rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance "GO ANSWER THE PHONES" "I'm deaf, but OK"

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

r/Maliciouscompliance In today's episode, OP has chronic ear infections and is deaf. She can't hear anything without her hearing aids, and unfortunately she can't wear her aids when she has an ear infection flare up. Her boss decides that she still has to work anyway, so he puts her on phone duty. A deaf person... on phone duty. When OP doesn't answer the phones, the boss yells at her. Dude, what did you expect? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Childhood vaccines have been around for decades and are safe and proven to help protect children against 14 preventable diseases. Learn more at Canada.ca slash childhood vaccines. A message from the government of Canada. Welcome to our slash, a podcast where we the best post from across Reddit. Today's subreddit is our slash malicious compliance where a stupid boss makes a deaf person answer the phone all day. Our next bread had posted from soft pockets. Between 8 and 10 years ago, I received an email welcoming me to Netflix.

That was a bit concerning since I hadn't signed up, so I contacted the company. They told me someone must have accidentally used my email when they created an account. Our last names were the same, as well as their first initial. I said, oh no problem, you must have additional contact information for them besides my email. Could you please remove my email from the account and let them know so they can fix it? Well for some reason that was a big problem for Netflix. No they couldn't remove the email because it was the only one they had for the account

and how do they know that it was mine? I said, well just give me your email address and say something, I'll email you the words that come out of your mouth. Somehow, that still wasn't good enough proof. What they finally ended up doing was changing the account password so that when the customer went to log back in, they wouldn't be able to and would need to do a password reset by calling Netflix and then they would confirm the email address. I kept getting Netflix emails, so that didn't work. I called again, and again, it didn't work. I changed the password several times myself because I could use the forget password function and get an email to reset it, but that still didn't work. I don't know how they kept getting the

new password without updating the email address, and I didn't really care at that point. So for the last 8-10 years, I've had free Netflix. I've signed into it on hotel TVs, my iPhone, my Xbox, my kid uses it. I only ever signed in under the family account and I told my son to do the same. The other logins, Fred, Softy, and Lila accumulated history. I would occasionally look over just because I was curious. Well, I woke up this morning to an email from Netflix telling me that my email address was no longer associated with that account. So, thank you, Softy. It's been an amazing run, and I'm not sure why you gave me free Netflix for the last decade, but I think that you're amazing. I have a similar story involving my grandma that's not nearly as innocent.

For the sake of this story, let's just say my grandmother's name is Jane Doe. Well, one day my grandma went to pay her bills and she noticed that her account was missing money. So she drove to the bank and they confirmed that, yes, Jane Doe from Arizona withdrew like $2,000 or something from her account. To be clear, my grandma Jane Doe lives in Virginia. Apparently, two separate Jane Does both had an account at this bank. And when the Jane Doe and Arizona went to a draw money, the bank mistakenly associated her name with my grandmother in Virginia. So this lady just walked away with $2,000 of my grandma's money.

Now, of course the bank fixed the issue and gave my grandma back her money, but still, that's a pretty major screw up. Like, imagine a some random person who happens to share your name, walks away with all of your money just because your bank is run by a bunch of idiots. Our next wedded post is from Kay. This happened about 12 years ago. My boss was a bully.

Around this time, I kept getting really bad ear infections in my ears. I was told that I could still work, but it's important to note that I'm deaf and I wear two hearing aids. Without them, I can't hear anything. So on a freezing snowy day, my boss had me standing outside, running a stand about the environmental work that we were going to be doing. I had a bad ear infection and a cold already. By the end of the day, I couldn't even feel my feet.

My boss told me it was my fault for not drinking hot drinks. The next day was Saturday, and I spent the day in the warmth of my flat trying to get better, but my ear was killing me. So I went to go to a treatment center. The doctor told me that I had a nasty ear infection and they gave me antibiotics. I woke up on Sunday to my ear swollen up to be twice its normal size, burning and half my face numb. I knew this was going to be a bad day. Anyhow, after being out for two weeks I was back at work in front of my boss and the HR lady because I had gone over my 10 allowed days of sick leave.

Even though I was in the hospital for over a week, they said that it didn't matter and then I still had to come in to work if I only had a bad ear. I said that if my ear infections flare up, I can't come in to work. The HR lady said that was fine, I could just do phone duties. I said that when I have an ear infection, I can't wear my hearing aids and you want me to do phone duties? Both the HR lady and the boss said yes. Okay, fine then.

Sure enough, the following month both of my ears flared up, and I couldn't wear either hearing aid. It was scary for me to leave my home not being able to hear, but I had to follow their rules. I got to the office and told my boss that I had infection to both of my ears, but I'm here. My boss tried to talk to me, but of course I couldn't hear him. So eventually he just wrote down instructions for me to go to my desk and answer phone calls. Okay.

So I sat there, staring at the phone, waiting for it to rang. After a couple of hours, the phone still hasn't run. The boss came over and started screaming at me right in the face. I looked at him puzzled and said, what did you say? He looked so angry and wrote down, why aren't you answering the phone?" I looked back at him and said, well I haven't heard it rang it. I swear he had steam coming out of his ears. He sent me back home because I was a health and safety risk. Apparently the phone had been ringing off the hook the whole time, but I couldn't hear it ringing. Seriously, who asked a deaf person with no hearing aids to be on phone duties?

Our next Reddit post is from Interstate. So around 10 years ago, I worked for a small independent construction supply store. We sold various things, measuring tapes, power drills, plumbing fittings, sheet timber, paint, and roof tiles. I'd been there three years by that point and I got on well with the whole team. There were around 12 employees in total, and everyone helped everyone. The atmosphere was always happy and cheerful. My boss, Jeff, was a star.

I loved him. He was laid back as hell and we had a lot of mutual interests, sports, bands, movies, etc. He would bring in donuts every Friday for the team. Jeff was just the best boss ever. We had the supervisor, Lynn, who had been with the company a good while. Lynn would come in early and open up in the morning before anyone else arrived and would stay back at night to lock up and close the gates. When Lynn left the company, Jeff told me to take over Lynn's shop of opening and closing the store. The verbal agreement between company, Jeff told me to take over Linge-Dop of opening and closing the store.

The verbal agreement between me, Jeff, and HR and payroll was that I was not promoted to the supervisor role, but I was to be paid an extra two hours per day for the added duties in the morning and at night. Things were normal for a good while, until Jeff went on long-term sick leave. His absence was a huge loss for the business, and naturally we were all worried about him. I would often visit him while he was absent, and I kept him up to date on everything that was going on. In the meantime, the company hired a temporary replacement, Rick the prick, to fill in for Jeff.

This guy was a complete but whole of the highest order. No one liked him. He was smug and arrogant. He would say rude things to the female employees and had this top dog tough guy attitude. Messed with me at your own peril kind of guy. It got to the point where he ordered people to stop bringing in donuts on Friday. With all my extra overtime money, I had taken over buying donuts on Friday to keep morale high. But no, I had to stop. Why do I love getting my last minute gifts at Shopper's Drug Mart?

Well, lots of stores, many open late, great selection of gifts, and let's not forget the PC optimum points. I get gifts for them and points for me, and so can you. Go to Shoppers, Exclusions Apply. So you think you know sports? Points vet is the sportsbook for you, because we've got the features for true competitors, like live, same game parlias. Use your sportsmarts to make picks live

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Soon enough, Rick was assessing the time sheets and noticed my daily two hours of overtime. He called me in to ask me about it and I told him about the agreement between Jeff and Payroll. He asked if I had anything in writing and I said no, it was a verbal agreement that people in HR would back me up on. Rick, being his typical arrogant, smart, bastard self told me, I don't give an F what you agreed to, it ain't in writing so you ain't getting F'ing over time. I know it doesn't take two hours per day to lock an unlock an F'ing door or two. I have a good reason to write you up for falsifying time sheets for this. It stops now. You work your stated hours and you do only your stated duties as per your contract. The thing is, this silly bastard confirmed to me what he said by email, so that you have it in writing, so that you're perfectly

clear as to what your place in the company was. Fine by me, Rick. That evening, I hung the shop keys in the key cabinet and went to wash up. I wasn't the last to leave, but I left at 505 pm and said to my usual 545 or thereabouts. I walked out while the lights were on, the doors were unlocked and the gates were left open. Even the roller-shutter door in the warehouse was left half open. The next morning I arrived at 715 and said toittima, Ysual 6.30. Some of my colleagues had already turned up by that point. The place had been completely ransacked. All the power tools were gone.

Loads of woodstock was gone. The pipes and paint were all gone. It had been ransacked good and proper. An estimated 30 to 40,000 pounds of stock were gone and the store was now a crime scene. So we were all sent home until further notice. We all had to give statements to the cops and a few days later I was called into a meeting with HR and Rick the prick. I was well aware of what was coming and I was well prepared.

Rick went to town on me. He accused me of being in on it because I was the only key holder, even though I wasn't, and that I would be facing years in prison. I sat there in silence as he fired me six separate times in that meeting. I got fired for dereliction of duties, breach of verbal contract, etc. He was coming after me like wildfire because I had failed to endure the building was secured as was the ongoing agreement put in place by my previous boss. After this lunatic screaming at me for what felt like forever, I asked HR if I could log into my email on her computer. Surprisingly, HR agreed. Imagine my smile when I opened that 3-day old email from Rick which told me to stick to the duties in my contract.

And then I smuggly and innocently told HR, I just did what my boss told me to do. And the best part was the sheer horror on Rick's face when I pulled out 5 pronounce of that email and handed them to him. I said I have more of these pronounce at home just in case you feel like destroying these and deleting that email. Now is there anything else? Can I go back to work or am I still fired? Rick resigned that day.

Our next reddit post is from a string of characters. So this was back during the 2008 government mortgage crisis. I had great credit, a great job, and multiple credit cards that I used to manage to different properties that I owned. So one day, I get a letter from my credit card company stating that they were unilaterally raising my rates from 14% annually to 27% annually. If I wanted to keep my card, I had to agree to the new rate. Otherwise, they would close my account, I wouldn't be able to make any more charges on

the card, and I would have to continue making monthly payments at my current interest rate until the card was paid off. Of course, I'd done nothing wrong to deserve this treatment from my credit card company so I called their service line. After being on hold for over two hours, I finally got to speak to a representative, and after getting nowhere with her, I had to hold for another 30 minutes to talk to her supervisor. I was basically told very rudely that I could either accept the new raid or choose to close my account. Those were my only two options. In Since, I said

fine, close it, and they did. What they didn't know was that a week prior, I transferred all the balances from my other cards, which was over $22,000 to their card. And I didn't pay a transfer fee, and I used the promotional rate of 1.9% for one year. And because of the loss at the time, they could only charge me at the rate of 1.9% until the loan was paid. So here I am 13 years later, paying the absolute minimum payment I'm required to make each month. Never missing a payment and never paying late.

Otherwise their default rate of 27% would kick in. Since the inflation rate during these years has been well over 1.9%, it's like free money. I was able to pay off all my other debts with the money that I saved, and I don't even use credit cards anymore, because I've been able to save enough to live on a cash-only basis. They've tried multiple times to get me to reactivate the card or to transfer the balance to another super duper account with lots of benefits, but they've had no success. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and my balance is now down to $1,000, but at least it'll last another couple of years.

Down in the comments, a lot of people are confused about how this is free money, so I'll try to explain it very briefly. Alright, so suppose you owe the bank a hundred bucks and you have OP's interest rate, which is 1.9%, but for the sake of this explanation, let's just round it up to 2%. That means that if you make no payments at the end of the year, you're going to owe 102 dollars. However, it is super easy to beat 2% interest in the stock market. So let's suppose that instead of paying off that debt, you instead bought $100 worth of

stock. Average market returns are like 7 or 9%, so at the end of the year, you'd have about $109. Then you'd take $2 from the $9 that you made in the stock market and use it to pay the bank. So when everything's said and done, you've made $7 profit. That's just a rough example, but keep in mind that OP was dealing with $22,000, and 7% of 22k is $1,500. And with OP repeating this over 19 years, it's very reasonable to assume that OP is made like $10,000 profit off of this bank. Our next reddit post is from Drumroll, please.

Early in my career, I was working on a government project and I was assigned to validate contact information for people in the area. I would validate phone numbers, emails, house addresses, things like that. I'm still shocked that people use such ridiculous emails on government forms. Emails like BigBubyMaster69aGmail.com or SmokeBlunts420 at Hotmail were very common. One day I went to my douchebag boss to ask him about an email. All I managed to say was I'm having an issue confirming, but he caught me off saying to just send the email to him and that he'd do it himself. What my boss didn't let me say was that the email was admin at the address of very clearly

an adult website, and we had constant internet monitoring so I couldn't exactly verify that that's what it was. Also I really didn't want to. It literally had the words furry and SNM in the site name. So doing as I was told I sent my boss the email. Thanks to the thin walls in my office, my co-workers and I were treated to a loud. Oh my God! And later, we heard the phone calls from IT and HR asking him to explain himself later

that day. He eventually just told me the-he eventually just told me the email was verified. That was our slash malicious compliance, and if you like this content, be sure to follow this podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.