rSlash - r/Maliciouscomplaince The Boss Fired Everyone and Lost MILLIONS $$$

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

https://www.youtube.com/rslash Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our slash malicious compliance where OP happily gets fired. Our next Reddit post is from Velocity Boy. This story is from June 2012. This story takes place in Australia where we have very stringent laws around employment, firing, hiring, redundancies, maternity, etc. I had started working for this particular company in March 2011. I was hired basically on the spot once I demonstrated my knowledge of the product that I'd be working on and I started two days later because of a deadline that had to be met. I had a very specific contract for what I did. I was thrown into the deep end and a sleepless seven days followed, but by the end I managed

to do a decent job on the first of many products. Two months after I started, my direct boss was let go, and not really replaced properly, but a consultant took over the responsibilities. I should also add that the majority of operations were in Australia, while a smaller team operated in the UK, which is also where the CEO was based, despite 80-90% of products coming out of our office. Towards the third quarter of 2011, the CEO's contract ended and was not reviewed, so the hunt began for a new CEO who was eventually found and began working in the UK location. After a very busy 2011, hiring approximately 30 new employees and launching a bunch of new products, business was booming until the second week of January

2012. By this point, upper management couldn't stay on top of everything, so they had to bring in the chief operating officer of the parent company to oversee operations in Australia. At this point, we had a group meeting where we learned that operations in Australia would cease on June 30, 2012. This was followed by management explaining that everyone except a handful of people would be made redundant with payouts, and the handful of people who would remain would instead be made redundant after finishing their projects at the end of 2012. So over the next

five months, as operations slowly winded down, I had a few job interviews lined up. June comes around, and everyone starts to get their redundancy letters, giving them 28 days of official notice outlining their pay schedules and all legal entitlements. When I say everyone, I mean everyone, except for me. I find this very strange, but I quickly realize that it's because if I hand in my notice, I won't be entitled to a payout and the company gets to save a few thousand dollars. This is where the malicious compliance kicks in. I keep quiet and don't say anything. By about the second week of June, I find out that I didn't get my dream job and I tell one other person but make sure they don't tell anyone else.

Fast forward to the last week of June, and now there's just seven employees, including me, the general manager, the chief operations officer, and the chief financial officer. Everyone except for me has packed up their desks, and at this point, I'm basically just showing up to be social. On the second last day, I run into the COO next to my desk, and he goes, you must be sad that tomorrow is the last day. And casually I respond with, oh is it? I know it'll be quiet, but I didn't realize it's my last day. He takes a closer look at my

desk, still not packed up, and has the most confused look on his face and responds with, yeah it's everyone's last day, why wouldn't it be your last? Oh, well, I never got a redundancy letter. At this point, I can see the expression on his face go from, huh? To... oh, no. In the hope that I would get a different job and resign so they didn't have to pay me out, among everything else going on, they forgot to issue me an official redundancy notice. At this point, he realizes all of this and goes, oh come and see me in my office in 30 minutes. Half an hour later I go to his office and he's sitting there with the CFO by a side. There are some papers on his desk. I sit down and he says,

sorry we didn't do this properly at an earlier point but here's your redundancy paperwork. The first piece of paper is the official letter. I pick it up, start reading, and the first thing that catches my eye is the date. It had been backdated to 27 days earlier. Now, I should point out this is a two-copy letter that needs to be signed by both employer and employee. I put the paper down and say, that's not today's date. He gets flustered and responds with, sorry, we forgot to get to you, but the notice was issued on that day. I said, it might have been issued then, but this is the first that I'm seeing of it, and you'll notice that it hasn't been signed by me. Yeah, but you knew this was coming. I did, but I assumed that I'd be retained for longer since I wasn't given official notice.

So what do you want us to do now? Put today's date on it and I'll sign it. But legally, we need to wrap up operations before the end of the month. We can't do that. You could try to fire me instead, but I don't think the Fair Work Commission would be satisfied with your reason of me not wanting to sign a falsified redundancy letter. By this point, he's very flustered. Meanwhile, I'm just laughing my butt off in my head.

Okay, let me change this for you. He disappears and comes back with another copy with the correct date. Okay, here you go. I'm not signing this yet. Why not? Well, I've got 28 more days of legal employment now, which means I'm owed an extra day and a bit of annual leave in my final pay schedule. He looks at the chief financial officer and the chief financial officer looks at him and nods in agreement. He changes my payout schedule, adding another day of annual leave to it. Prince it out and hands it to me.

I carefully look everything over. Everything's in order, so I sign the paperwork and we both get copies. So what will you be doing here for the next 28 days? Nothing, I'm not coming back after today. But you're legally employed for another 4 weeks. We can't be paying you for nothing. You should help out the IT guy with packing up some boxes. There's nothing in my contract about packing up boxes, so I won't be doing that.

Also, if you read my contract, it says that I'm employed to work on this one specific project only, and any other work outside of this needs to be agreed on separately. And since you sold my project to the competition yesterday, and it's no longer at this company, I have no further contractual obligations to fulfill. By this point, the CFO is barely holding in his laughter. Well, that's not fair. We have to pay you an extra month for nothing. That's not my problem. My contractual obligations have been fulfilled. I'm gonna pack up and go home at 5 p.m. Okay, please make sure it's not before 5 p.m. I get back to my desk and pack it up in less than 5 minutes, putting all of my personal belongings in a box. Then I just sit around doing nothing. One of my colleagues who was remaining on for a few months more comes over and asks, what was that all about? I explain everything in detail, and he lets out the biggest booming laugh. Goes to his office, closes the door, and continues laughing. 15 minutes later, the

CFO comes over and goes, you don't have to stay until the end of the day, you can take off whenever you want. And this is the story of how I got an extra months paid due to management and competence. Done in the comments, we have a similar story from Massackeel. German laws are even more stringent. I know of one case where a US manager came over to Germany to hold an all hands meeting. He told everyone that they were terminated at the end of the month, including the German HR staff with one month's severance pay. He said that since all managers were dismissed too, he would handle the shutdown. In German law, a termination must be in writing

to be valid. Since the HR staff was getting fired as well, they didn't feel any obligation to educate the top boss. The German managers, who were also affected, just shrugged, and maybe smirked a bit when he wasn't watching. So everyone was still legally employed and continued to appear at work. As the end of the month approaches, people keep requesting vacation days and so on. People started asking where they should show up for work next week since the offices were closed. When the US manager wonders about this, they tell him that they're still legally employed. So now he has to fire everyone

in writing, but the HR staff saw this coming, so everyone called in sick. So now he tries to write termination letters himself and in a hurry. Not knowing German law, he completely messed it up. The next week, he had lawsuits from every employee, including HR, all with the same lawyer. And since his own German legal staff was also suing, they cited conflict of interest rules and refused to help him. The CEO then hired an outside lawyer who told him how completely he had screwed up. Since he made an illegal termination, his chances for any termination to stand was practically zero. In the end, termination was delayed by six months, and everyone received two months salary

per year of employment. Some people even received two years of pay through this. This created a local vacation boom. Our next reddit post is from Tollhouse Frank. This one took place six years ago. My bosses were usually very cool and easy to get along with. However, some caring got into HR and insisted on changing the work culture to suit her vision. She rewrote the dress code and overnight, instead of being allowed to show up dress comfortably, we suddenly had to dress business professional.

She even specified the materials the clothing could be made out of. She tried firing almost everyone there for violating dress code before a manager told her to calm herself because not only had she not published a dress code, but it also hadn't even been approved by management. HR care and gets her panties in a knot and pull strings to get it approved in a couple of days. So, during those couple of days, I was reading through the dress code trying to see what I could do to make her regret it. The dress code word for word said, clothing is to be made of woolen materials only unless

a specific exception is made below. Allowable clothing is listed as, business suits, button up dress shirts, monocolor ties, leather shoes, skirts, and blouses. If wearing a skirt or blouse, silk materials are accepted. I should point out that she added the silk exception solely for her because she claimed that wool gave her hives. Anyway, the air conditioning had been out for weeks and we had been getting by in the building

with big fans and wearing light shorts and shirts. It was a hot summer. So I searched for a loophole in the new dress code. Note, despite having lost a lot of weight since then, I'm still a hefty, very hairy man with a very long beard. So on day one of the new dress code on the way to work, I stopped by at the local

goodwill. I bought the most garish skirt that I could find that I could squeeze into, and also the most feminine blouse that I could find. I paid for them and got dressed at a gas station just down the street from the office. I walked into work with lots of stairs coming my way. However, I was the only man on the floor not sitting in a pool of my own sweats. Less than 30 minutes in, everyone in the building can hear HR care and screaming about me as she runs to my desk, and she demands that I go to her office for disciplinary action. I tell her that I can't do that, because company policy states that disciplinary action can only be undertaken by the employee's team lead and site manager, not HR.

She then screams at both of them to force me into her office. They both give me the stink eye, but I give them a thumbs up and grin and say, please, please, please make me go into her air conditioned office. Oh, did I also mention she had the only working air conditioner on sites? So the four of us trudged to her office with me grinning ear to ear. Myself and many co-workers laugh as this large, hairy, heavily bearded man and a silk skirt and blouse walks past everyone. So, we get to Karen's office and I sit down. She tells me that I'm going to be fired for in-supportation and breaking dress code. I laugh in her face and tell her, terminations can only be processed upon agreement by the

team lead of the employee, site management, and HR. You're the one who insisted on the dress code rule. Unless these two other guys agree, you're lying, and you can shut up. She was screaming at the top of her lungs at this point. She said that it was sexual harassment against all the women in the office for a fat Harry man to be in women's clothing. I said, oh, can you point out in the dress code where only women are allowed to wear skirts and blouses? As soon as I said that, my team lead suddenly lit up and started giggling because she knew

where I was taking this. Karen got out a written copy of the dress code and started sputtering and stammering as she read it word for word as I typed it up above. Gender was never mentioned. As she started screaming at me again for being inappropriate, the site manager looked at her and said, Do you really want to get fired for sexual discrimination and sexual harassment? Strangely enough, the dress code was rescinded before the end of the day, and we were allowed to go back to the way that we'd all been dressing. As an extra, Karen is no longer with the company.

She made Blunder after Blunder, which usually ended up with her screaming at me and my bosses. Our next reddit postage from Stuck at Work. A while back, I was stationed in Pensacola, Florida as a trainee for learning to be an IT for the Navy. Every morning, our class would meet at the end of a long stretch of walkway where we would march as a unit down to our classroom building. Now, this base is primarily manned by enlisted personnel. For the uninitiated, we're the lower ranking personnel, and when we encounter an officer, we're required to render

a hand salute. Most officers who set foot on the base know that they're outnumbered a thousand to one, and as such, tend to avoid the enlisted mob. So as to not draw unwanted attention, as massive herds of people are forced to stop what they're doing, render a salute and greeting, and you have to do the same. QR brand new lieutenant, lieutenant Dan. Lieutenant Dan was a dick, and would often park his car near to where we were forming up, stroll by our formation, and cuss out any of the new kids who didn't notice. One time, his exact words were, I'm a naval officer, and you will show me the respect I deserve by rendering a hand salute. I swear to God, it was like he rehearsed this spiel in the mirror before showing up at

work that morning. What Lieutenant Dan didn't know is that enlisted folks are petty. What he also didn't know is that sometimes on rare days when it was too hot in North Florida to safely march in formation, we would all be allowed to walk ourselves home down the long half mile stretch. Well, one summer day, with maximum humidity and heat so hot that you could fry an egg on concrete, we were all allowed to walk ourselves back to the barracks. As we were walking, in the distance, my class sees the all-too-familiar stride of Lieutenant

Dan coming our way. A plan is hatched, and we begin spacing ourselves several meters apart and marching one by one down towards him. I was in the middle of the pack, so I got to see the look on his face as the first salute and polite good afternoon was rendered, followed by another as soon as his arm went down. Then another, and by the time he got to me, he was sweating. He even shouted at us, you don't need to salute, but try as he might though, our class decided that day that all 20 plus students

in my class, and a few others nearby, would render him his proper salute during the sweltering half mile walk down the path. I can't confirm this or not, but apparently he was pretty pissed at the end and cussing pretty loudly. His uniform was all stained from sweats. All I know is from that moment on, when we on Park his car he would get out, look at our class and walk well around our class out of the hand salute range. You gotta love the military. That was our Slash Militius compliance and if you like this content be sure to follow my podcast

because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day. single day.