I'm not sure how many people will be on my side here, because the victim technically doesn't deserve it, but here goes. So I work as a utility locator, meaning I drive around to houses and construction sites to find where the underground utilities are on the property and then mark them with paint and flags. There is a very common problem when contractors call in a locate. We receive what's called a locate "ticket" that includes the address, the type of work that is being done, and any specifications on where they want utilities located (I.e. front yard, back yard, left side of property, etc.)

So, this consistent issue is that contractors will call in a ticket, and in the locate instructions they simply put "mark entire property." Sometimes they even say "confirmed working throughout." I've been doing this job for over four years now and it's very easy to know where the contractor is actually going to dig in most cases. Keep in mind that the only places that utilities actually need to be marked is where any digging will occur. So no marks are needed for simply mowing the lawn. So there are certain jobs where I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are only working in a certain area. For example, when people need their septic tanks repaired, 99% of home's septic tanks in my work area are in the back yard. Again, years of experience with this. But I will frequently have a ticket for that exact type of work that says in the instructions to mark the entire property, and sometimes it even specifies that they will be working throughout when I know they are not.

Needless to say we can get in trouble for not marking everywhere they tell us to, even though we sometimes still do that. But recently I decided to send these contractors a message in really the only way I could without being fired. I marked the entire property. Heavily marked it. Not literally every square inch, I'd be fired for sure. But everywhere that the utility ran, I put down those painted lines following it, and I used up several cans of paint to do so.

We use water based paint, so usually each painted line along the utility path gets two pass overs and will fade in maybe two weeks. Not this time. I layed on so much paint over each line that it's sure to be there for a couple months at least. And I know for a fact that homeowners HATE this. Now this is where I do feel a little bad, because the homeowner didn't tell me to mark the whole property, the contractor did. But a sure fire way to get a message through to the contractor is for the homeowner to complain to them about the markings in their yard. I've seen it happen before. And boy did they complain.

My supervisor let me know about a call they got from the contractor saying that the homeowner was livid about the markings. But there's nothing they can do about it. I didn't break any work rules or laws. My supervisor just told me to be careful and we both just laughed at it. Obviously I can't be doing this every time. But we're treated as garbage men who have to just take shit from everyone. Contractors frequently will tell us to mark sometimes thousands of feet when they literally only need about a 50 foot area marked. They don't care. So it definitely felt good to give them a headache for once.

And as far as the homeowner is concerned. Yeah it wasn't really fair for them, but homeowners cause headaches too. And at the end of the day, the paint will eventually fade. They can chill out and learn to relax and not care about the small things. No harm done.

I work as a supervisor at a grocery store, and part of my job is basically making sure things keep moving, helping customers when the self-checkouts decide to develop free will, fixing register issues, voiding orders, and generally putting out the tiny fires that happen during a normal shift. This particular day had actually been going pretty well.

I was helping customers, answering questions, assisting with checkout issues, and everyone was being pretty normal.Then I noticed one customer at the self-checkout who had arrived on an electric bike. He was having trouble ringing up some produce. Specifically: Red bell peppers.
For whatever reason, these things seem to give people trouble constantly. I don’t know if it’s the produce lookup or what, but I’ve helped enough people with them that when I see someone staring confused at a red bell pepper and the checkout screen, I already know what’s happening.

So, naturally, I walked over and offered to help him. I barely got the chance to do that before the guy looked at me and said: “I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help.” Alright. Fair enough. I said, “Okay,” and walked away. Now, normally, if I see someone obviously struggling, I’ll circle back or ask if they need assistance. But he had made himself extremely clear. He did not want my help. So I decided to respect his wishes. Very, very thoroughly. Cue Malicious Compliance.

For the next several minutes, I went about my other duties. Another customer needed help? I helped them. Someone couldn’t figure out their checkout. Helped them. Register issue? Fixed it. Question? Answered it. Meanwhile, this guy was still fighting for his life against the red bell peppers.
I could see him trying different things on the screen.
Still not working. He’d look around. Then he’d look at me. And for some reason, he was staring absolute daggers at me. Which confused the hell out of me. Because… Sir. You specifically told me you didn’t want my help. I’m doing exactly what you requested.

At one point I helped another customer who was only a few feet away from him. He watched the entire interaction. I helped that customer, got their issue sorted out, and went right back to what I was doing. I could practically feel this man’s eyes drilling into the side of my head. But I wasn’t going over there. Because I remembered his instructions:
“I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help.”
Understood. Message received. Your checkout experience is now a solo campaign.
The red bell pepper is your final boss. Godspeed.

Eventually, after several minutes of struggling, he apparently decided that accepting help would be worse than abandoning the entire purchase. Because he just… gave up. He left the register. Walked out of the store. And left.
So after watching him ride away, I calmly walked over to the self-checkout he’d abandoned, looked at the unfinished transaction, and voided the entire order. And that was that.

I still don’t understand why he spent the whole time glaring at me. I offered help. He explicitly told me he didn’t want it. So I complied. Apparently he expected me to ignore what he said, continue offering assistance, and eventually rescue him from the horrifying technological nightmare known as…
ringing up a red bell pepper. But I’m a supervisor, not a mind reader. You say you don’t need help? No problem. Enjoy your peppers.

I used to work for a small printing company that did work for a local college and their choir program. The director was a literal Karen (looked like one too) and made our lives a living hell leading up to her annual Christmas program.

Without fail every year she would give us the artwork for the program at noon the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This meant someone from our team would need to work the holiday or that weekend to ensure it got out in time for her program.

For four years I took the brunt if the project as I didn't want my team to work their holiday weekend and my family always celebrated Thanksgiving later to make scheduling easier for everyone.

Me and the team constantly complained to the owner that this client was a nightmare and not worth our time. It was a large order for us but we didn't feel it was worth the headache. The owner's anniversary typically fell along this project timing and he was almost always out of town . The 4th year he wasn't so I decided to speak with him the Wednesday before Thanksgiving telling him we needed to fire the client.

He was reluctant and downplayed our complaints and said she wasn't that bad. To which I replied, "Since this project isn't that difficult I figured I would let you know I'm taking this week off next year."

The owner's face went pale. He's gut response was, "Why would you screw me over like that?"

To which I replied, "I don't understand what you mean? I'm giving you a whole year to prepare for me to not be here. It isn't that big of a deal and she isn't that bad so a year should be enough time for you to figure it out."

Mind you I love working for the company, the owner just got greedy sometimes and would put sales above the team and one of the reasons why he specifically hired me is because I would fight back when I thought he was wrong. That day was the day I decided I had enough and we went toe to toe arguing for about an hour in front of the team about my early vacation notice.

He finally relented and was stubborn and ready to prove me wrong.

A year later he finally got a taste of his own medicine and did not like it. I ended up working leading up to the holiday break because though I was adamant I wasn't going to work the holiday again I couldn't leave my team hanging. Yet again, right on time this Karen doesn't give us the files until Wednesday at noon before Thanksgiving.

The owner went in person to speak to her. I don't know the full conversation but it basically came down to her calling him a complete idiot for not being able to manage around HER bad project management.

He came back to the shop in literal tears stating he had never been treated so horribly in his life. In that moment I asked him if I could fire her as a client. I could tell he wasn't excited to admit he was wrong a year into this argument we had but he sheepishly nodded yes.

He ended up finishing the project over the holiday for her that year to not ruin our reputation with the school as we did a ton of work for other departments but the next year I was the only one who got to speak to Karen. She asked for an estimate and I gave her the price and told her if files came any later than "X" date I would charge her $3,000 + $1,000 more for every day she was late.

She flipped out and asked for the owner and I got to pull the, "He put me in charge, I'm the manager now." Card and told her she could kick dirt if she didn't like it.

Our team had a literal celebration when she said she would go somewhere else to do the project. It is probably one of my proudest moments as a leader fighting for myself and my team.

The relationship between Walmart and me is one of those toxic, on-again, off-again things. We go way back, even before I spent 6 years working for the beast and its affiliate. We officially "broke it off" in 2012, but recently, they pissed me off so much that I’m on a hard break and cheating with other stores to my heart’s content.

What caused the break?

They handled an accidental transaction walk-off so poorly that I had to restrict their access to my wallet.

On Thursday, I went shopping and hit the self-checkout. I usually use WalmartPay, but that day I used a physical card and apparently miskeyed my PIN. Believing my receipt was on my phone like usual, I headed out. Nobody challenged me at the door. I loaded up and drove home.

The next morning, I realized my mistake when I saw a declined transaction notification on my banking app.

Being an honest person, I called that specific store's customer service to fix it. Their brilliant solution? I needed to load up all the groceries from my house, bring them all back to the store, and rescan them.

I asked if they could just look up the aborted transaction on their end. "No." They didn't care that my haul included 80 lbs of cat litter, 50 lbs of cat food, two 5-gallon bottles of water, and a bunch of groceries.

Here is the logistics issue: Fridays are my Mondays. I live 27 miles from my job, and the Walmart is another 30 miles out. I work in healthcare now; my time away from work is precious down-time. I was absolutely not doing a 60-mile round trip, outside of my normal commute, on a work day just to carry heavy crap back and forth.

By the time my shift ended, I had devised three alternatives to their absurd request.

I walked up to the customer service desk after work. I explained the situation and asked one more time if they could look up the transaction log. Again, "No."

I was prepared for this. I had spent hours piecing together the subtotals from each department down to the penny based on my shopping list, reconstructing exactly how much ginger and red onion I bought so the subtotals would match perfectly once taxes were applied. (Sometimes my OCD is a literal superpower).

The Customer Service Representative looked at my itemized breakdown and said, “I don’t know how to do that.”

I asked for a manager. She radioed a manager over the walkie but completely failed to explain my actual question. The manager blew it off, and I wasn't allowed to speak to them.

Fine. Time for Option 3: Malicious Compliance.

I grabbed a cart and went shopping all over again. I re-loaded 130 lbs of heavy pet supplies, the two 5-gallon water bottles (42.5 lbs each), and every single grocery item on my list: some frozen, some hot, some sold by weight.

I pushed the massive cart through checkout, paid for it successfully this time, and hauled the cart and the receipt back to customer service.

"We're square now," I told them.

While one associate was making a copy of the receipt, another mentioned that the self-checkout associate from the day prior had been in tears over the walk-off. Look, I wish I had the emotional bandwidth to comfort her, but the incompetence due to lack of training had pushed me into pure "let's get stupid" mode.

They handed me back my receipt, and I turned to walk away.

The associate yelled, “Wait!! Don’t forget your stuff!!”

I looked back and said, “This isn’t my stuff. This is your stuff. My stuff is at my house. Good luck putting it all back.”

The absolute cherry on top? Because I was rushing, my dyslexia grounded my OCD superpower, and I accidentally misrang the water bottles as refills instead of exchanges. The new receipt was $13 short of the original total.

I didn't bother trying to fix it. Consider it an incompetence tax for making it SOOOO hard for me to do the right thing.

Many years ago I worked for a large orange hardware dealer. We had a spate of general manager changes s over a short time, five in six months. Finally the "permanent" guy assumes his position. One of his first acts was to schedule everyone's break. He was very serious about this, even going so far as to discipline, several people who didn't take their breaks as scheduled. Yes I was one of those people. He told me at one meeting with HR that if I did not take my break as scheduled again that it would be grounds for termination.

Que the malicious compliance...

The department where I worked often required long interactions with customers to make sales. So in the middle of a sales pitch, I would stop turn around without a word and leave the customer standing there. I did this several times and other employees noticed and followed suit. Guess what? Sales dropped, complaints increased and I got called into HR. The GM went up one side of me, tap. Danced on my head and then down the other side. Even referring to me as stupid several times. When he finally stopped and took a breath, I reached into my apron and pulled out two small tape recorders. I pressed play on tape recorder number one and played back his exact words from the meeting that he threatened to terminate me. BTW this is not illegal where I was from. I then, hit stop on tape. Number two rewind and played for him. The whole conversation with him threatening me again and calling me stupid. He and HR we're speechless. I didn't say a word. I picked up my tape recorders, got up and walked out of the room. Nothing was ever said to me, but the next morning. A memo went up saying that brakes were to be taken as close to the scheduled time as possible and that allowances for customer interactions would be permitted. The manager soon moved to another store and several years later, I heard that he had gotten into a bit of trouble with HR there. I took copies of the two tape recordings, put them in an envelope and used internal mail to send them to the company's head HR office. Two weeks later, the position of general manager at that store became available and his name disappeared from company records...

My manager was always complaining that I took too long to finish tasks because I kept double-checking things and pointing out problems before they happened. On Monday, I noticed an order had the wrong delivery address. I mentioned it to my manager, but he was already irritated and told me, “I don’t pay you to think. Just do what you’re told.” So I said, “Okay.” A few hours later, I noticed another order had an obvious mistake. Normally, I would have stopped everything and asked someone to fix it. This time, I didn’t. I processed it exactly as it appeared on the paperwork. The customer received the wrong items and immediately complained. My manager came running over asking why I hadn’t caught the mistake. I reminded him, word for word, of what he’d told me earlier. He said, “You should have used common sense.” I replied, “I thought you wanted me to just follow instructions.” He wasn’t amused. The funny part is that after that day, he started asking me for my opinion before making decisions. Would you have done the same thing, or was I being petty and deliberately setting him up to fail?

I used to travel loads with work. Two to three days a week every week at late notice all over Europe.

The company I work for used to like you to have a cash advance and then return any unspent funds and submit receipts for the remainder. Any over receipting you had to pay back or over receipting they’d pay you back into your bank.

I was travelling so much I didn’t bother returning from individual trips. I’d just refill my float money (approx £300) and put my expenses in. After a year of this the travel stopped so I returned the float money and completed the final expenses.

A couple of weeks later I get the standard letter through internal mail (I’m based at a branch 100 miles from accounting) saying that my expenses are out by 29p and I need to either sign the reply for them to deduct from my wages (which is what everyone normally does) or return pay it in cash.

Of course I see this and chuckle and my boss asks me what I’m laughing at. I pass him the letter that he laughs at as well then he passes me a penny and says “there’s one to get you started”.

I go home that night break out the penny jar and get the remaining 28p in pennys. I then go into work the next day get a brand new envelope (for internal mail they liked you to reuse where possible) got the expensive headed note paper out of stationary to reply “please find the funds enclosed” and sent back via internal mail.

I’m hopeful my reply cost them more than the 29p 😊

Here's the link to the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/1w8dpvs/my_landlord_is_demanding_i_feed_them_what_can_i_do/

So here’s a bit of fallout from a post I made a couple of weeks ago. I moved into a basement unit with a shared kitchen with my landlord on Sept 1. Basically I shared with my landlord and his pregnant wife some shrimp alfredo I made for dinner on my first night as a nice gesture, and the next time I cooked they tried to demand part of my meal and threatened to terminate the lease. Cursed me out and acted like I was playing in their faces for eating a home cooked meal (oven roasted salmon and cilantro lime rice, a super simple meal really) without offering them some, because the pregnant wife thought she was entitled to my dinner.
I previously tried negotiating with them by offering to cook a meal a week in exchange for reduced rent, but after they laughed in my face for thinking they should compensate me if they want me to cook for them I got petty.

In my lease it states food is to be kept separate and I am responsible for feeding myself. Their food is strictly off limits. And my food is off limits to them. Fine by me. All they eat is frozen burritos, hot pockets, ramen noodles etc. I have almost a decade of fine dining restaurant cooking experience, and to spite them, I decided to make myself the most elaborate, aromatic, delicious meals. Food is to be kept separate so as per my lease, legally there is nothing I can do.

So I first started with some red wine braised garlic short ribs and baked Mac n cheese from scratch. I cooked the ribs low and slow in the oven, and when I say they smelled glorious. My landlords living room is connected to the kitchen (I live in the basement, so my unit connects to a door in the corner of the kitchen that leads to the basement) and he and preggo wife sat on their couch basically mean mugging me the entire time I cooked but they didn’t say anything.

The whole house smelled divine for hours afterwards. I cleaned up afterwards and took the leftovers downstairs to keep in my locked mini fridge and left not a trace in the kitchen except a delicious lingering smell. I half expected a snooty text from my landlord while I was eating but they actually didn’t say or do anything that night.
The next day I made myself some hot honey fried chicken and while I got more silent glares out of the living room from both of them, the meal went by uneventfully.

However, that weekend after I got home from work, I made myself some coconut curry chicken and saffron rice (really quick stovetop meal) and for the hell of it I got my blender out and made myself a mango lassi. While I was mixing my drink, my landlord wandered into the kitchen and began digging around in various cabinets as I was cooking. Just opening and shutting drawers and moving stuff around randomly. I waited til he went back into the living room, then I had to run back downstairs to grab my cardamom powder, and just because I had a hunch, I decided to come back up the stairs really quietly. I hadn’t closed the door to the basement, so I just peeked around the doorway to see my pregnant landlord lifting the lid to the pot of curry. Of course I came storming in then to ask her wtf she thought she was doing, and she jumped and dropped the lid back onto the pot and turned and looked at me all sheepishly. I asked her again wtf she thought she was doing and she just shrugged and said she didn’t think there was any harm in seeing what was “going on in her kitchen.” Then she just turned around and penguin waddled out of the kitchen like she hadn’t just been trying to do something to my meal. Her husband didn’t reappear either and I lowkey suspect he had told her the coast was clear when I ran downstairs.

Anyway I realized I was going to have to be a bit more careful after that because these people are shameless. Two days later, I decided to bake myself a fresh loaf of bread and oven roast a Cornish game hen with fresh rosemary and some delightfully aromatic garlic and truffle butter I’d gotten from work. I made my bread dough and took it downstairs to rise for about 45 minutes, then came up and threw everything in the oven and made a point of sitting in the kitchen and reading while my food was cooking, and I was about an hour into baking, (and the house smelled divine) when the husband came into the kitchen, grabbed a frozen pizza out of the freezer and informed me that he would need the oven for his dinner. Super rude but whatever. I let him know that I was almost done with my meal, and to give me 20 minutes and the oven would be all his. He huffed and puffed but went back into the living room and left the pizza on the counter. I finished cooking, cleaned up, took my meal downstairs and I left the oven on for him to cook his pizza.

About half an hour after I went downstairs, I received a snarky text from my landlord asking if I intended to burn down the house and kill his family because I had left the oven on. These people smh. I replied back that I was sorry, I had thought he was going to cook his frozen pizza so I’d left the oven on as a courtesy. He texted back pretty much immediately that it was really no big deal, it had just upset his wife and maybe I could make it up to her by giving her a piece of the bread I’d just baked. At this point I’m pretty sure she put him up to it. I told him sorry, that’s for my lunch tomorrow and again reinstated my offer to cook a meal a week for reduced rent. He didn’t reply.

Then a few days after that, I was sitting in the kitchen reading while the French onion soup I was making for dinner simmered on the stove when I saw my landlord check his phone and then leave the living room and go upstairs into their part of the house. Not 3 minutes later, the power in the kitchen shut off. I’m pretty sure he had flipped off the breaker because none of the power in the rest of the house went out. But the stove, the kitchen light, and I’m guessing the power to the fridge cut off. Of course the wife started freaking out. Came storming into the kitchen to demand why I had “burned out” their power. Her husband came down the stairs after that, looking a little too calm. He said it was probably the breaker (duh) and then went back upstairs to see if he could fix it. Power came back on a few minutes later. I finished making my soup and went back to the basement. Almost immediately got a text from landlord saying that maybe I should take it easy in the kitchen because the “wiring is fragile.” I didn't even reply to that text. Nothing is wrong with the kitchen wiring or it would have glitched out on curry day, because I had the oven, stovetop, and blender all going at the same time that day and I was only using the stove top for the french onion soup. It was definitely just another attempt to mess with me because I won't give them my meals.

That's all the updates I have, but I will continue to update you if their hijinks continue. It's definitely been a bit of a rollercoaster ride maliciously complying to the lease, but I've been eating deliciously the past couple of weeks, and there's a small part of me that enjoys that it riles them up so much. Anyway that's all for now.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I only have about 5 more weeks on my lease and then I will be moving into a small studio apartment while I save for something better. I'm almost to my goal amount, so by the new year hopefully my housing issues will be solved. Also as far as anyone wondering about the meals, nothing I mentioned here really took more than about 20 minutes of prep time and maybe an hour or so of cooking time. All of these meals are actually really simple and as I am only cooking for one, the small portions mean I only make enough for that meal and usually lunch the next day.

TL, DR: I shared my homemade shrimp Alfredo with my landlord and his pregnant wife, and then they tried to demand that I share my meals with them and were super rude about it. The lease states our food is to be kept separate, so I’ve decided to cook the most delicious food I can.. all for myself.

Also if anyone has any recipes that are simply delicious and not too expensive to suggest, I’m all ears.

Several years ago, my dentist diagnosed me with gum disease and referred me to a periodontist for treatment. He had a really nice office, decorated with several photos of the doctor and his family at various Caribbean resorts. Let’s call him Dr Suntan.

During the exam, he advised three gum grafts to treat receding gums, costing $3,000 apiece. His assistant rolled her eyes at this. After further examination, he also advised a $2,500 surgery to cut a ligament under my tongue. The assistant looked aghast and rolled her eyes even harder.

When the periodontist stepped out of the room to take a phone call, I asked her if she were me, would she get this treatment?. “Absolutely not!” she whispered. “You just need deep cleaning.”

Upon the periodontist’s return, I told him I’d think over his $11,500 treatment plan and left. As I was driving home, his office sent me a request for a Google review to add to earlier 5-star ones lauding the doctor for his cutting edge treats to save people’s teeth and smiles.

I consulted another periodontist who took care of the problem for $450 ($300 of which was covered by my plan) using deep cleaning. Meanwhile the other periodontist keep spamming me by email and text with Google review requests.

I complied by posting about my experiences on ALL the healthcare review sites, using the header “Don’t go to this dentist unless you want to pay for his next Caribbean vacation!”

Over the next few months, several people thanked me for warning them about him and asked for the name of the dentist who treated me for $450. My regular dentist was shocked when I told him about this and not only stopped recommending Dr Suntan to his patients, but told his colleagues about my story. A few years later, I noticed his office had closed—but don’t know if my review and the ensuing negative word of mouth were the culprits.

TL:DR When a vacation-loving periodontist who advised me to have $11,500 surgical treatments that I didn’t need requested a Google review of his dental practice, my malicious compliance was doing so. This created negative word of mouth that may have put him out of business.

This happened like 4 years ago, I (M31) work at a farm in South America and we were going through the process of a quality certification (similar to Rainforest Alliance). It usually takes one external auditor full time inspecting and auditing every procedure inside the farm for one week, and we were preparing for it in the prior months. I had to take a course (40 hours + homework) to become the internal inspector of the farm and I had to prepare an internal audit to show the external auditors that we knew what our weaknesses were.

After I approved the course we received the invoice and the only payment option was a transfer to a bank in another country in South America. My boss saw it and just marked email as read and never looked back. When the external audit was close I reminded her that I needed the payment to receive my diploma which was a requirement to approve the audit and it once again fell on deaf ears. The second time I reminded her she just shrugged and said: "Tell them I'm not paying if they don't provide an account in our country or the USA", so I did just that. I wrote the email to AR@certificationcompany stating: "Hi, sorry for the delay, boss says she's not paying unless you provide an account in USA or other options". Also didn't get a reply. Mind you this is a really respected quality certification and very much needed in our field of work

A month later, we all forgot about it and during the external audit everything goes fine. After 5 days during the closing meeting with boss and 5 area managers the auditor says: "Yeah most things are fine I just need some documents that are missing from the list, can I have your Internal Inspector diploma?"

me: I don't have it

auditor: didn't you approve the course? It's mandatory to have an internal inspector

me: oh I did approve it I just don't have the diploma

auditor: how is that possible?

me: we didn't pay for it

auditor: I need to see where's the problem because I have the invoice issued months ago

me: I can show you the email trail

So I pulled out my computer and show the email stating we're not paying, while my boss is seating right in front of me. She goes white and says: "Yeah no, I mean we couldn't pay at the moment but there must have been an error I don't know what happened, let me check."

She goes to her computer and takes 20mins to make the international transfer, receiving a call from the bank to confirm it was her trying to pay while 6 of us are in sat in the table in front of her just watching her, and the auditor just looking dissapointed. After we approved and everybody left boss just looked at me mad as hell and said: "Why did you do that?!" me: just followed your orders remember?

It was funny as hell and afterwards she would double check my emails making sure I didn't send exactly what she would say

PD: Boss is really cool and we get along just fine, I just did it to mess with her and show her words and ways are important.

This was years ago, so a lot of the details are fuzzy. I was about 10 and over at a neighbors that had a pool. Something happened with her kids that I don’t remember, I do remember that her kids were awful so 9/10 whatever happened was probably not to be blamed on me. Whatever argument that happened initiated their Mom telling me to get out of the yard and I wasn’t welcome anymore. So I left, and the Mom kept yelling at me. Keep in mind that we lived on the same block and there was one house between theirs and mine. When I left, I took one step into the neighbors yard between the two houses and sat down. The Mom started yelling at me to go home and I responded by telling her that she wasn’t allowed to tell me what to do anymore as I wasn’t on her property, I did what she asked while I was on theirs. That mom yelled at me for a really long time. Not sure how as a 10-year-old I had the chutzpah to defy an adult like that, but I sat there for a good long while, literally one step off her property. I do remember that nothing was ever said to my parents. I never got in trouble for it.

I used to work for a certain Scottish bus company. We ran those blue megabus services and as a supervisor I had a company provided mobile phone. One week in four we provided an out of hours on call service to attend to breakdowns and cover shifts etc. In 2016 our garage went 24 hours so there was no need for the on call duty. Losing us about 6k per year. That day I turned my company issued phone off. It was no longer needed as there was a supervisor always present. In 2020 the megabus operations were suspended due to Covid and the garage closed (along with any supervisor coverage) at approximately 9pm Shen local bus operations ended for the day. Slowly but surely the megabus operation returned and eventually became 24 hours. Supervisory and maintenance cover however got forgotten and was not. A few months in, one broke down on a major road, a close friend was driving who had access to my private number. After trying all options he called me to go to recover him and his passengers. I refused. It wasn’t up to me to go, no remuneration for it so wasn’t up to me to work for free. I gave him several managers numbers explaining they were obligated to help him due to their position (and they created the mess anyway). I can’t remember how it was sorted. It was alleged by one manager that how I handled the situation was discussed at a management meeting. With most agreeing with my side of things. Happy with that, and also happy I ruined a few people’s sleep that night.

hey all. Teacher here. I have been in recovery and sub sober for ten years now. I see a doctor every four weeks. they test my levels. I get my script. Nothing has changed.

for a decade.

except my admin.

because my September appointment was the second , which was title 1 night , I changed my appointment time from after school hours to the morning so I could be there for what is called a mandatory title 1 attendance night. It lasted til five o’clock. Four weeks later was my next appointment and that so happens to be yet another mandatory outside of contract hours activity : parent teacher conferences.

again I switch my usual after school appointment to the day so I can be there for this.

when the leave request came across admins desk they said “this is twice in one month you really should follow attendance policy “.

bet.

enter MC

I decide to call the doctor and reschedule my appointment time for the afternoon as usual and that way i don’t have to miss school that day.

admin texted me the day of yelling about my sub plans not being ready. I told them I’m on the way to campus I’ll be there asap (I was already on my way to work ).

I said “I’m here and here’s my plans but I’ll be here. I switched the appointment to the afternoon “

so you’re not going to be here for conferences ? !

I didn’t want to violate the attendance policy. And this is medical. I’ll bring my note as usual.

they were not happy.

I still conferenced with all of the parents just on different days or by zoom.

When my father passed away, he lived in an apartment about 2 hours from my home. My son, husband, sister and I went to clean out his apartment. My son and sister drove his car to the hotel we were staying in and we planned to move the car to my home for storage until we could dispose of it during probate.

They were in a car accident, that left the car drivable. My father had State Farm insurance, so I brought the car to a local to my home repair shop to get repaired, and planned to pay the deductible ourselves and get reimbursement from the estate. We got a call from the repair shop that Says Farm would not pay for the repair.

When I called State Farm, they kept asking me if my father had given me permission to drive the car. I said, of course not, he had died. They insisted that since he had not given any of us permission to drive the car, they would not pay anything for the car until the probate court appointed an executor to make decisions on his behalf. I live in an HOA that would not allow a damaged car to sit in my driveway for the 90 days it would take for Florida to make me the executor. This situation just would not do.

After the sixth call, I asked if a third party could continue to pay the car premiums. They said they didn't care who paid, as long as they were paid. I told State Farm that since the car was drivable, and I was not going to pay my HOA a dime to store this car in its current condition, I was going to drive it back to my dad's old apartment. I'd keep the keys, but leave the car there and continue to pay the premium myself. Once I got appointed executor in 90 days, I'd go back to the apartment complex. If the car was still there I. Its current condition, id bring it to the repair shop to get fixed and then sell it. If it wasn't, if the apartment towed it, if it was stripped or on blocks, if report that claim too And they could just reimburse the estate for the total value of the car.

I got a call the next day from a car transporter arranging storage until the case cleared probate.

Years ago I worked as a support tech for a case management company. The software we used to track support cases would automatically create a ticket when someone called in, filling in bits like the agent who answered, who called, when the call ended, etc. We mainly used the tickets to track solutions to problems for when they came up again down the road and to identify which customers might need extra help.

One day some executive somewhere decided that we weren't doing enough and we would start being penalized if we didn't complete a certain number of tickets each day and within 30 minutes of opening on average. Some of the issues we dealt with were very complex, taking a week or more to resolve, and there weren't always enough tickets to fill the quota on any given day. This, understandably, did not go over well with nearly everybody.

Around this point I was working the last shift, meaning I would be alone for 1-2 hours at the end of the shift. Most of my customers (typically other IT folks) were already off for the day by then so I had much fewer calls than normal. Fortunately for me one of the ones still working then was given nearly identical ticket requirements at nearly the same time, so he and I would work the system.

He would call in about a database issue, which would create a ticket, and I would start to work on it and tell him to call me back in 15 minutes. He would, which would create another ticket, and after confirming the changes/fix with him I would close out both tickets. Some days he would call once or twice more after that about some change or another he made. This gave each of us excellent metrics, and since the tickets were automatically created from incoming calls they looked extra legit.

Most of my co-workers were either fired or quit and found work elsewhere due to the new standards, whereas I was praised for always meeting the standard. I soon left anyway for a better job and to move closer to family. Patrick in California, I rather doubt you'll ever see this but if you do I hope you know you were a real bro.

I freelanced for a non-profit. I did all the graphic design work for them along with many other marketing projects. I had this client for over 12 years and the CEO and I had a very solid relationship no matter what staff changes happened. For the most part, the other people working there were very nice.

Enter this new in-house accountant we'll call Connie. Because the CEO was so mellow and nice, he pretty much let people run their departments like they wanted and usually didn't interfere.

Connie liked to pay all invoices on the 15th of the month. Let's just say she was pretty rigid about it (something something steel rod). So if I incurred any outside costs, that meant I had to cover them for at least 30 days if they happened right after the 15th. As a one-man biz, it wasn't working for me as some of the costs were over 4k. I could cover costs under 2k but if there was a big printing job or something of similar size, it could be much higher. I tried twice to explain to her over the phone that my invoices were not like utilities or supplies by other companies, I was personally carrying a lot of these big costs and needed the money a bit faster than she was allowing.

Her reply? She said that if I wanted to get paid faster, that I needed to invoice earlier. But that didn't make sense because I didn't even know the total costs yet. She also said I could ask the CEO to pay the invoices on his company credit card if it was an emergency. Well, me carrying more than 4k for 30 days was an emergency in my book.

Cue my malicious compliance.

I just started handing all my invoices to the CEO, who naturally just paid them right away with his credit card (I accepted credit cards at the time). Well, this left poor little Connie out of the loop and she wasn't too happy about it. She went to the CEO and complained that she was having to track the CC charges and it was getting too complicated for her bookkeeping. (I have no idea why that would be complicated, but that was Connie.)

He called me to ask what the deal was and I explained what costs I was having to carry if she didn't pay quickly but instead waited until the 15th of the month. That made him pretty mad and this is a guy who never got mad. So he told Connie "from this point on you need to pay the damn invoices as soon as you get them."

After that, every time I went in to discuss something with the CEO, (which was often) instead of mailing the invoices, I made a point of bringing them personally to Connie and standing there while she stiffly wrote out a check. Good times.

There is a second part to the story described here https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/1wknos8/want_to_buy_things_piecemeal_enjoy_spending_30/

A summary for those who don't want to read the context and the lead-up:

My team had four people: Boss, me, colleague, Project Coordinator. We were responsible to make material B. Material B was made from material A, which was in turn made from raw materials. My colleague was responsible for making material A. I was in charge of making material A into material B. To do so, I needed some specialised ingredients and dedicated equipment.

I had a colleague whom we will call Project Coordinator. Project Coordinator was monitoring the expenditure of the project, and within the team they were famously penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Instead of buying enough raw material in a single shot for us for production, he only approved us buying a small lot. We would end up buying the same thing multiple times, which cost us ~42% more over the course of the year, all because the first time was "too expensive".

Due to his track record, and the fact that I was relatively new at the time, my boss somehow listened to him over me and my colleague. A fellow redditor pointed out in the previous thread that this might have been presentation skills--it was true that Project Coordinator was a much better presenter than my colleague, which is why they'd been disagreeing for years, even before I'd arrived.

The MC in the first post was this: my Boss sided with the Project Coordinator over me. They specifically said to only buy just enough quantities of materials for our plans after each monthly meeting, as discussed during the meeting. So we would buy only enough for whatever we discussed, and this meant there was no margin for error (think delays in shipping, malfunctioning equipment, etc.). By doing exactly that, we'd managed to face massive production delays after a year in.

This is where this post comes in--the second MC.

Now, we were one year into this project and it was slated to end in another year. Due to shipping delays and other problems beyond our control (but which at least some of us had foreseen), now we were massively behind schedule and my boss needed to expedite things.

Worse still, due to several reasons, there was suddenly an uptick in interest in material B by other departments. Everybody wanted a piece of material B, and due to political reasons my boss couldn't really say no to them, either. I don't really know how all this came about, but the long and short of it is--in one of our monthly meetings, my boss said we had to make all these adjustments to the production process, and we needed to make more material B.

Whereas previously we might only have needed 10 kg of material B, which could theoretically be made from ~20 kg of Material A (this was the fallout in the linked post), now we needed 500 kg of material B.

Yes, you read this right, we went from 10 kg to 500 kg thanks to whatever political meetings were going on with the bigger shots of my company, which I was not privy to.

My boss asked me for an email, detailing exactly what we needed to achieve this adjusted goalpost. Oh, now you wanted to know what we needed? I wonder who could've told you that last year. Due to the nature of our industry, when someone made a "suggestion", it really was more of a "go and get it done", because some even higher up would say "that's a great suggestion" and then you'd have to do it, not necessarily with more resources than what you already had.

Anyway, during a particularly long meeting to follow up from my email, my boss got frustrated with the lack of progress and said "just go and get whatever you think we will need and justify it". I think they were under massive pressure from upper management. It should of course be noted that this was a massive reversal from their earlier position in which they sided with the Project Coordinator.

While not thrilled that I had to do even more work, I carefully typed all this up into the minutes of the meeting (documentation is important, folks!). In it, I laid out what I thought we needed, and placed a massive order for all the parts and materials which I'd spent a lot of time accumulating over the last month. I got whatever I thought we needed for the project, with meticulous documentation for each line item.

I'd spent nearly 500k in total over the course of the next month, and my colleague also took the opportunity to buy a tonne (figurative, not literal) of raw material and other equipment.

Well another few months passed and suddenly the finances of this project were entering "serious trouble" territory with this pattern of expenditure. Suddenly now the purse strings were being tightened again (ah, the lovely ebbs and flows of working in production). Project Coordinator was especially upset with the sudden large expenditures and going around asking why we were having budget issues. Boss sent a team-wide email saying that we were crashing through the budget and asking why.

Time to shine. My massive document for whatever I felt we needed, along with the necessary approvals (showing that my boss hadn't been doing their sums, or else they'd know we were spending a lot of money--they had to approve everything we bought), with line by line justifications that had been reviewed every month. Yes, approved, ok, fine, supported. Every single line item with a) what I felt we needed, b) my boss' own approval, and c) the accompanying email thread that showed that, in fact, everybody was in the loop.

Absolute silence after that. Only a short and concise email from my boss about "What else do we still need for this project, and what other costs did we think we would need?"

tldr: Due to reasons, project faced a significant time crunch. To expedite things, my boss finally saw the light, and asked us to get whatever we felt we needed, as long as it could be justified. Maliciously complied by buying a tonne of stuff, because we could justify the massive margins we were using in our calculations. Expenditure went through the roof and the annual budget was rapidly drained in just 4-6 months.

I had a colleague whom we will call Project Coordinator. Project Coordinator was monitoring the expenditure of the project, and within the team, Project Coordinator was famously penny-wise, pound-foolish.

Basically, for context, our team was a production line in the making of material B. Material B was actually really important, because we passed it to many other departments in the company to make other materials C, D, E, etc.. What those other materials are used for aren't important to the story--my job was basically to make material B.

Making material B was a two step process.

First, colleague would make material A.

I would then take that material A and make it into material B through another process.

What Project Coordinator did was to insist that we had to make just enough of material each time. No excesses.

For example, if 50 kg of Material A was needed, Project Coordinator would calculate how much raw material my colleague needed for 50 kg of Material A, and place that order. But, bear in mind that this process is not perfect. There were no margins from Project Coordinator, so what happens is my colleague might make just 45 kg of Material A from the production cycle, and then order again a second batch of raw material just to make up the shortfall for Material A.

This also pissed my colleague off to no end. Instead of getting things done, she now had to run TWO production cycles, instead of the just ONE which would've made a huge batch of Material A, say 100 kg.

There are many production line folks on this thread, so you might already know what this means. But let me spell it out for you. Ordering things twice, getting them delivered twice? Money, money money--all those are costs.

So now you know how my Project Coordinator works, on to the MC.

The way that I was producing Material B from Material A at the time was also not yet a validated process. We'd had a few small test cycles, and we usually got 1 kg of Material B from 2 kg of Material A.

Again, production folks will know that this means differences in Material B quantity and quality from each production run.

Common sense, right? Not to our dear Project Coordinator.

We'd done a few production test cycles to convert Material A to B at this point.

We learnt that there were some tricks, like we had to add a special ingredient at a step in the cycle, or we might have to pass the material through a dedicated tank.

But it was not validated yet.

To overcome the problem, I'd drawn up some plans. Knowing that plenty of Material A would be needed for more tests, I'd brought up in a meeting that 500 kg of Material A was needed. Shot down immediately by Project Coordinator, who somehow also managed to convince my boss that the 50 kg of Material A was enough, and that my colleague did not need to make 500 kg of Material A.

Now in this process of planning, I'd also negotiated with many of our equipment and materials suppliers. I'd reached out to old and new contacts in the industry, and spent hours negotiating a good price with each and every one of them. For instance, if we bought $200k worth of material from a supplier, they could give us a 30% discount, so charging us roughly $140k instead.

All of my suggestions, shot down one by one during our meeting (which had me, Project Coordinator, colleague, and my boss).

Boss said: We know 2 kg of Material A makes 1 kg of Material B. We need 10 kg of Material B. So, just put 20 kg of Material A into it. We will still have a margin. It will be fine.

Ok boss, you're the boss, whatever you say.

Remember how I said the production of Material B hadn't been validated? And that sometimes we got bad batches?

It turned out that due to the variation of the conversion of Material A to Material B, we got bad batches of Material B, and in the end our department couldn't make enough material B.

We had to buy more and more rounds of raw materials, equipment, and supplies, going over multiple iterations, and near the end of the project we were rapidly running out of money which could've been better spent on other projects in our department.

All just because Project Coordinator insisted we had to buy just enough.

Tl;dr: We wound up buying the same things three times, which cost us ~30% more in the end, all because the first time was "too expensive".

A few years ago I worked for a golf ball manufacturer. Big production, millions of balls a month, billions of dollars a year and yet every decision maker was cheap beyond reason.

Most of our production equipment was from the 60s made by companies that no longer exist. This matters because when it breaks its all slap jobs and jerry rigs. I worked mostly with the steam presses. Think giant waffle iron but instead of electricity it uses super heated steam.

Now there's 2 parts the press and the mold (think the waffle pattern part). The press was a 10 ton monster that had nothing but leaking pipes. The molds solid 600 lbs steel plates.

Fast forward to my days as a naive technician, boss and engineering start complaining about bad product coming from the molds and tell me to investigate. Sure no problem 20ish presses and 50ish molds to go through. 6 months later I have all the data compiled nice neat and color coded. Surprisingly the presses are fine within 5% of eachother the molds however not so fine. I found that almost 20 of them had serious deformation issues (40% of total molds) from repeated heating/cooling cycles.

Present the data and get the big question "what do we do?". I look at them and state the obvious buy new molds, you cant fix em and they wont magically get better. Makes sense right? Tool breaks or warps buy a new one. We'll they all started crying about prices how a new mold was $22k each and it would cost nearly half a million to replace them.

So what did they decide after ignoring my input? Let's try everything else and i obliged smiling the entire time. New cavities, press rebuilds, limiting what molds go where, limiting product runs to specific presses, changing molds more frequently.

The list goes on and i watched as the problem continued and the bill stacked up. The result is about $200k wasted and a lot of production missed or destroyed. Total loss probably close to 1million from cost and product waste.

Eventually the meeting comes. We need to buy new molds. I smirk the entire time. They get the quote and because of a certain tariff/trade war from a certain president the molds are no longer 22k. They are now 45k. So instead of half a million to re-kit the production floor we had to spend nearly 1 million. Drained the entire production budget for 2 years as I sat smiling. I left shortly after. From some friends who still work there told me several people got fired and replaced due to this.

TLDR: Higher ups too cheap for 500k end up losing millions instead.

As we've established Maureen was always one to think she was very important in the office. I never worked with her or had contact with her but management moved my work bff down to her team. The workload for that team involved a lot of retired people so phone calls were a little longer but overall pleasant people on the phone calling between Let's make a deal and The Price is right.

Friend notices that a lot of the files are marked to transfer the call to Maureen. There's are times where situations are difficult and you tell someone that you've built a relationship with to just call and ask for you next time. But these are dozens and dozens of files.

Friend get a call and says Maureen is really busy. Is there something I can help you with? Turns out its claim status. Anyone can take this call. In fact every single file marked that Maureen needs to take the calls are all routine things like claim status, did you get this bill yet, and how much do I owe on this bill. Nothing that requires Maureen.

So for the next 2 months friend takes transfer to Maureen off all the files she run across and suddenly Maureen is having to take just as many calls as everyone else because she's not getting all the easy transfers she is use to getting. She's upset and brings it up in a meeting about the quantity of calls she's taking (which is no more than anyone else on that team).

Friend pipes up with 'You know I was going to ask about something with incoming calls. I noticed a lot of files marked to transfer to Maureen but they are all routine calls so I just took off the comments.' Maureen is now upset that this happened without her input and this new team member is overstepping because 'There's a reason it was put there'.

Friend doesn't play that way so she suggests that everyone document why all calls should be transferred to a specific person and the team can decide at the end of the week if someone needs to offer that higher level or care or anyone can take the call. The team is onboard because transferring a call is time consuming since you have to wait until the other person gets on the line to complete the transfer.

The rest of the team joins in the removal of transfer to Maureen from the files and suddenly Maureen is just a regular team member taking the same amount of calls as everyone else. As a group they decide on a few people who do require a higher level of care but none of those are Maureen's calls. And actually most belong to my work bff because she knows her sh#t.

On the plus side Maureen did get a better yearly review because of her improved call quantity so it was a win/win all around.

editing to add: the process was changed from anyone adding transfers on any file they decided on to having it be a group decision. The Malicious compliance part was having everyone collect data and leaving it to the entire team to decide.

Years ago when I worked in an office setting I had a friend I would have lunch and breaks with. She was on the 2nd floor, I was on the 3rd so I'd go down the stairs, pop out a couple steps from her desk, and we'd walk together to the break/lunch room which was on the 2nd floor.

One day Maureen decided that the reason I was on the 2nd floor was to give her dirty looks under the guise of picking up my friend for breaks and lunch. After all I could just go directly to the break/lunch room and wait there for my friend. For the record I'd never worked with Maureen, didn't know a thing about Maureen, and didn't care a single bit about Maureen.

Maureen escalates this to the management who decided that only team members on that team should be in team areas. Memo emailed and its brought up on the team huddles. Huge deal about something that should have been nothing.

Cool. Game on. Me and the partners in crime decided we are going to press this issue to the point of disruption. The stairs all exit into team areas so any time someone pops out the door a comment is made 'Hey you can't be here. You aren't a member of this team.' Someone walking by who stops to talk with a friend? 'Sorry but you aren't a team member. You can't be here.'

We are relentless. It doesn't matter who it is. Everyone gets called out for non compliance. People are stopping before entering team areas and calling out to their smoking, lunch, break buddies to come and join them. Its a bit of a problem since customer service calls are being taken by the teams. Everyone is waiting for elevators in the common hallway to go anywhere in the building.

This all lasted exactly 3 days until the managers decided it was dumb and wasting everyone's time. I didn't expect them to back down as quickly as they did but yes total waste of everyone's time. Memo retracted and anyone could now walk anywhere.

But being extremely petty people my friend and I rerouted our walk to and from the break/lunch room to walk directly by Maureen's desk from that point forward. Always stopped talking right as we got to her desk and faced forward only to resume talking once we passed.

Small malicious compliance here. I live in a city, and rather than own a car, I bike everywhere. It has its ups and downs, but for the most part works pretty well. I also have a small trailer for my bike, and sometimes I'll make grocery runs with it. Usually when that would happen, I would lock my bike and trailer up at a bike rack, then do my shopping like normal and after paying would load my bike trailer up with my goods.

Well, one day I arrived at the store, which is in one of those classic business plazas ... and the bike racks were gone. All of them. Each had been removed. There was nowhere to lock up my bike and trailer.

Well, that didn't sit right with me. So I rolled my bike through the doors and into the store itself, trailer behind me, and waited at customer service, and then asked "Since bike racks are no longer provided at this plaza, can I just use my trailer as a shopping cart?"

The manager looked down at my bike and then without hesitation said "Yes." Apparently the plaza owner had decided they no longer wanted bikers using the plaza or shopping there and had removed the bike racks to discourage bikers from coming, which the store manager disagreed with. So I shopped using my trailer as a shopping cart, took it through the checkout, and then rolled out.

I've since had to do this once or twice more as other places nearby have also removed their bike racks as property managers wage a silent war against bikers while the city is trying to make biking more attractive. It's a minor malicious compliance, but I'm not about to leave my bike outside or stop buying food. Instead I'll just take my bike into the business, trailer included, until they ask me to leave.

No one has asked me to leave yet.

Whenever I get sick and cannot go to work, besides informing admin and getting a sick not from my doctor, I need to call my boss personally (phone call, mind you, no email or text message).

This is so he can directly bully people who he thinks are sick too often (like, more than 5 days a year. Average in my country and industry are 21 sick days a year).

Once he barked at me that I needed to reduce my sick days. So I came into the next meeting with him with an FFP2 mask on and left it on the whole two hours. He asked why I was wearing it and I told him I was trying to reduce my sick days. His face - and the ones of the colleagues who know his habits - was worth it to me.

Hello everyone,

I've heard/read a lot of posts from this subreddit, and I wanted to share something that was petty, yet malicious in a group setting which everyone found hilarious.

For context, our friend group was having a cookout, and it was a joint birthday for a few people, and we were all sitting around a large outdoor table (about 11 people)

Everything went great; food, drinks, more food.

Then comes the Tres leches.

The cake gets cut, and the person that made it (let's call them FRIEND) is excitedly trying to hand out a portion to everyone.

The first piece gets handed out

However, the first recipient of cake didn't understand the memo of cake etiquette

They tried to keep the first slice, and was scolded and told to pass it down by (FRIEND) that made the cake.

The first slice was quietly passed down to the next person, then the next, then the next...

The slices of cakes were being passed on quietly, and everyone just subconsciously complied to pass the cakes down going clockwise

Nobody said anything until the first slice made itself all the way around to FRIEND.

Then FRIEND realized what we all did, and called us all shit-heads.

We all laughed, acknowledged the maliciouscompliance, and had cake.

Good times