the idea of getting a court check directly. It sure would show me!
Everything wrapped up, we got the totals, and signed papers, I handed over a check for the first payment, and the officer got up to make copies of everything.
I asked the officer if I could wait in another room while she did, and got an agreement with a bit of side eye at my ex.
I got my paperwork first, with the officer saying: “it might take a few minutes for her to get her paperwork, but you are free to go.” I got the hint and left immediately.
I had parked a few streets away anyway, another barrier if she couldn’t park near me.
I got in my car and immediately called my cell carrier and canceled her phone. “Does she want to set up her own plan?” “I can’t answer that.
I am obeying a court order to remove her from my accounts.” “Okay.” And worked down the remaining subscriptions I was paying for that she used. I even had the bills in front of me from court with account numbers and customer service numbers right there.
I was done and driving home when she started blowing up my phone with incoming emails demanding to know what I was doing. Then texts from her sister’s phone. Then calls. I just grinned and didn’t answer any of them.
She stopped after an hour or so and gave me a few hours of silence. Then an all-caps email with a screenshot of the Netflix inactive account message: “OMG! EVEN NETFLIX!”
I admit I giggled.
The fallout wasn’t over though.
A month later after she realized how much less she has from me after “winning” her case, she files an appeal. It is denied due to a lack of reason. A month later, she files a complaint that “I wasn’t paying her car payment.” Just an excuse to get into court.
I had been paying it, and I was also pretty confident that even if I hadn’t she didn’t know how to get into that loan’s account (she legally could, just never had cared to learn how). I had a lawyer at this point, and we both go to court.
She is going to join us by phone. The officer paused before calling and telling my lawyer: “this lady is a piece of work.” The validation of that statement will always remain with me.
The call goes predictably. My ex makes irrelevant rants.
The officer keeps shutting her down. Finally asks my ex for proof that I wasn’t paying the car payment … as she is holding statements and check images proving I had. My ex nearly screams: “I just know he isn’t so he can hurt me!” The officer replies: “I am holding proof that he has paid it and is satisfying his legal obligation.
The complaint is dismissed. Thank you.” And hangs up on my ex.
(Divorce took another 10 months, lots more crazy, teaches her newbie lawyer a hard lesson, and I walked away with even less alimony than the spousal support, and only about 60% of the debt.
I lost my dogs to her though, my only regret in the outcome. One is certainly past old age limits now, the other is in that range. I still miss them.)”
5. Your Food Is Never Spicy Enough? I'll Make Sure Of It
“I used to be a chef in a Mexican Restaurant in a small town in Australia nearly 40 years ago.
We were modestly popular and I loved working there. One night a young man came in to dine with a young lady. It was very obviously their first time meeting. They ordered nachos to share with a side of jalapenos for their entrée, and he ordered a steak vera cruz (hot) for his main and the young lady ordered a chicken burrito (mild) for hers.
I, as I usually did throughout the night, would walk around the tables and ask if people were enjoying the food. After the nachos, I checked on them and the young man informed me that the chilli that accompanied the nachos was not hot at all and that he loved hot food.
I was informed that he had travelled extensively and had eaten some of the hottest food in the world and that no one had ever made a dish too hot for him. He reiterated that he wanted his steak main extra hot.
To be honest I found him to be pompous and rather obnoxious in the way he was speaking down to me and found myself taking a disliking to him.
I will add at this point that the young lady was looking a little uncomfortable and I got the impression her date was not going as she had expected.
I headed to the kitchen. I made her a lovely chicken burrito while putting together his steak. He wanted it hot?? He was going to get it!
Our steak vera cruz was usually a steak cooked and topped with our house tomato sauce base with some capsicums (bell peppers for you Americans) and onions with a touch of chilli.
On this occasion, I set to work. Keep in mind this was Australia back in the 80s, and we did not get a lot of different chillies back then, and a jalapeno was considered hot by most Aussie palates. Hey, we were an uneducated bunch!
I had a few bird’s eye chillies in the kitchen that were mainly there for the staff and the resident Mexican guitarist’s meals so I started with those. I finely diced about 10 of those with their seeds. I then started sweating off my onions and capsicums. I then threw in the chillies and then I added about a tablespoon of chilli powder and about a tablespoon of cayenne.
I soon felt the fumes hit my nose and the back of my throat and my eyes started watering. I ran to the door of the kitchen to get a breath of breathable air as the air in my tiny kitchen was rapidly becoming unbreathable.
I ran back to my pan and put a ladle of the house tomato sauce in. I then let that simmer for a few minutes. I then added some chopped-up jalapenos from a jar in my fridge and thought why not, and in went a bit more chilli powder.
I then put the flash-fried steak in to finish it off in the sauce. I served it all up on a plate with some rice, served up the chicken burrito and hit the bell for the waitress to serve it to the table.
The waitress came back and told me that as she placed it in front of him he said, ‘This had better be hot.’ She assured him the chef had done as he requested. I went to the door of the kitchen, joined by my waitress, to watch the show unfold, and unfold it did!
I watched with glee as he sliced the steak, took a piece on his fork and with a smug look on his face, put it in his mouth. He took a chew and then realised his mistake. I saw it.
That moment when his face changed, but he was trying so hard not to show it. He couldn’t. He had bragged so hard and now he had to go through with it. He ate the steak. I could see every ounce of pain on his face.
He struggled. He struggled hard. His lady watched him with a slight smile on her lips, and I got the impression that she was thoroughly enjoying his pain. He went through several jugs of water. He sweated. He barely spoke.
He looked darn uncomfortable.
At the end of the meal, I came out of the kitchen and asked him if he had enjoyed his meal. His words? ‘Could have been hotter.’
He never came back. His chick? She became a regular and told us he was an insufferable fool and she never saw him again.
I have no regrets other than I wish Carolina Reapers had been around then.”
4. Don't Leave The Spill Unattended? Gotcha!
“A story of malicious compliance from many years ago, when I was a teenager <1 year into my retail job, where I did recovery (basically tidying your allocated department so it was neat and presentable for the following day).
There was a rule that if you found a spillage on the floor, you had to have one person stay and guard the spill so no customer would come along and slip in it, and one person to go and get the cleaning supplies cart to clean it up (or if that wasn’t in its place and you couldn’t find it, then at least one of those yellow ‘Caution: Slippery Floor’ signs to put there).
On the day of this malicious compliance, I was working in the household cleaning section, which was right in the back corner of the store. About halfway into my 3-hour shift, I walked into an aisle and discovered a bottle of dishwashing liquid had been knocked off the shelf and had pretty much exploded, leaving a pale yellow sheen of liquid that covered almost the whole middle of the aisle.
I thought about the rule for a moment and then realized that because of where my department was, I would be waiting a very long time for another staff member to even realize there was a spill, let alone help, and that it was unlikely customers would go down that aisle in the next few minutes anyway.
So I walked out of the aisle and went to go find the cleaning stuff, but only got a few meters away from the spill when I bumped into the store manager, who we’ll call Ray. We had the following conversation (paraphrased a bit since this was from around 20 years ago)…
Ray: How are you going with your department?
Me: Good, but there’s a spill in the dishwashing aisle, so I’m just going to get the cleaning cart.
Ray: Who’s standing watch over it?
Me: No one, the other staff don’t really come up here so I was going to quickly go and-
Ray: No, you do not leave spills unattended! What if a customer comes along and trips in it? Go back and stay there and make sure any customers who go down that aisle are aware of it.
Me: Okay. In that case, can you please get me the cleaning trolley so I can clean it up?
Ray: No, I need to get to a meeting upstairs. Just wait for another staff member to come past and ask them to go and get it for you. In the meantime, don’t leave the spill unattended.
Me: But-
I was trying to say that because of how out-of-the-way my department was, it was unlikely another staff member WOULD come past, but he’d walked off before I finished talking.
About 20 minutes before the recovery shift ended, when Ray had gone home for the day and the store had closed, the night manager, Lucy, was doing her rounds. When she got to the dishwashing aisle, she stopped.
Lucy: Why are you just standing there?
You haven’t finished more than half of your department!
Me: There’s a spill.
Lucy: Well why didn’t you clean it up?
Me: I tried but Ray told me off.
I explained to her what had happened and she rolled her eyes and told me to go and get the cleaning cart, so she could clean it up after she let all the recovery staff go home.
After that, they brought in a rule where if you had a spill and there were no staff around, you were allowed to leave either a shopping basket over it or create a makeshift barrier around it with stock so that you could go and get the cleaning supplies yourself.”
3. Complain To Whoever I Want? Believe Me, I Will
“The last school year has been challenging for me at work.
I’m an English high school teacher (not in the US), and the work environment at that school has been going from bad to worse as the school year progressed. Our principal has created a very hostile and toxic work and learning environment that has made many young teachers leave, even at the start and middle of the year (very uncommon in my country).
I (32M), and many of the other teachers, have felt bullied and oppressed. Our complaints went unheard and ridiculed, with the principal targeting many of us (young and experienced teachers alike) for public shaming sessions. And my turn came last week.
I asked for a meeting with her to discuss my desire to go back to university next year to complete my thesis, which would have resulted in me taking Tuesdays off (all teachers in my country get a day off, which is usually for us to choose).
As soon as I walked in, she called the pedagogical administrator, and they both started a 30 min shaming session. I was told that I am a lousy teacher, my classes are boring (they never attended any of my classes), that I have conspired to ruin English teaching at our school, and that students, parents, other teachers, and administrators have been complaining about me.
She wants teachers to work full-time (which she knows I planned on doing anyway and have been asking for it for two years) and advised me to take a break from teaching (unpaid leave).
I was shocked and speechless. In my three years at that school, I received only praise from everyone I worked with.
My students, their parents, and colleagues love me (to which I have written proof). The following day, I went ahead and turned in my notice. She called me a liar (I told other teachers what happened as they saw me coming out pale and on the verge of tears out of her office) and said that I couldn’t take criticism.
She has also started lying about me to colleagues and other school principals (they all know me and told me). She also told me to complain to whomever I want.
Cue malicious compliance: I waited to file the complaint until I secured a new position.
However, I decided to follow that last bit of advice from her. I sent it to whomever I thought might be interested – the regional English teaching inspectorate, the regional general inspectorate, the teachers’ union, any other official and inspector I knew in my country’s ministry of education, and the best part – every teaching college and program in a 200-kilometer radius which included the most prominent and largest education programs in my country and area.
Fallout: The principal had to beg the ministry to send them new teachers, as quite a few of us left at the end of last year. Most of the poor English teachers she did get contacted me via mutual friends and colleagues, asking me for help getting new positions as the work environment has only gotten worse, a request to which I gladly obliged. The complaint itself didn’t impact the principal professionally, but she will have a pretty difficult time filling positions for the next few years.
A few colleagues from that school will join me next year as they kept calling me to vent about the worsening conditions there, so I just told them to send me their CVs, which my coordinator was more than happy to receive.
As for me – I found a wonderful school outside of my city where I could rediscover my love of teaching. Not only have I found a place where I feel good, but I also found a second job – I now teach at my local college, where the hourly rate is five times my school salary.
I have also found the courage to start something I always wanted to do – move to another country, which I’m on track to do in 2024.”
2. Force Me To Make Coffee? I'm Not An Expert, But I'll Try My Best!
This was when I was a young Airman First Class (A1C) stationed at Davis-Montham AFB in Tucson AZ back in 1997/98 working the graveyard shift (midnight to 7 am) as an AGE Mechanic.
At the time I was not a coffee drinker and had never even made a cup in my life (an important point for the story). In fact, my first cup wasn’t until about 2004 when I was a SSgt stationed at Cannon AFB in NM, and have been hooked ever since.
On to the story, I was assigned to a Combat AGE Team (CAT) the folks that support all flight-line equipment, and our boss was a Master Sergeant (MSgt) that was known for being a real jerk for no good reason.
He was a chain smoker and a caffeine addict. One day at the end of my shift he calls me into the office and wants to know why there was no coffee in the coffee pot when he came in.
I informed him that I don’t drink coffee so I have no reason to make it. He tells me that when he comes in the next day there had better be a full pot waiting for him and every day after too.
I told him I had never made coffee to which he dismissed me with a barking order to have coffee made for him.
Now it’s important to note that while he was my MSgt the military or the Air Force at least frowns on sergeants using airmen as their personal gophers in this way.
Cue MC, that night I asked the shift sergeant how to make coffee, and he asks what do I mean? It’s so simple, filter grounds, water airman, seriously!?! He also asks why I need to know as I don’t drink the stuff.
I tell him and he informs me that the MSgt can’t order me to make it, but I say it’s no problem really.
Well, I do what I’m told, a full pot right? So 12 cups water in the maker, filter in the holder but how much grounds?
Well, I figure, the pot was full of water, so the filter must have to be full with coffee right?
I filled that filter to the top, packed it down a bit, and filled it up again. Just before 1st shift came in I turn it on and wait.
From outside the shop I see MSgt come in, see the coffee, and grin the crap-eating grin he was known for, pour himself a full cup (he took it black) and take a good hearty swig…. and spew it straight back out all over the table and floor.
I watched him clean it up, take the pot, and pour it out and look at the filter with a look on his face that clearly said “that stupid airman.”
When I walked in after I stopped laughing and crying he called me over and told me I was never allowed to make coffee again, for life.
Now I own a coffee maker that grinds its own beans and I’ve become a bit of a coffee snob so I can only imagine how terrible the concoction I made tasted all those years ago.”
Another User Comments:
“Also a non-coffee drinker here. But my dad drank it a lot and taught me (my idea) how to make it to his liking. He even warned me that if you put too many grounds in, you will end up with grounds in the pot in spite of the filter.
That’s likely what happened. He got a mouthful of hot, chewy grounds…” [deleted]
1. Try To Screw Me Over On A Promotion? Go For It; I'm On My Way Out Anyway
“I was in the US Army and the Army National Guard for over 20 years. I did finally get my pension, but I was ready to throw all that time away because of the inability of a 1st Lt to count to 8.
We had an annual APFT scheduled as part of a drill weekend. A drill weekend consisted of 4 Unit Training Assemblies, or UTAs. Each UTA was equivalent to a day of active duty pay. The duty day started at 7 am, lunch at 12, final formation at 4:30 pm, then released for the day unless an overnighter was on the training schedule.
Promotions were contingent on passing the Army Physical Fitness Test, as well as a bunch of other random qualifications such as military schools, professional development, military awards and decorations, Rifle qualification, civilian training and/or schooling, and college degrees.
The APFT consisted of three events: pushups, situps, and a 2-mile run.
It has since been changed, but that was what it was when I was in.
I’m a natural runner. I ran track in high school. Tall and lean with good stamina. Not too fast, but I was steady, 6-minute miles all day long.
Situps were never a problem for me. Pushups, however, not much for upper body strength. I’ve always struggled with pushups. It’s the only event of the APFT that I ever actively trained. I could max out the other two events, but pushups…I was happy if I could make the minimum required to pass the test.
I was up for promotion, I trained in pushups for months prior to the test. On the day of the test, one of the smokers in the unit wanted to run with me, to pace off me so he could pass the PT test. I did the required number of pushups to pass that event and I was flying high, knowing the other two events were easy for me.
We ran on a quarter-mile high school track, 8 laps for two miles and as we passed our scorer, in this case, the idiot 1st Lt, we’d yell out our last name and he’d check off the completed lap. My buddy and I ran side by side for all 8 laps and when we got to the last lap, the LT said I had another one to do.
We explained that we ran together for all 8 laps and that if one of us passed, both of us passed, but he wasn’t buying it. He made a mistake and couldn’t admit it. He was adamant that I had to run another lap and because I was running slower than I normally would have to let the smoker keep up, I couldn’t complete another lap in the time required to pass the test. I was marked as a PT failure and wasn’t eligible for the promotion.
Because I was an NCO, there weren’t that many slots that opened up in a year in my job classification. The opening went to another NCO farther down the promotion list than me. I was livid.
My civilian job was in manufacturing, we worked a 3 on, 3 off schedule.
I worked nights. Weekends were our big buck weeks. In order to attend a drill weekend, I’d have to miss work Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday night. I would lose about $600 for attending drill. Occasionally we could be approved for missing drill as long as we made it up during that month, or we could just take no pay for drill and miss those days towards creditable retirement.
At some point, leadership decided that all PT failures would take a PT test every month until they passed. Failure to show up for the PT test would be an automatic forfeiture of pay and retirement points.
Eligibility for retirement was based on having a “good year”.
A good year was 50 points. Each UTA was 1 point. Annual Training was 15 points, leaving 35 points needed from drill weekends. In a year I could miss 3 drill weekends and as long as I made all the rest, I was eligible for a “good year”.
I saved those excused drills for the weeks I was scheduled to work Fri, Sat, and Sun, so I wouldn’t lose the $600 difference from my civilian job and drill pay.
Now, back to those mandatory PT tests every weekend. Leadership decided that we couldn’t miss the scheduled training so the PT test would be held before drill, at 5:30 am at an armory 30 miles farther away from my unit’s armory.
To be at the PT test armory on time for the test meant that I had to get up at 3:30 am, get dressed, drive almost 2 hours, then do the test.
Cue malicious compliance. If I was going to be inconvenienced by this idiocy, so is my scorer.
I would show up for the test, sign in, do one pushup, one situp, one lap, and call it good. Drive to my unit and report that I failed the PT test and go to work and still get paid.
Every month.
My 1st Sergeant pulled me aside one day and asked what was going on. He said he knew I could pass the test. I explained that I already passed the test but that the Lieutenant never passed kindergarten counting.
If they wanted to hold the PT test during duty hours, I’d be more than happy to try to pass, but there was zero incentive for me to do so as long as I had to drive two hours to take the test at 5:30 am.
Another drill weekend, it snows quite a bit and it slows my drive down so I get to the PT test a few minutes after it started. The LT in charge said it was too late and I couldn’t start now.
OK, whatever, drive to my unit to report in that I wasn’t allowed to take the test. Then I’m informed I’m getting an unsat for refusing to do the PT test and wouldn’t be paid for that UTA. Ok, if I’m not being paid, I’m leaving and will be back in four hours.
“Nope, if you leave, you’ll get another unsat.” I realized then, that means I don’t have a good year, I’ll only have 49 points. Screw it, I quit then. I had over 18 years in, re-enlisted for 6 more right before the failed PT test I passed and I just walked away.
No more stupid chicken crap and no more losing money.
In years past, some National Guard units were known to carry soldiers on their rolls. The unit would report that the soldiers were present for duty when they were not and unit administrators would pocket their pay, or create company slush funds.
Sometimes, those soldiers were almost ready to collect pensions and were kicked out and the state saved those pension payments. Now, after 18 years, soldiers are locked in and units are unable to discharge them. You can quit, like I did, and ask for a discharge and the National Guard Bureau will kick it back, denying it, like they did with me.
I still had four years on my current enlistment. They wouldn’t, and couldn’t, release me.
Meanwhile, the State National Guard bureau would get a report of soldiers not showing up for drill. My name kept appearing. Uncomfortable questions were asked why someone with all this time in at my rank would just walk away.
My situation became an embarrassment for the state. How are they going to get my name off this report every month? Why did this happen? How did we fail a soldier with one year left until retirement eligibility?
A friend of mine was a senior NCO, and in one of these meetings, he raised his hand and volunteered a way to get me off this list and not do anything illegal or fraudulent.
I was transferred to his unit, I attended drill at this unit, just a few miles from my house on my days off, during the week, and reported to him. All I needed was 50 points and that would give me a good year and I could retire with my 20 years in.
I could also do military correspondence courses for retirement points, which wasn’t available when I “quit.”
When I attended enough UTAs and completed the courses, I got my 50 points, I received my eligibility for retirement letter and promised my friend he could have half of it.
Unfortunately, my friend passed away at age 55 a year or so after he finally retired after 30+ years in uniform. At his funeral, another retired senior NCO spoke and reflected on my friend’s ability to think outside the box and referenced my situation.
Yes, I’m happily collecting my pension, but I’ll never forget him and what he did for me.”
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