rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance Destroy My Trees? I'll Sue for $1,000,000!

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

2nd channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4-rik_U7doQyPpn4co48rw Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our slash malicious compliance where OP gets a one million dollar payout by maliciously complying. Our next reddit post is from someone you don't know. This malicious compliance story isn't mine, it's my brother-in-laws. My brother-in-law grows avocados in California. Several years ago, a portion of his ranch was ravaged by a wildfire, or so he thought at first. When the smoke cleared, it became obvious that the fire was caused by an electrical line that was blown over by strong winds and had landed on his fence, catching it on fire. Since he'd been planning on diversifying his crops anyway, he decided he'd simply replace his fence, replant, and move on. To that end, he called up the electric company that owned the downed power line and asked them for about $10,000 in compensation to replace the fence that had been destroyed

by their electrical line. They denied any and all culpability in the matter and told him that he should sue them if he didn't like it. What the electric company didn't realize was that my sister, his wife, works full time as a corporate attorney for one of the largest utilities in California, and she would defend against cases just like this one. At first, she was concerned that this utility was a subsidiary of her employer, in which case there would be a massive conflict of interests. Apparently, legal departments frown on their employees when their husband is suing them. Go figure. Thankfully, after some investigation, she realized the utility company in question was completely independent of her employer. And at that point, the gloves were off.

My sister didn't represent her husband because she's typically on the other side of these cases. But she did advise him when everything he needed to bring to court to win the case, and she helped him find a very reputable lawyer with a solid record of winning cases like these. Not knowing what they were up against, the utility persisted in refusing to negotiate. Hoping that by forcing my brother-in-law to go to trial, he would simply give up and go away. Spurred on by my sister's insistence that he had a solid case, he called their bluff and went to trial. As it turns out, California takes agricultural damage very seriously, and the court conducted

its own independent investigation. The court estimated the total damages at around $335,000, which is over 33 times more than what my brother-in-law had initially asked for. Furthermore, there's a law in California that awards triple damages in cases where agriculture is impacted. So, the utility that had been unwilling to negotiate for $10,000 was now on the hook for over $1,000,000 in damages. When everything was said and done, my brother-in-law confided in me that he would have gladly settled for $10,000 in arbitration, and that it would have probably taken him over a decade to even sell a million dollars worth of crops.

The utility company just had to have their day in court, though. Well, it's like the advice that we've been reading about for so long. Just think about all the money the utility company would save if they would just stop toasting avocado trees. Our next reddit post is from District equivalent. This happened about 13 years ago. I was a field service engineer for a national retail chain. Basically, I was the IT guy who drove around in a company vehicle servicing the computer networks in the stores. The way the company was organized, there were corporate employees and there were retail employees. Being a corporate employee, I received corporate stock as a small part of my salary. And my starting pay was three times the rate of any store manager. Because I was always putting out fires, I often found myself in the

awkward position of dealing with store managers who honestly thought that they were the store owners and that I was just the hired help. This was truly ironic as I actually did own a very small piece of the corporation, whereas the average store manager did not. One day, I got orders to replace a server in a store not too far from my house. So I show up to the store where the server needs to be replaced. This was my second of three scheduled stops that day. I walk in the store wearing my very obvious corporate uniform and name tag with logo. The store manager instantly demands to know what the hell I'm doing in her store. I get this all the time, it's nothing new.

I calmly explained that my boss wants me to upgrade one of the store servers, and I even show her where I'm going to be working. I explained this will take about an hour, and that the registers might go offline for about 5 minutes. She isn't happy, but she reluctantly allows me into the room where the server is and I start working. When I'm just about done, the registers go down as I'm switching them to the new server, which isn't fully hooked up yet.

At this point, I realize I've forgotten to bring in a couple of cables that I need to finish hooking up the new server to the store network, so I run out to the truck to get the required cables. I'm gone for about two minutes. When I get back, the store manager is sitting at the table in front of the server and she's got food spread out all over the table. The server is under the table. I tell the store manager I need to finish hooking up the server and I gesture under the table. The store manager tells me I'll have to come back in an hour after her lunch break. I'm shocked into total silence. Then a cashier burst into the room, panic that the registers aren't working, and the checkout lines are getting backed up.

I explain to the manager that I have to fix a server now, or the registers won't work. The manager tells me that I should have thought of that before I started working in her lunch break area. I calmly tell the store manager that she'll have to either take a break later or find somewhere else to eat her lunch. She tells me that I'm rude, incompetent, and demands to speak to my manager immediately. Okie dokie. I call up my manager using my corporate issue iPhone and quickly explain the situation and then walk into the server room to hand the iPhone to the store manager. While she's on the phone with my manager, I head out to the front of the store to explain and apologize that the registers are going to be down for a few more minutes. I can't hear exactly what the store manager is telling to my manager, but I can tell that it's a heated conversation, and I can clearly hear the word fired mentioned a few times.

It's clear that the store manager once me to be fired for daring to try to interrupt her lunch break. Unfortunately for her, my direct supervisor was about 5-6 levels above the retail district manager. So this store manager was complaining loudly about interrupting my work to the manager of her managers managers managers managers managers managers manager a few minutes later the store manager walks out of the room awkwardly balancing bits and pieces of her lunch. I immediately go back to work getting the new servers up and running and rebooting the registers so they'll sync with the new server and cashiers can get back to work. Everyone's happy now except for the store manager because her lunch break was ruined. The main part of my task is done now but it takes me about another 15 minutes to clean up my mess

and reorganize my truck to get ready for the next stop, which is about an hour away. As I'm doing this, I see the retail district manager who I've met before going into the store. She walks back out of the store with the former store manager, who's carrying a box of her personal items. And today, that manager learned an important lesson. Never mess with the IT guy. Our next reddit post is from Raza Daza. Many years ago, I worked as an engineer repairing retail customer PCs. Our team was small, and there were often times

when the number of PCs that needed repair was more than the team could get through during normal hours. In these circumstances, we were allowed voluntary overtime on Saturday, and we would get time and a half pay for it. The rules for overtime were flexible. We could start whenever we wanted and finish whenever we wanted and we would get paid for each full 60 minutes that we were clocked in for. Back then my girlfriend used to work until 2 p.m. on Saturday so I would go in at 9.30 and then leave at 1.30 p.m. giving me plenty of time to pick her up. This worked out great for everyone.

However, the company's structure was a little strange. The front facing customer service was managed by one director, and the back of house, including my team, was managed by another director. These two directors despised each other, and they were constantly trying to cause each other problems. And, of course, their workers were always caught in the middle. One fateful Saturday I was working, and I noticed the front-facing director walk up, see that I was there, and then move on without saying anything. I didn't think anything of it, and a short while later I left at 1.30 as normal. I came in on Monday like normal to find that I

had a meeting request from my director. Confused, I attended the meeting and found both my director and the front director there also. Turns out the front director had a range for a customer to bring in their PC for an urgent repair on Saturday, having confirmed that I was there to fix it. On the spot repairs were very rare, reserved for only the most problematic or high-spending customers. Me not being there to look at it had caused the customer to have a meltdown in the shop

in front of many other customers. Of course, the front director took this opportunity to bring this up with the big boss, which led to the Monday meeting where she was out for my blood. Luckily, since the overtime rules for our department were clear and I followed them, there was no direct action taken against me with my director supporting me. However, one thing that did come from this was that we lost our flexible overtime. From that point on, if we wanted to do overtime on Saturday, we had to be there for the whole day. Since I wasn't willing to lose my entire Saturday, overtime stopped.

It took less than a month for the department's backlog to hit over 100 units. Our target was to have less than 15 units at the end of each day. I had originally wondered why my director didn't put up a fight when the new rule was set, but it didn't take long to see the number of customer service complaints and call waiting times skyrocket. All of which was the front director's responsibility. Not long after, my director approached me smiling to let me know that the front director had gone to the big boss. First, to try to force us to do overtime and when that failed, beg for the new rule to be removed. So the next Saturday, I was back to earning a little extra cash

and that director never tried to screw with our hours again. Our next reddit post is from Moonlover. This happened 16 years ago. When I was about 20 years old, I was a department manager in a big box hardware store. People said I acted like I was 25, but I didn't even look 18. As a young female, I saw my fair amount of sexual discrimination, but the worst always

came from women. This is the story of one such woman. I managed the paint department. I had three associates who worked for me. They loved me as a boss, because I bought them a department radio, and I took the shifts they didn't once. My team was awesome! One day I was in the department alone and a lady came up and asked me where she could find the 5 gallon oil based primer. I let her know that my location didn't carry the 5 gallon size of that primer. She told me that we did and said that it

was shelved right there while suggesting that I was too stupid to remember. Her husband gave me an apologetic look. I let her know that another location had what she was looking for and that it was, in fact, in the exact location she described, but in that store. She let me know how stupid she thought that I was for thinking that she could mix up stores. Then she began yelling and loudly insisting that I get a man out there to help her because she wanted someone competent and not a stupid little girl. Her husband actually tried to step in at that point. But I just smiled

and let her know that a male pain associate would be clocking in any minute and I'd be happy to direct him to her as soon as he was on the clock. I smiled and waited for Joe to clock in. Joe was great and I knew that he could handle this or I wouldn't have put him in this situation, but Joe was also new. He was learning things super quick but still relied on the rest of us for help. When I saw Joe walking up, I quickly said

that there was a customer who needed help. I let him know that she was upset and I asked him to do his best to answer her questions. Joe walked up to the lady, she said, finally a man. She asked her question, explained where the product should be and waited. Joe calmly let her know that he had never seen us carry a five gallon size of oil based primer, but he could check with the paint department manager. She was happy and loudly said that she was happy to be getting some real help.

Then Joe walked up to me and started to ask me about five gallon oil-based primers. The lady quickly walked up to Joe and asked him what he was doing. He turned to her and said, this is my manager, she runs his department. The husband laughed out loud, the woman stormed off, and I bought Joe lunch. Down in the comments, we have this post from Catch Me If You Can. I had a really similar experience. I worked in a large appliance store, and an older woman came in to buy a washing machine. I was in my early 20s and looked really young. Anyway, I went up to help her and she stated that she would like a man to help her please.

I said, okay, and went to get one of my male colleagues. I told him that she had requested a man. The whole way through the sale, whenever the old lady asked a question, my coworker would say, hang on, let me just check with the expert, and then he would come and chat with me for a moment. He knew very well what the answer was. In fact, he had trained me, but he was a golden soul. That was our slash malicious compliance, and if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast

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