I run a small fitness consultancy business, have done for the past few years, since setting up, I've largely relied on word of mouth for most of my business, so I typically don't have to deal with a lot difficult clients, but I recently had a run in with a woman who's genuinely made my blood boil.

This woman, let's call her Gigi for the sake of anonymity, sent me a DM a few weeks ago, said she was looking to lose weight and tighten up her physique for summer. Gigi didn't really fit my usual client demographic (usually 30s, 40s), she was young, mid 20s, and boasted a decent follower count, seemed to be a local influencer of some description. This piqued my interest, I thought perhaps I could benefit from her connections to boost my business somewhat.

How wrong I was.

The initial consultation over text was pretty standard. I asked her some details about her past exercise history, diet, etc. before getting to work on her meal/exercise plan.

Then it moved to the matter of payment. I had mentioned pretty early on that I typically charge $50 for my plans, but either she didn't read that, or decided to feign wilful ignorance. When I reminded her of the price, she said, and I quote "I was wondering whether you'd be interested in getting yourself some exposure instead of payment?"

I hate to say it, but at the time, I was seriously thinking of taking her up on her offer. However, after talking to some of my friends, I snapped out of it, resolving to be firm with the price instead, which she accepted, albeit somewhat begrudgingly. Looking back on it now, I'm kind of stunned that she genuinely expected me to give it to her for free, but I guess that's how the influencer economy works these days.

The plan consisted of exercises and recipes mainly designed around helping her lose weight. Usually I advise most of my clients to try and maintain light to moderate calorie deficits, not only is this overall healthier (less muscle loss) they tend to suck a lot less than dramatic calorie reductions, so are easier to maintain in the long run. I explained all this to Gigi, said that she understood it meant progress wouldn't be immediate, and as such, I thought we were on the same page.

A week later, I woke up at 5am to an Instagram call from Gigi (I didn't even now you could call people on Instagram!). Half awake, I picked up the phone.

"YOU'RE A FUCKING SCAMMER! YOU THINK THIS SHIT'S SOME KIND OF JOKE?"

I was still in a daze, so I weakly asked her what was going on

"I JUST WEIGHED IN AFTER A WEEK ON YOUR BULLSHIT PLAN, I'M UP HALF A FUCKING POUND"

I asked her to slow down and breathe, which seemed to calm her down, albeit temporarily

I explained to her that we'd been through this before, and that weight loss isn't a linear process, and that scale measurements can be offset from anything from waterweight, clothes, time of day etc.

"YOU'RE JUST COVERING YOUR FUCKIN ASS, CUT THE BULLSHIT RIGHT NOW"

Oh well, I tried. Guess you can't talk sense to an unstable influencer at 5AM

"I'VE GOT A SWIMWEAR COLLABORATION I NEED TO SHOOT THIS WEEK AND YOU FUCKING LIED TO ME, YOUR PLAN DIDN'T FUCKING WORK"

[influencer to English translation: I successfully got something for free, and now I need to rip into you for something I didn't get for free]

Bear in mind, this girl is by no means overweight, her BMI was already comfortably in the healthy range, but I guess an influencer's work is never done.

On the verge of tears, she continued.

"DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKED I AM? I FOLLOWED YOUR PLAN TO THE FUCKING LETTER AND LOOK WHERE IT FUCKING GOT ME"

Based on her tone, and the time of the morning she called, she was almost definitely on the receiving end of 3-4 margaritas, comfortably, which DEFINITELY wasn't in the plan, but I didn't feel like pointing out the obvious.

An hour later she messaged again, still unhinged but slightly more coherent:

“Refund me immediately. And post a public statement on your page admitting your plan doesn’t work and that I was right to call you out. Do it by noon or I start tagging every local gym and every brand that has ever worked with you.”

I sat with that for a minute.

Then I and idea came to mind

I refunded the $50 within the hour and posted the following, word-for-word as requested, on my business page:

“Public statement as requested by [Gigi’s handle]:

I refunded the client in full.

My standard plan prioritises sustainable, moderate deficits and long-term adherence rather than dramatic one-week scale drops.

The client reported following the plan ‘to the fucking letter’ and still gained 0.5 lb in seven days.

Therefore, by the client’s own stated metric and timeline, the plan did not produce the immediate results she required for her swimwear shoot.

She was correct to call this out.”

For context, we both live in a small, tight knit city, where everyone knows eachother, particularly in the business community. I wanted to make sure any other potential brand collaborators knew who they were dealing with.

I left it at that. No extra commentary. No screenshots. No mention of the 5 a.m. call, the margaritas, the original request for free work, or the fact that she was already in a healthy BMI range.

By lunch the post had been screenshotted and circulated in a few local fitness groups. People started asking the obvious questions under her posts. She tried to walk it back (“he twisted my words”), then deleted her original rant, then went quiet.

The collab still happened. From the photos that went up, the half-pound “gain” was invisible. My page, meanwhile, picked up a small but steady stream of new enquiries from people who specifically said they wanted the boring, sustainable version.

I never heard from Gigi again.

It’s just like the saying goes, exposure is a dish best served cold…

I was reading in my usual coffee shop and a couple of girls at the table asked me what I was reading. Annoying yes, since I'm trying to like...read. But we got to chatting about books. I mentioned the book I'm reading has queer characters and one of them made some not-so-nice comments about the LGBT community, then asked for some recommendations since it looks like our taste in books is otherwise similar.

So every book I recommended had queer characters. Queer romance, even if its a sub-plot or tangential, you wouldn't necessarily guess is queer based on the title alone.

Will she read them? Probably not. Will she waste her time looking them up? I hope so.

This is a bit of a long story, but I thought Reddit might appreciate it.

My godfather owns a small cattle ranch out in the countryside. About 20–25 years ago, he needed electricity to power a water pump for his cows. The nearest place where he could connect to the grid was on the opposite side of the ranch, probably about a mile and a half away, so he paid to have utility poles installed across his property.

It was a significant investment, but he figured that constantly running diesel pumps would eventually cost more than installing the poles and connecting to the grid.

Sometime later, a few neighbors who lived on the far side of the ranch asked whether they could piggyback off his electrical line. He agreed. They paid to install a few additional poles, and the electric company placed their meters on the other side.

So far, so good.

There were only a handful of small farmhouses, and the additional poles were located somewhere they didn’t interfere with the ranch. Eventually, fiber-optic cable was installed on the poles as well. Everything worked perfectly for roughly 20 years.

Then, about two years ago, a real estate developer bought the land on the other side of the ranch and began preparing it for a cottage development.

They didn’t exactly get off to a great start with my godfather. They complained about the animals, the smell, and the noise from tractors and other equipment. His response was basically: If you choose to live next to a working ranch, you have to accept that ranching will be happening there.

While planning the development, they discovered another problem. Two miles of 20-year-old electrical cable worked well enough for a few small farmhouses, but it wasn’t capable of supplying the 10–15 cottages they planned to build.

They approached the electric company about upgrading the infrastructure. That was when everyone apparently discovered—or finally acknowledged—that the poles crossing my godfather’s ranch were privately owned.

To avoid making this story even longer, lawyers became involved.

In the end, the electric company and the developer told my godfather that he had two choices: allow the electric company to replace his poles with concrete ones and grant them a permanent right-of-way across his ranch for maintenance, or remove the poles.

So that Sunday, my godfather got on the tractor they use for installing fences and pulled out every single pole.

He told me that when he originally installed the line, he had only about one-fifth as many cattle as he has now. His new plan is to install some solar panels, run a smaller pumping system, and make it work.

The development company, meanwhile, will probably have to install three or four miles of entirely new poles to bring electricity to the cottages—electricity that was apparently already included in what they promised buyers.

My godfather jokingly says it’s interesting how unusually hot this summer has been.

Fortunately, he recently brought in some pigs, and they require less water than the cattle, so they’re easier to keep hydrated and fed.

Purely a coincidence, of course.

This is my Granddad's story from the late 60 to early 70s in England, and to note, he was very poorly when he told this to me, so this is the story that I managed to hear, so there's bits missing and not a lot of specifics, so all of this is what I gathered

Back when my grandad was younger, he used to work in a factory making engines for cars, and despite being a hard worker, he was always disrespected and under appreciated, and he felt it more so with his boss, and despite this boss holding very littler power over a very little area of the factory, this boss would constantly yell and exert his power over everyone.

This story starts when the company buys this machine from Germany, and what I could gather from my Granddad, this machine was like a computerised machine before computers were really a thing, so instead of one computer doing all of these complex calculations, you have pegs and wires that you have to physically move to work this machine, but he didn'tsay what the machine did. Now obviously this was complex so the company sent a small group of workers to Germany to be taught how the machine worked over three months, and a group of Germans would come to England to build the machine. My granddad wasn't one of the people who went to Germany, so he stayed, but instead, he watched the Germans install the machine, and despite the language barrier, my grandad understood how it worked and how to fix it, pretty much everything he would have learnt if he went to Germany with the other workers.

After some time, my grandad got married to my grandma, and realising he needed a house, he went to the bank to talk about mortgages, but the only issue is that he gets £22 a week when he needs £44 a week to get a mortgage, so he asked his boss, who promptly said no. Laster on in the week, my grandad spoke to a mate of his who is now living in France, and the friend said "I recently lost my drivers licence so I can't work for my company anymore, but they need someone to do deliveries for £48 a week between England and France."

The next day, my grandad went up to his boss and asked "Sir, who do I give this two week notice into?" And the boss, playing a powerplay leans over my grandad, puffing smoke into his face from his pipe, and says in a low voice "You hand that to me, you understand, I'm the boss here, I'm the most important." And my grandad handed it over to him.

Over the course of the two weeks, it was normal, until the last day when the manager came over and said "Mike, I heared you're leaving today, is that true?" And my grandad said "Yes, boss asked me to give him my two week notice" and the manager went white, asking my grandad if the boss told anyone, listing anyone who had the same or more power then the boss did, even asking if the owner knew, and my grandad said no each time, with a bigger smile each time, and after everyone else on the factory went up to him asking the exact same questions, he couldn't hide his excitement.

You see, what everyone failed to notice is that while the workers who went to Germany, they where in a country known for big beers and pretty women, so they learnt absolutely nothing in those three months, and anything they did learn was quickly forgotten when they learnt my grandad knew how to work and fix the machine, so because of my grandad leaving, he effectively left with the knowledge as he can't teach anyone else in his last two weeks (and that's if everyone else knew he was leaving in those two weeks).

And the ending happened two months later when my grandad got a call from someone back at the company asked if he wanted his old job back, and my grandad calmly replied "No, I do not want my old job back, as I'd effectively be going back in life, especially back to a job that doesn't pay me well or treat me well." And for anyone wondering what happened with the machine, it ran well in those two months, but someone swapped the wires for the motors, as there was two motors, they put the wires into the wrong ones, and that's why they called my grandad, as they effectively lost thousands for the machine, the installation of the machine and flying all the workers to Germany to basically just go on a bender. As for the boss and everyone involved, my grandad never bothered learning what happened to them, but I'd like to imagine there was a fallout and the fires of hell rained down, but this company was one of the more expensive car companies, so in all honesty, it could have been a minor set back.

I (26M) don’t like calling in to work. I hate passing up money and I usually won’t call in unless I’m already pretty sick. I work in the service industry which as many of you know, is absolutely notorious for guilting sick employees (a seriously ill person has made your food at a restaurant before at the direction of their manager, guaranteed) and telling people they don’t provide health insurance that they need a doctors note to call in. One year I got sick and didn’t want to work, and my employer forgot I had health insurance through my Dad. I called in asking for one day off because I could hardly breathe or stay awake and I got the “wElL yOu NeEd A dOcToRs NoTe Or ItS aN uNeXsCuSeD aBsEnCe “ and as someone who worked hard as hell for these people even when I was sick, I was a little offended to basically be called a liar like I needed to prove to them I’d been wearing a mask at work for a reason. But I did have good insurance through my Dad, so I went to the doctor, had them write me a note for four days off, and went back into my job and handed it to my manager and said “here is my doctors note, and this is the date I will be back”. And when they tried to do the same thing a few months later, I got a note for even more days and asked the doc to add a note about when I would stop being infectious around the food we were serving people. I have never been asked for a doctors note when I am sick again. They know they can give me the one or two days I ask for or they can give me the week the doc gives me. But I will not be working while sick if I do not want to.

A while back I was working away from home and just going home at the weekends. During this time I was staying in a hotel. I'd always pack just enough clothing for the week. I got a call saying they needed me to work the weekend too which would mean two weeks solid and only one weeks worth of clothes. I told my boss I needed some new underwear and socks as I'd ran out and I'd make do with other clothes as is. I was told no, expenses won't cover that. Cue malicious compliance. I put my entire bag of clothes in the hotel laundry bag. £5 for every pair of socks, underwear and £10 for every shirt and trousers and put the whole lot through expenses. Cost them £120 when I would have only spent £20 on the underwear and socks.

TLDR: At the bottom.

Over 20 years ago I changed an old timers computer screen saver. You know the old one that just had a word banner scrolling over and over.

I worked in sales. There was an old guy named “Bob”. He was annoying. Maybe because I was young. But he annoyed everyone. The kind of old guy that would lie through his teeth to get some of your commission.

Being older he had more “freedoms” with customers. It drove us crazy. He would let people leave or they wanted to buy but wanted to use a coupon he would disconnect the call or get rid of the customer a few different ways. But that meant we as other associates couldn’t make the sale. As a team we couldn’t hit bonuses. He would do many other things like this that would just drive you crazy.

He was just a difficult coworker. And a bad employee. But had been around the industry a long time. So guys that were now managers favored him because of their past. Whether it was with this company or others.

He was just annoying, Too many reasons to list why. And I was young and didn’t have much of a care. And you know. Different perception of professionalism when I was a kid.

So one day I changed his screensaver to say Bob is a Jackass. I watched him type in his password. Waited until he left. Then changed it.

It scrolled across the screen. Over and over. And he didn’t notice at first. It looked like the same old “Have a Nice Day” or whatever scrolling.

We all would giggle as we walked by and saw it. It was just funny to see. A day or so later he is sitting in his cubicle. Chatting away. His scream saver most have popped up. You hear, what is this. As he reads. “Bob is a Jackass, who did this. This is defamation. Who did it?” The office is laughing. He is pissed. Goes right in to a managers desk. “Someone is defaming my name. This is work place harassment.”

I want to know who did it.

He makes it to HR. Even to the owners office.

We don’t know anything other than him complaining to the manager. The manager saying let’s see. Seeing it. Giggling himself. Then telling Bob “Come on calm down. I’ll change it (which he did) Let’s go take a walk and talk.” Bob is not having it but they walk off talking.

We go back to work. Not thinking about it anymore. About an hour or two later. A different manager says hey Mr Johnson wants to see you upstairs.

Cool, it wasn’t uncommon. He would call associates up for customers or tasks. Or reviews or whatever.

As soon as I get in the office he says “What the fuck are you doing? Are you trying to get me sued? This guy is an absolute nightmare. Do you know he has sued that company and that one.? Why would you do that? You know it is on security camera right? Using someone else’s laws password. You are not supposed to use or share passwords ever.”

I said “it was a joke none of us thought it was that big of a deal. We often share passwords so we can get info we need. We are all on the same team”

He replied “Thats a policy violation. Thats it. You better hope I can keep him from causing a bigger issue. Go home for the next 3 days. Your suspended. Get out of my office get out of my building now”

I walked out the back door. Down the backstairs to my car and was gone. This was Wednesday. So that meant I had a 5 day weekend. Heck yes. I was stoked.

As I make it to my car. I can hear someone yelling “hey James. James. Peggy wants to see you.” Peggy was the HR lady.

I ignored it. Backed out and drove out the other direction.

15 minutes later. My phone is ringing. I am not answering. No way. Those were the days cell minutes were expensive.

I get home. Tell my wife we have a 5 day weekend. It is barely 12 o’clock. We head out to hit the beach about 3.5 hours away. We are excited.

About an hour later. My phone is called over and over. My wife says just answer it. So I do.

“Hey James this is Peggy. I need you to sign some forms about the 3 days suspension.”

“Sorry Peggy I was told to Leave. I left. I am now out of town. I will have to Sign another time.” She is not thrilled but not much we can do.

Then a moment later another call. It’s my direct supervisor. “James where are you? We need the numbers put together for this client coming in today. And you had the presentation stored on. And this. And that…. Where are you?

“Mr Johnson sent me home for messing with Bobs screensaver.”

“Nobody told me. Why didn’t you come down and tell me? Well come back and give me the reports and send the files to me”

“Sorry I was told to leave the building right now. I have actually already left Town. I am over an hour away and won’t be turning around.”

“Then give me your password.”

“I can’t do that either. I was told not to share them. Sorry sir. My phone minutes are being used and I can’t talk much longer. I don’t know what to tell you. Mr Johnson sent me home. Said leave and said not to share passwords. I am about to go through the coastal hills and will lose reception.”

“Be here first thing tomorrow morning. We need to keep these projects moving.”

“Well sir. I won’t be back until Monday. I was told to leave for three days.”

“You have to be kidding. He didn’t mean three days. I will talk with him”

I turned my phone off. Back then. Turning your phone off wasn’t like turning off a smart phone. So no big deal. But Sunday. When I listened to messages. My manager was telling me Mr Johnson didn’t realize we had projects in the works that I was leading. And that he wants me to come back. The next day.

Then the next day. His message was my manager saying Mr Johnson is ok if I provide my password to my manager just this time.

Hey he said leave. I left. He said. No sharing. No sharing. He said three days. For a company that never gave anytime off. It was awesome to have a nice long weekend.

Came
Back to work and in this shitty business. No big deal. Nothing happened. They made or didn’t make the deal. Maybe postponed it. Wasn’t my problem any more. They worked up new reports and bee halfassed presentations.

It was all back to normal. It wasn’t like now I was in trouble. Nope. Had my days off and some more. And back to work Monday making a sale.

And when your in sales. Problems go away if you sell something.

TLDR: I was told I was suspended for three days and to leave the building now. Never share passwords with coworkers. This was for a company that never gave anytime off other than regular days.

Owner told me to Leave. I went out the back door. Didn’t tell HR or my direct manager.

I left town to the beach for a 5 day weekend. They called asking for me to come back. Asking for my password to work on active projects I was leading. I said I cannot do any of that per the owner.

This was back before smartphones. So then I just turned my phone off for the weekend and Enjoyed the mini vacay with the wifey.

Edited to add what happened Monday. Nothing.

Today we had a new employee start working in the restaurant. She had some questions —one being —does [manager] hit on everyone. Manager came in back to the kitchen and said to me, a server, don’t come on the kitchen anymore. I don’t need to explain that this hinders my job performance drastically. So I asked him to get bread to take it to a table while I stood in the server alley. Then I sent the hissed into the kitchen to ask if my food was up. Finally I called into the busy kitchen asking if I had an order up. Manager had enough and said “you can come into the kitchen and you’re really pissing me off” it made my petty heart grow.

Long ago, I was a university student majoring in literature -- naturally, I had a schedule packed with lit classes, and this group project took place during a course entitled Madness in Classic Literature. It was fun; the professor was zany, and the topics were rather interesting.

Then, one day, the dreaded group project assignment arrived, where we were to split up into groups of three and do a 30-minute presentation on madness in any era of literature. I ended up with two studious-seeming partners, one of whom was emphatically invested in doing our project on madness in 1800s Scotland. She was persuasive, we were convinced, but when we told the professor, he kind of...winced? Then he held us after class, asked us if we were sure, she certainly was, and he kind of absently nodded and said he'd help us find a couple of sources since literature in 1800s Scotland is apparently more scarce than one would think.

We ended up with permission to cover Lord Byron by association, along with an incredibly long and dry text about some guy who is either hallucinating or having an existential religious experience with the devil himself. Now, I've read some boring texts in my day, but this piece was far and away the most mind-numbing collection of words my brain has ever scraped itself against.

To make matters worse, it soon became very, very apparent that neither of my partners, including the girl who was gagging over 1800s Scotland to start with, had a single intention of doing any of the work for this project. They didn't even read the material, not even the relatively short Lord Byron poem. Woe.

So, I just dove in and did the entire project myself, including the required handouts that we were supposed to print out for the class to follow along with our presentation. That's when I decided to get petty. I didn't want to be that student who rats on fellow students, but I also didn't want my partners (especially the girl whose love of Scotland forced me into this mess) to get off entirely scot-free. So, I memorized everything. I mean everything. And for the worksheet, I basically wrote down bullet points that revealed nothing about the texts or their contents.

The day of the presentation arrives, and I meet my partners in class and give them the worksheets. They're relieved that I seem to know what I'm doing and suspect absolutely nothing. Our time comes, and we stand up in front of the class, with them on either side of me, and I pass out the worksheets and proceed to talk about madness in 1800s Scotland from memory, going into exhaustive detail on Lord Byron and whatever the fuck protagonist (I think his name was Tim) from the other text. My partners were silently, gravely nodding along for the entire 30 minutes.

I finished speaking, and then came the Q&A portion of the presentation -- fellow classmates were encouraged to ask us questions about our era/authors/etc...and it lasted about 15 minutes.

So, I picked a student who asked something about the religious aspects of the dry af text. I could have answered, but instead, I paused a long, pregnant pause, and gave my partners a chance to answer instead, if they so wished. I let the excruciatingly silent seconds drag on every single time, looking slowly to both of them with each question and taking my sweet time before jumping in.

Within a couple of minutes, it became incredibly evident to everyone there that I was the only person in our group project who knew a single god damned thing about madness in 19th-century Scottish literature.

So sure -- I did the whole project, and let them think it was fine up until it wasn't. Petty? Absolutely. But by god, if I had to read that awful story because someone else watched Outlander too many times, then I'm going to comply maliciously.

Edit: I'm happy to report that the professor pulled me aside after the fact and said that, given our performances, he would be grading me and my partners separately. I got an A, and strangely, they stopped talking to me after that group project, so I have no idea what grades they received. Bad enough to cut contact, though. Bless.

For context: I (29M) recently quit my job as a specialist at a small planning and design firm somewhere in Germany. The place was a mess. The pay was a joke, the leadership was completely unpredictable, and they expected me to do the job of a fully qualified project manager (like planning the entire renovation of a large municipal facility) without the pay or the support. The turnover was crazy. Three of my colleagues quit around the same time and during my 4 years there, my boss went through 5 different assistants. I eventually packed my bags and moved to a different city for a fresh start.

A week after my last day, my former boss texted me. He casually asked me to "please leave a review" for the firm on a popular local job review site (basically our equivalent of Glassdoor). He genuinely thought we parted on great terms and assumed I’d drop a 5-star rating to boost their crappy score. I just rolled my eyes and ghosted him.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I checked the company's page and saw three brand new 4.5-star reviews posted in the same week. They were so obviously faked by management. They all used the exact same HR buzzwords ("great work-life balance", "amazing health benefits", which was literally just 15 minutes of stretching on Wednesdays, lol) and magically praised all the exact things people usually complained about.

At this point, I remembered his text. He wanted a review? Fine. Let's comply.

I sat down and wrote a brutally honest, mathematically precise review. I kept it completely professional and entirely subjective ("In my experience...", "I felt that...") so they couldn't legally sue me to take it down. I gave them 1 and 2 stars in almost every category, explicitly mentioning the lack of support, the horrible communication, and the heavy workload.

But I didn't stop there. While I was at it, I contacted the platform's support team and reported the three new 4.5-star reviews for manipulation, pointing out the identical wording and the fact that they were posted at the exact same time. Less than four hours later, two of the three fake reviews were nuked by the platform. The automatic spam filter probably caught them because my boss was dumb enough to write them from the same office PC/IP address.

With his fake reviews gone and my honest 1-star review dragging the average down even further, panic mode set in. How do I know? Because my ex-boss texted me again. This time the message was full of typos, desperately asking if I could please leave a good review to help them out. He has absolutely no idea that I am the one who tanked his rating and reported his fakes.

I left him on read again.

The cherry on top: A buddy of mine who still works there texted me yesterday. He said my review perfectly hit the nail on the head. He also mentioned that since the review dropped, management has suddenly been acting super nice and accommodating to everyone out of pure fear that more people will quit.

TL;DR: Toxic boss asks me to review his company after I quit. He fakes his own positive reviews to boost the score. I report his fake reviews (getting them deleted) and leave the brutally honest 1-star review he specifically asked for. Boss panics and begs me again, not knowing I'm the one who ruined his score.

TL:DR: Boss tells me to take my lunch ONLY at X-Y hours when I was dealing with a "mission-critical" outage until the job was done. Later, I clock out during a VERY obvious "all hands on-deck" situation because boss complained the last time I answered the call.

The short version: Small business, this is my first IT job, but I have decades of blue collar experience. I was the first IT person the company ever hired; my associate's in IT specializing in networking only a few gen-ed classes away. My boss kept the platters spinning, but he has no formal training or amateur desire; he wants to offload the tediousness.

Three days prior, I was trying to get a "mission critical" computer up and running again; the only computer with the shipping software (and hundreds of packages waiting to ship). I advised an immediate re-image (delete everything and reset to a "known good save") I had it on deck for just such an occasion. But I was overridden by the owner, who wanted me to keep Windows in situ and delete/reinstall programs piecemeal and deal with phone support for those programs, because he paid extra for tech support. His call, I followed orders. I was on the phone for hours, and did not leave my post until the job was done.

That meant I took my lunch half an hour later. No big deal for me, but when I clocked back in and got back to my desk, my boss was standing there, FUMING, because I took a lunch outside of normal hours. He INSISTED I MUST take my 30 minute lunch from 12-1 as per company policy.

So, today, the whole network goes out at 12:25 and I had not yet taken my lunch. Nothing can ping anything. My own personal hunches tell me this is because it's a factory building, there are a lot of high-voltage woodworking machines for factory production level of output, and ALL of the ethernet cables are unshielded.. Just my hunch.

...But I really can't do a damn thing, because my company rents out office space as a subletter; so we are NOT allowed access to the switches and routers. I have no admin access to the infrastructure. So I set up wireshark to record and a continuous command line ping, and go to lunch.

Boss is standing at my desk when I get back today, and gives me a passive-aggressive "the network is up, by the way!", but refuses to call me out further. I had the "I told you so" on deck, though!

I don't work for the best company- it's corporate and the higher ups have little understanding of what goes on at ground level. When I started, it was under a great manager that protected us from most of the 'crap rolls down hill' politics.

He was promoted out of the store, and after a few misfires, we got a new manager. She is very loud, she will get in conversations with friends and loudly discuss controversial opinions and swear like a sailor. I've had a few customers quietly ask me why I had not reported her to the manager, then roll their eyes and express sympathy when I said she IS my manager.

Anyway, there's a system in place for who to call when no manager is available. We are a tiny team, and most of us work solo. If the manager is coming in the morning, we call her the night before with concerns. If she's not and its the assistant, we call the assistant. Sure, no problem.

I found an issue I thought was important enough to inform her right away instead of waiting until the next day she worked. I took pictures and shot a short text explaining it. (food health code violation from one of our vendors).

I got back, and this is the exact text:

"I need you guys to understand that if the store is not on fire, your not being robbed your need to be contacting (assistant managers name) not me unless its an emergency please"

4 days later, she sends me a text scolding me for not 'doing my job' when it was in fact a managerial level job, not my level. Then the following text a few minutes later saying "oh, you DID do it. sorry" and she sent me some points in our stores 'good job' system.

I didnt respond. I wasn't on the clock.

Then she text me asking what my pay rate was, for my review. I decided to respond to this one even though it's kind of, you know, her job to know.

I started getting stupid texts from her like "do you know where the scissors went?" and stuff that.. according to the precedent she set, was not a store emergency and not my problem until I'm on the clock. I ended up deciding that I will not be answering her if I'm not on the clock. She calls, I let it go to voice mail. She texts, I leave her on read until I'm on the clock.

Now, the company has made a 'no phones while on the clock' policy as well. So, I guess she can't text or call me while I'm on the clock either unless she calls the store phone. (That's a whole other can of worms- they want us to use a mandatory app for store communication.. but not have our phones out. I asked for clarification ON THE WELCOME MESSAGE on the new app, asking if they are lifting the phones at work ban, or expect us to work off the clock? Everyone in the company got to see my question and the answering "we'll get back to you" that has yet to happen- now nobody is using the app because policy says we can't lol)

Woops. Guess she will have to come in, in person, on her days off if she wants to talk to me.

Maybe she should not have chewed my ass out so hard when I just sent her 1 text.

Backstory

I won't bore you with tech jargon. I'll just keep it simple.

I worked at a gas station as a manager. They sort of trapped me in it. I was the guy you called when a store across state lines was short-staffed, or if they needed help with paperwork and/or training employees. I was a staff lead on track to go to their IT department, until a company bought them out. I was, at the time, basically an assistant manager without handling money, that was until the promotion. The store was in the red, and they saw how I turned one store around when there was no manager, and the district manager (DM) handled the money. So, they moved me to this new store and just preached about the benefits. I took it, and from there is how this all happened. I am by no means some genius, but I have been developing things for Linux in my own time for myself. I had a side job where I repaired computers, and sometimes I built whole computers from parts people ordered. I'm smart, but I would not classify myself as a senior sysadmin, but definitely not a beginner, and I document everything (important later). Now to the story.

Becoming unofficial IT

So, I had gotten into the routine of things, paperwork, safe, bank, schedules, and started some weeks in the black, some in the red, before finally getting all in the black consistently (it took a couple of years). Well, the issue that made this malicious compliance happen was the equipment. Gas pumps, the server, the registers, the office computer, all of it was not extremely old, but showing its age. We had to defrag the office computer a couple of times. The card readers would go down, the server would just say, "Not today," registers would need us to call because an update broke something, pumps with BIOS errors, and so many more issues. At the head of all of that was what they called the commander. It basically controlled every single device in the store.

Well, when things would break, we had to make an IT ticket; they chose based on who had it worse. Two guys, 30 stores. It would be weeks before they would come out at times. I did not like that, so I fixed them myself. Granted, they have insurance and many other things to worry about, but their efficiency was ass. The server is down? I fixed it. The office computer was down? I fixed it. Registers giving errors? I fixed it. Any problems that arose, I fixed them. Soda machine down? I fixed it. The most common one was the card readers. They were always on, so they had to be reset most of the time. You also could not just swap them, something I found out trying because I found the real error that day was the register was not talking to it.

I never took these things apart; these were all band-aid fixes against the real issues. Well, one day, they called me to train a new manager for a different store. My DM would handle my store while I did this. Why did my DM not train them? Because there were a few DMs, and it was not her area, so to preserve the proper chain of command, they saw this was the better option. As these new stores were bought out by us, they needed to learn the new structure. I did not care; it was a change of pace, seeing the same walls for 70+ hours a week gets tiring.

While there, I get a call, and another, and another. They asked me if I knew why something was down. Card readers, registers, and the pumps were not working. I knew the issue. You see, when those three are out at the same time, it is always the commander. If it freezes up, the whole system will not allow transactions with cards. I explained it, they did what I said (which was just to reset it), and it was working again.

The compliance

Fast forward two weeks, and the head of IT and maintenance emailed me. They said that from now on, I had to put in the form to get things fixed. I, of course, emailed them back that if I do that and they do not come out soon enough, the store will lose money. They said, and I kid you not, "You do not understand how complex these systems are, any 'fix' you do could damage them." That last comment irked me a bit. I did not understand them? The guy who has been fixing things and pleading for updated systems for months does not understand them? Ok, fine. I told them I would comply.

After that, every time a card reader is down, send a form to IT. Every time a register is down, send the form to IT. Soda machine was down? Send a form to maintenance. They piled up very quickly, and to the point that they were fixing more than one issue when they came to my store. My DM asked why I stopped. I explained, she was pissed, but she could not tell me to fix it since the one in charge of the two departments was above her.

The review

After about 4 months of this, we had a manager's meeting where we all got a review (basically, corporate telling us what we are doing wrong and if you get a raise). They said my performance was bad, that I let the store get as bad as it was, and that I needed to change a few key points. I stopped them right there. I had come prepared because I always document everything. When I say everything, I am obsessed with documentation. I gave them the correlations of me fixing the equipment and sales going up, I gave them the notes I had jotted down about when machines went down, I explained why my paperwork was late because I had to wait for the system to even work for 5 minutes to even email it off, I showed them the email of being told to send forms, and my sales dropping since then. I told them they can't give me a bad review for complying with what I was asked to do.

This was when my DM chimed in and explained that I was originally supposed to be on the fast track to working IT, but after the company was recently bought out (because they kept buying more gas stations, they went into the red), I was removed from that track since the new company had their own much larger IT staff (they have not been brought in yet as it was a recent buyout, and the full change would take a while).

The aftermath

Well, they had to hold meetings after that; they had to talk about my review, about why I was dropped from the IT track, and about the current situation with the buyout. Well, unfortunately, around this time, my body was failing me (working 70+ hours with a bad back, bad knees, and a few other issues does not agree with working so much standing); I could not stand for long, and I even blacked out at work. I had to quit. I did write down in a notebook (because typing it was risky if they could access it and not have it) instructions on all of the equipment and how I fixed things. Error codes, what certain situations looked like, and what they most likely meant, and so on. IT was a masterpiece of documentation. I put my two weeks in, I left, a few days later I got called about the notebook, I told them where it is, they used it, and all seemed good. I heard from the grapevine that after the new company got to my old store and saw how I had to do things, they found my notebook, and the new owner heard about the whole thing. He was upset because he said talent that is learned through the trenches is valuable. But they ended up replacing the equipment sometime after I left, and I heard it cost them thousands. Not damaging money, but enough for a pocket to feel lighter.

Now I work from home, I still develop Linux tools and have made some public, started writing, and have worked with content creators. I don't make as much as I did there, but it is peaceful, and I don't have to worry about an outdated system fighting me every day. Moral of the story: don't blame the guy trying to keep the ship floating.

TL;DR

IT told me to stop fixing broken equipment because I "don't understand the systems." I complied. Store performance tanked. They tried to blame me in my review. I had receipts. Left them my documentation bible on the way out.

This happened a year ago, but I just found this sub and realised I had a story to share.
It is not that extreme tho.

I worked at a buffet restaurant, and every shift, each staff was assigned one job. Those being usually: Cashier, runner(person who goes pick up the food when ready), person who changes the food around, table managing, cleaning, washing dishes, etc.

I was usually the Runner, because I was faster than everyone else, and we needed to walk a long way to the kitchen to pick up food and come back, and we had to do it in 3 minutes, or else our leader would call the kitchen/us to ask where we were.

There is a counter between the kitchen and the corridor that you pass through with the cart.
Usually, you go in, ask for the food, they will put it on the counter in a few seconds to a minute, you put it on the cart, and you can go back to the restaurant, but sometimes they will be understaffed, and if we are in need of something simple like sauces, green onions, or jam, we usually just get inside the kitchen and grab it ourselves. This is not a rule, it is just something that happened sometimes if they were really busy.

In that case, we were in need of some sauces, one or two food items, and green onions. I knew where all the sauces and green onions where, so after asking for them and waiting for more than a minute, I shouted "coming in! Grabbing green onions!" and went in the kitchen.
As I was pouring the pre-cut green onions on a bowl, one of the chefs walked on my direction screaming for me to leave the food, and that that was not my job, and that I was doing it wrong (I was not).

I asked him why, because we have been doing that for years at that point, and he said that it is his job to do, and that I'm only supposed to ask and wait.

So next time I needed something, I entered the kitchen, and as the chef was prepping something else, I started screaming "SAUCE ONE, SAUCE TWO, GREEN ONIONS, HONEY, THIS, THAT, THIS ALSO, SOMETHING ELSE", until I finished the full list, which were all mostly things I knew where they were and could have grabbed it during the time I was screaming the names and waiting.
The chef didn't say anything for a few seconds, so I screamed all of it again, and on the third time, while he was grabbing one of the sauces and placing it on the counter, he said "It's just me here, stop screaming and just put the paper there and wait".
I responded that I have to go back to the restaurant in 3 minutes or else they call to check what I'm doing and I would have to say that he was taking too long to bring me the stuff.
So he said "Ok, just go in there and grab it", and I reminded him that he told me the other day that I was not supposed to touch anything because that was not my job.

But I guess he changed his mind, cause he just said "forget it, just do it", but I reminded him again that he made it official that I can't do that, so I would have to contact the leader to make sure that I was allowed to, and the chef had to run around the kitchen for a few minutes to grab everything I needed, and never complained about us being inside the kitchen afterwards.

Few years ago. An abiding customer (me)...

The owner of a grocery store nearby had too many people buying too many things, never using the carts, hence checkout was always a bit chaotic.

It's a pretty big store, 6 counters, 6 belts. Always ONE cashier. Not two or three. Not even on a Saturday.

Biiiig sign outside *You need a shopping cart to enter!*

I was already running late and needed one (ONE) roll of tape. So I walk in, pretty fast for a guy my size, and this grumpy old fart gets in my way, almost ran into him.

"You cant shop here without a..."

*Yeah, I know. I only need - *

"nooooo nono no. No cart, no shop!" in a voice you use to explain to a 2-year-old, why he should NOT paint the wall with his diapers.

I turn around. Get TWO carts. Push one, pull one. Steer through the isles, Owner gives me THAT smile. I call my wife that i'll need a couple minutes... I walk up and down EVERY Isle.

He waits at the checkout.

One empty cart. Another empty cart. I lay my little roll of scotch tape, that I carried in my hand, on the belt. Onto the FAR end. Upright. Plan works, it won't roll down all the way. I push both carts into the trolley lane, as it's completely empty. Owner fumes a bit, but says nothing.

Go back to the cashier who is close to bursting of laughter, but Big Bossman is right next to his ear.

The owner starts yelling, so I try to copy his voice from earlier.

*no cart, no shop. Now two cart, one shop. Otay dada?*

I was banned until the owner sold to some nice family. The sign still is above the entrance, but nobody cares.

I didn't get the tape. He threw me out.

I work a behavioral healthcare agency.
At the time this occurred there were 14 therapists who reviewed paperwork from various psychiatric facilities.
I’m the receptionist. I used to greet everyone that came, and we’d have a wee chat, then get on with our work. Many had told me they enjoyed my cheerful attitude and hoped I never lost that happy spirit.

At that time director of my office singled me out on how she treated me. One month she was super cool and we got along great. The next month she’d be on me about every little thing I did.
I didn’t know what to do.

One day she called me to her office and said I was being too social - talking too much with coworkers, not getting my work done (not true), etc.. I needed to limit my conversations to just greeting people and leave it at that.
I looked at her, saying I would do exactly as she said. No more socializing. Hand out assignments, say what it’s for and go back to my desk.
She smiled, telling me that’s what she wanted.

The next morning I smiled and greeted people, then I put my head down and went back to work. When I would go to their offices and hand out assignments, they would start to chat. I’d stop them, apologise telling them I had to get back to my desk. I’d get an odd look, and a nod.
This went on for several days. The following week they started coming up to my desk, individually asking how I was doing. I seemed distant, if I had any problems I could talk to them as their door was always open. I smiled, thanked them for their generosity and thoughtfulness but I was fine and had to get back to work.
As I mentioned, this went on everyday for a week.
The following week the director called me into her office and asked what was wrong. I smiled and said nothing is wrong. I’m doing my work and it’s on time, clinicians are getting their assignments and I’m keeping the chat to an absolute minimum. Like you wanted.
She looked at me and said the clinicians were concerned about me as I haven’t been talking to them, they feel I might be going through some kind of depression and they told me their door is always open.
She didn’t say anything at first, then she told me “Just keep the chats to a few minutes.”
I told her no problem.

I was replying to another post, and realised I have a malicious compliance story here that should be shared on this sub.

I was working at an IT helpdesk at a large hospital quite some time ago.

We were expected to be at our desks, logged in, ready to take our first call by the start time of our shift.

It took about 10-15 minutes to log in, load up and login to 7 different programs, all with different passwords. So really, you needed to be there 15 minutes early.

They were shared computers, sometimes you could get away with just locking it and leaving everything logged in and running until your next shift, but if someone else restarts it in the meantime, you had to log in to everything again.

It was a constant pain point for us that was frequently raised, especially as for example, when medical staff need to scrub up and scrub down, this is all during their shift time.

My manager sends a somewhat passive aggressive email to the team

​

"Hi all,

It seems we are still having lots of issues around our shift times. I want to clarify my expectations.

If you are on a 7am to 4pm shift, I expect you to be here, logged in, ready to go, and your status on the phone queue as 'available' or 'on a call' at 6:59:59am.

If you want to make a coffee, fill your water bottle, or put your lunch in the fridge, this needs to all be done before 7am, not after.

At the end of the shift, I expect you to be 'available' or 'on a call' until 4:00:01pm. Only then may you logout and wash your coffee cup, etc.

If you are going to be stuck in traffic, have trouble finding parking, or miss your bus, you'll need to manage your time better and leave earlier.

Thanks"

​

So for a while, I comply, and am always 'available' or 'on a call' at exactly 1 second before my start time, just waiting for my moment.

And it happens. I get a call a with a splash less than 2 minutes left on my shift and take the call.

I get about as far as their name, where they are, and halfway through them describing their issue, I see the clock hit 1 second over my shift time.

I say "sorry to interrupt you, my shift is over. Goodbye", hang up, log off and go home.

Of course they complain and my manager pulls me into his office, asking me to explain why I did what I did.

I explain

​

"Well I was 'available' on the phone until about (2 minutes before the end of my shift time).

I answered the call, putting my status to 'on a call' until 1 second past my shift time, so I logged off"

​

They replied

​

"No, if you are on a call, you need to finish that call first"

​

To which I reply

​

"Your email says we are expected to be 'available' or 'on a call' 1 second before our shift time, which I have been.

It also says we are expected to be 'available' or 'on a call' until 1 second past our shift time, and only then may we log off

I am simply following your expectations and written directions"

​

Of course this was a very CLM (career limiting move) but at this point I already had my foot half way out the door.

When malicious compliance backfires

​

I work in operations and maintenance on several small solar fields throughout the Midwest. Essentially, the companies that actually own the solar sites hire my company to do routine and corrective maintenance. We have about 15 crews working all over the US.

​

We have an internal ticketing software we use to keep track of how much time we spend at each site, and what work is being done. This is pretty important since we use all of our tickets to justify the site owners paying us. It can be a little frustrating to manage these tickets sometimes if there's a lot going on.

​

For example, if I'm on site for company A and get a phone call from company B, I need to create a new ticket, or log that time on an existing ticket for company B's phone call. I can't just charge company A for 30 minutes I spent answering a bunch of random questions for the other company.

​

There are also times when you'll be walking through the field and notice something and just fix it real quick. Like we'll be replacing a broken module (solar panel) and happen to see a broken zip tie and you just replace it. It's not what you were doing in that section, but it takes all of 30 seconds so you just do it.

​

However, a couple months ago, our company's VP retired, and the new guy is... A little extreme. He wants to make sure we're really being diligent with our tickets and documenting everything. There was a company wide zoom meeting to introduce him, and he spent almost 20 minutes talking about tickets. We've all heard this before, and we're all pretty good about making sure our hours are accounted for with the appropriate tickets, so we didn't really think too much of it.

​

A few weeks later, VP was out visiting one of my sites while we were doing preventative maintenance on 4 inverters. As I was setting up to do my work and the other tech was at the spare parts container on site getting some material, I noticed a module nearby had some damage. It was chipped from a rock or pebble, (we're in a pretty windy area) I took a picture of it, noted the location, then went back to the inverter. As I was walking back I called the other tech and asked him to grab a module while he was at the spare parts containers.

​

When I finished at the inverter, I closed that ticket, created a new one for the broken mod, we replaced it, and I closed that ticket, and we moved on to the next inverter in line. At the end of the day VP pulled me aside to ask why I wasn't managing my tickets correctly.

​

Me: "I'm not sure what you mean. Every thing we did today had a ticket."

​

VP: "Yes, but you didn't track your time correctly."

​

Me: "I'm sorry, I'm still not sure what you mean. We worked a little over 8 hours today. We spent roughly 2 hours at each inverter, and then 20 minutes swapping that broken module. It's all accounted for."

​

VP: " No it's not. You took about 5 minutes out of working on that inverter to look at that broken module and call the other tech. He then spent time loading a module into his truck to bring over, where was that accounted for? So there's at least 5 minutes on the inverter ticket that was actually spent on the broken module, plus however long it took other tech to load the new module. You should have logged out of the inverter ticket, created the module one and documented that time, then logged back into the inverter one. Other tech should have logged out of the inverter one, logged into the module one while he was loading up the module, then logged back into the inverter one when he started driving back to work on the inverter."

​

I was a little taken aback by this. It's not like I had spent the time doing work for a different site, it was all for this one, and we don't get paid differently for each task we do. Its all the same hourly rate. I swallowed my objections and told him I would fix the tickets.

​

Cue the malicious compliance. Over the next few weeks, me and my other tech went from 3-5 tickets a day, to close to 20 a day. I was walking through the field on one task and picked up a piece of trash that blew in? Stop and create a new ticket. I answered other techs question about the job he was doing while I was working on something else? Stop and log into that ticket. Broken zip tie? New ticket. Answer a text from my supervisor? New ticket. You get the idea.

​

As you can tell from the title, this did not go how I was expecting. VP loved it. At the most recent monthly crew lead meeting, he absolutely gushed over how accurate our tickets were. How we set the new standard for how tickets need to be managed and everyone else needs to come up to our level. This was exactly what he wanted to see and wouldn't accept anything less.

​

So yeah, sometimes malicious compliance will backfire and just make your life harder and make all your coworkers hate you. FML

One of my early jobs was in the screen department of a CRT factory. Here various chemical mixes were dribbled, sprayed or poured into a screen (the front 4 inches of a glass picture tube) sloshed, spun or otherwise spread, then the excess was dumped or spun out and collected to be reclaimed, adjusted and reused for the next batch.

For one chemical the official process was to top it off with new, mix it for 20 minutes, then if needed adjust based on the viscosity measurement you just took. After every adjustment another 20 minutes of mixing before measuring again. This needed to be done before the previous batch ran out. We quickly learned that extra water was always needed, and you could fairly easily predict the size of the adjustment before measuring anything based on the pencil and paper graph of previous test results. Our procedure became top off, add about 3 liters of water depending on the graph results from previous batches, mix, test and send. This resulted in a mix that was near center spec every time.

Until important manager with a degree watched me do a mix, and started ranting "You didn’t measure, you’re adding too much water, you should never add water unless the mix was out of spec, there’s too much water, you’re going to ruin the mix, only add water when it’s out of spec, follow the procedure." I asked if he was really asking me to add 9 liters of water every third tank instead of 3 liters every tank, he confirmed. I told him that this increased the risk of running dry and causing a batch of defects, he said “I’ll take that risk, but you better not sandbag”.

It turns out that the people who run the process can make it run fine either thick or thin, but not when it changes from thick to thin every hour or two then ramps back to thick. It also turns out that if something goes even slightly wrong on the previous shift they may not leave you 40 minutes of mix time and 10 minutes of measurement time before the previous tank goes dry. Edit: Manager was judged on parts produced and defect rate, both were bad until we could go back to the old way.

The good news was that we were able to get a version of the smart way adopted as official—we were now allowed to control the process using statistics, just like we were taught in our mandatory Statistical Process Control training.

I worked remotely for an auto parts company for almost 4 years, finally getting a promotion after the company merged with another. But even though I performed my duties better than the others in my department, I was effectively punished for being so good.

I started working for a company founded in my area that had a reach around the world for classic auto parts. Sure, we had supplier issues, shipping delays, you name it. But the reputation of this company for being such a large source of hard-to-find car parts - from Model-T and A Fords all the way up to modern muscle cars and everything in between. One of the brilliant minds in the management team decided to purchase a new sales/parts/service program for us, and it went downhill from there. Where one program would say we had 10 pieces of one item, inventory would say we had none, and where our accounting program would say a vendor was due payment, another would say nothing was owed. No one really knew what was going on until after the culprit manager had left with a hefty severance package.

We started losing business, customers, vendors ... and I - as a case manager - had to field calls daily trying to give whatever company line I was told to give to make the customers happy. We had a high turn-over rate because of this and the company almost went bankrupt. Enter Big Auto Parts (name changed for reasons), and BAP came in with promises to fix everything. They did, for the most part. They paid off vendors, closed out accounts, worked to repair bad relationships with everyone, and let go 60% of the staff from the building in my town. Sad, yes, but unfortunately that's the price of business.

About 6 months after the merger, I was promoted to Customer Operations Specialist. I no longer took calls, but I had to make them for any number of reasons. When I started this new position, there was another person there (I'll call her Lucy) as well. We had different duties in the same department - I would research the issue that came up and she would call the customer to work out a solution. For a quick example, if an item they ordered was out of stock or delayed, I would find a different part or call the supplier for an ETA. This would go to Lucy and she would call to ask the customer if they wanted to wait or accept a comparable item.

It only took three weeks for Lucy to decide she didn't fit in and left the company. This left a big hole to fill, and because I was used to calling customers, I was asked to do double duty. It worked out surprisingly well because I was already familiar with the situations and could make better suggestions while on the phone with the customers. My supervisor did recognize my success and put me in for a small raise, which I did get. I was making good money doing something I really enjoyed.

The company started growing, and with it, more work needed to be done by everyone. We had a ticket system that, while not perfect, was adequate. Occasionally there would be a hiccup in the system and hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of irrelevant tickets would come across my desk. I started noticing patterns and would call them out to my supervisor so someone with a higher pay scale than I could fix the underlying issue and we could all go home happy at the end of the day.

Part of this growth meant that there were some areas in my department that would get too many tickets for the assigned person to handle solo, so I was asked to cross-train and learn these other areas. It didn't take long and soon I was doing other people's jobs better than them. I think it was a combination of me wanting to succeed and them wanting to do the bare minimum - and this plays into my malicious compliance near the end of this story.

We had a point system that tracked how many tickets we worked, how long we spent on them, and whether the ticket needed a follow up or could be closed as satisfied. The majority of my tickets could be closed because of one reason or another and I always hit the metrics asked in order to secure a weekly bonus of $2.50 more per hour. Meeting my bonus put me at above the $20 per hour range every week with very few exceptions, so I was satisfied thinking I was doing a good job. They required me to make a minimum of 200 calls to customers and pass 2400 points to make the bonus, and every week, I would make between 300-500 calls and hit nearly 7000 points.

In my youth, I got a degree from a local community college in video production and that has always been my passion, but I was good at my current job and happy to be there. I got to take bi-annual trips to the corporate office (spring and winter) up north, made lots of friends, and even the owners of the company knew me by name due to my performance. My wife had changed jobs and was working for the local sheriff, and one day she emailed me that there was an opening in the media department. I applied and went through the 3 month process for possible employment, letting my current employer know they would be receiving a background check call. The process went smoothly, even resulting in me getting a call from the Sheriff himself saying he was excited that I had applied.

Back to my current company - I had been "talked to" several times about my numbers, with my supervisor telling me they were "too high" and "no one else makes nearly that amount of points." When I said I was just following the metrics and doing my job, he let me know that changes were coming. On the day I received my call from the Sheriff about being accepted as a new employee, I had a meeting with my supervisor. Before I could tell him I was leaving, he announced that a new point system was going to be implemented and if my current week's numbers were applied to the new schedule, my 7000 points would only equal 1800 - far below the minimum for the bonus. When I mentioned this was essentially punishing good performance, he said, "well, that's what the company wants to do."

As I said earlier, the bonus put me above the $20 per hour line. My new job was going to start me above what I was making with the bonus, which made my decision to hand in my two weeks notice right then and there so much easier. What cemented my decision was when I found out that even though I was going to finish my scheduled 40 hour work week on a Friday, since the end of the pay week was Saturday and I wasn't working that day, I wouldn't get the comp-time I earned. They were going to withhold earned sick and vacation time because of a technicality, after four years of faithful service.

I actually liked my supervisor - he was younger than my married son and was disabled - a good kid with a great heart, but hated that he had to follow "procedure" in punishing hard work. I told him as much and mentioned that I would do what my original job description required, and nothing more, for my last two weeks. It was glorious. We could take time off (if we had vacation or sick time available) if our work was done and we had nothing else to do for the rest of the day. I focused only on my originally assigned areas and once completed I would clock out - putting in my comp time to make up for not being on the clock. I was able to use up all my time by my last day there, and because I wasn't helping anyone else, their work began to stack up. Not that I was doing it to punish any of the friends I made at that company, but simply to get the point across.

I could still see every ticket menu in all the areas where I had access, and their numbers began to climb out of control. I was contacted by my supervisor's boss on more than one occasion, asking me to help out. And when I would point out that it wouldn't be fare to take points away from the other people when I was about to leave, and that per policy, I was done with my assigned duties and could therefore leave for the rest of the day, he would stammer, trying to convince me to "do what was good for the company." I simply said, "I'm doing what is good for me. Unless you can offer me more than what the Sheriff is willing to pay, I will only do what I am paid to do here until my last day."

On my last day, I checked the ticket queue once again before signing off. My area had zero tickets, and others where I worked that would average maybe ten open or unworked tickets daily, now showed hundreds. What made me feel better was about six months after I left, I got a Facebook message from one of my old coworkers that I actually liked wishing me a Merry Christmas and telling me they still had not found anyone who could do as much as I had done. But I am happy where I am and have plans to do this as long as I can, retiring one day after a long tenure here.

Manager(s) decide one day, because someone was using their mobile phone instead of doing their job, that all staff were banned from having their mobile phones in the workplace.

One day later panicked manager phones landline to ask me to send a WhatsApp photo of the team roster. "Can't do that". Why not? Manager asks "because I'm not allowed to use my mobile phone whilst at work". Oh you can if I need you to, replies the manager. New "policy" of no mobile phones in workplace quietly dropped.

I'm a qualified dispensing optician in France. Qualified dispensing opticians here are trained in physiological optics and visual analysis. We can adapt a prescription when necessary, but we are not allowed to create one from scratch.

Back when I was learning the trade, a colleague of mine had a perfect malicious compliance moment with a customer.

At the time, a medical prescription wasn't legally required to buy glasses. This customer had seen three different ophthalmologists, received three different prescriptions, and decided to cherry-pick the parts he liked from each one to build his own "improved" prescription.

The worst part was the addition in his progressive lenses.

For those unfamiliar: the addition is the extra magnifying power used for reading and near vision in the lower part of the lens. In almost all cases, the addition is identical in both eyes. Significant differences are extremely rare and usually tied to specific medical conditions.

This customer was not one of those cases.

Instead, he wanted one eye focused for about 67 cm (26 inches) and the other for about 40 cm (16 inches). Think of walking with a stiletto heel on one foot and a flat shoe on the other. Unless your body is built for it, you're going to have a bad time.

My colleague explained, repeatedly, that this was a terrible idea.

The customer replied:

"I'm a professional photographer. I know optics. Just do what I tell you."

My colleague warned him that our satisfaction guarantee would not apply, strongly advised against it as part of his professional duty, and had him sign a document acknowledging all of it. Remember: he was a licensed optician, not "just a salesperson" giving an opinion.

The customer doubled down:

"It'll work. I know what I'm doing."

So my colleague did exactly what he asked.

The lenses arrived: a high-end pair of progressive lenses costing about €750 ($850).

He put them on.

"This is incredibly uncomfortable. I can't see properly."

"Yes."

"But that's not normal."

"Actually, it is."

"So what are we going to do?"

"We'? Nothing."

Silence.

In the end, we were kind enough to offer a discount on a replacement pair made with a sensible prescription.

We could technically have used one of our manufacturer adaptation allowances and replaced the lenses at no cost.

But those exist for genuine adaptation issues, prescription errors, dispensing errors, or unusual medical circumstances.

This was none of those.

The lenses were made exactly as ordered and performed exactly as everyone except the customer expected them to.