rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance I Cost My Landlord $$$

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

0:00 Intro 0:06 New client 2:37 Email reply 6:36 Productivity 9:19 Away 10:32 Shopping bag 12:23 Inspectors Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world for, free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca. Welcome to R-slash malicious compliance, where OP deals with a Karen. Our next Reddit post is from Best Pirates. Yesterday, I had a new client who was referred to me and booked a 90-minute mobile massage. She was very specific over text

before I even showed up. She told me exactly what she wanted. Deep tissue only. Focus on her upper back, shoulders, and neck. Do not check in with me at all. I I hate when therapists keep asking if the pressure is okay. Just do the work. I do not want any small talk either. Just quiet. When the time's up, that's it. No free extras.

I confirmed everything back to her so there was zero confusion. She replied, Perfect. See you then. I get there, set up, and go over the same list one more time in person just to be safe. She nods and says, Yep, that's exactly what I want. Don't ask me anything once we start.

So I did exactly that. I put my headphones in to get some much-needed audiobook time, started the timer on my phone where she could see it and worked in complete silence. No check-ins, no how's the pressure, no small talk. Just the exact work she requested. Every time I felt her body tense or shift, I kept going at the same pressure she asked for. No adjustments, no questions.

When the 90 minutes hit, I stopped. Immediately. I didn't offer the free scalp massage or hot towels I normally throw in. I just said, That's time. She sat up looking annoyed and said, Wait, that was it? The pressure felt hard toward the end, and you never even checked on me.

Most therapists give a little extra time. I looked at her calmly and replied, You specifically told me not to check in, not to ask about pressure, and that when time was up, that was it with no free extras. I followed your instructions exactly. She got quiet for a second and said, Well, I didn't mean it like that. You should have known to check anyway.

I'm not tipping for that. I smiled and said, That's fine. The session is paid for already. You can get dressed and I'll be outside. She started packing up her things while muttering about how I was too rigid and not customer service oriented.

I just kept packing my stuff in silence the same way she had requested the entire session. I have never felt more at peace ending a session. Was I supposed to ignore the very clear rules she set and somehow read her mind instead? No, Opie, I think you're only supposed to, solution to this is the first time you get this text message just understand, okay, I'm dealing with a Karen, there's literally no way I can make her happy and there's no way I'm getting

tipped. I just accept that fact and move on with my life. Our next Reddit post is from ITN. So this is from a while back on one of my old jobs as a systems analyst. This was during the height of the pandemic, so we were all work from home at the time. I worked as a non-exempt employee, meaning I did my 40 hours Monday to Friday and overtime for any work over that. Our VP at the time. When we were getting ready to lug all of our stuff home once lockdown was announced, made sure to remind us that unless we were exempt, we were not to answer any work-related emails, texts or calls outside of our work hours, and said that if anyone tried to give us grief over that, to let him know. He was a good being that VP. For some background, I was the main analyst for our

systems, and I was also the main guy to reach out to for reports and things like that. Most of the folks knew how to run basic reports and export them to Excel. But the more complicated ones, I was one of probably only two in the company who knew how to really make them. Anyway, a few weeks into lockdown, a supervisor who worked at a different city, emailed me asking for a report on a Saturday morning. After not getting an answer from me, being off work that I was, they decided to call my phone instead. I ignored it the first time, but they seemed pretty determined to reach out to me

and called me a second and third time before sending me a text demanding that I stopped being unprofessional. Get on my work PC and answer their email. I decided, F it, they want to reply, I'll get them that reply. So I boot up my PC, open the email, and without running the report or anything, just hit reply and CC my VP. I wrote something along the lines of, hi supervisor, per VP, I'm not supposed to be working or even answering emails on weekends.

I'm waiting for approval from the VP to run this report. I send that off and left my work PC running because I already knew there was going to be a shit storm incoming. Less than 10 minutes later, I get a separate email from my VP, telling me to hold off on the report and asking if he could call me, with him clarifying that him calling me would constitute overtime and that I'd be paid for it. Well, I wasn't doing anything that day anyway, so I tell him to go ahead, and he called me up asking what this report was about and if I'd already started working on it. I told him not yet, but that supervisor seemed pretty pressed about receiving it as soon as possible. He asked if the supervisor reached out to me on my phone, and I confirmed.

He asked me to send him texts and to not worry about running the report, then told me to turn off my PC and enjoy the rest of my weekend. Monday morning, I opened my PC to a sternly written email from VP sent to all supervisors, with me in CC, terestly reminding everyone that I was non-exempt, and that under no circumstances was anyone to reach out to me outside of my working hours, and that if they needed anything to reach out to him first. And he would determine if it was important enough to have me do it outside of normal business hours.

Come next payday, I did see an additional three hours of overtime on my paycheck, which was nice, because the entire thing only happened over an hour or so. After that, no one ever tried calling me outside of work hours. After that, no one ever tried calling me outside of working hours. Only my VP did, and only ever under extenuating circumstances. and every time he always made sure that I was paid at least two hours of overtime each time, even if it was just a report that took me like 30 minutes to run. As for the supervisor, they didn't get fired,

but from what I heard from the grapevine was that they got a pretty nasty dressing down from the VP over their behavior. And sure enough, on one of our weekly Zoom calls that week, they looked really subdued and avoided speaking to me directly the entire time. You know, a thought occurred to me. I read many stories about a toxic middle manager who flexes his power on his underlings and makes their life miserable. But if a VP is like that and he loves flexing his power on toxic middle management, does that make him a good boss?

Or does he get lumped in with all the bad bosses? Our next Reddit post is from Keyboard Bastard. I once worked as the IT guy for an HR company where the founder and president became convinced that the sales call center was wasting too much time on the internet. These were already the lowest paid people in the company, but apparently the solution to that problem was finding reasons to pay them even less. In order to not single out any one department, he wanted browser history reporting on everyone in the company, so managers and HR could review it during weekly performance meetings.

So I complied. I wrote a scheduled task that scraped browser history from every Windows machine on the company domain, stored it centrally and fed it into a management portal along with, with the employees information. The first reports came in. The call center employees were surprisingly boring. Sure, there was Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, and the occasional person apparently conducting extensive research into things that definitely weren't part of their job. But overall, they were pretty tame. Then HR started looking at everyone else's reports. That's when things got interesting. The browsing history of the founder, owner, and president were absolutely

spectacular. So much adult content. Like the man has a sickness level. And while I wasn't particularly surprised, I had worked on his home computer before and already knew about his rather enthusiastic browsing habits. I had never expected to see it neatly categorized in the same productivity dashboard he demanded for his employees. A few days later, HR asked me if I could exclude certain people from the reports. I asked, too. They gave me a list. The president was at the top. Funny how quickly the company's commitment to objective productivity metrics disappeared when the metrics became objective. Also down in the comments, we have this story from Andy of Ney. I worked in a doctor's office some years back. The docs

and the office manager were concerned about how much time people were wasting on the internet. I set up a web filter and started collecting data. When I showed my boss how much MySpace and Facebook activity was taking place, he told me to block those websites. It wasn't even four hours later, and he called me to tell me to block those websites for everyone except the doctors. When I provided the next report a few weeks later, the social media activity was nearly at the same level as when the other 60 non-doctors had access. My conclusion was, either the doctors were spending all their time on social media, or their nurses and personal assistants were just using the doctor's computer login to access the web. So that was a pretty short-lived project. Our next Reddit post is from Keyboard

Bastard. A few years ago, I was working remotely as a fancy IT guy and developer at a tech company. Within the first couple of months, I'd automated so much of my workload that I legit had almost nothing left to do most days. Everything that could be scripted, monitored, or scheduled was. One morning, my manager messaged me. We've noticed your Microsoft Teams keeps going to away every 20 minutes. This shouldn't be happening if you're at your desk working. Fair enough. I replied, Understood, my teams will never go away again. And I meant it. Instead of arguing, I spent about 40 minutes writing a PowerShell script that launched a harmless train of processes every few minutes, like mouse clicking, alt-tapping, and it simulated just enough activity to keep my

status green. I set this to repeat every time. 10 minutes. I tested it. I was available. Five minutes later, still available. An hour later, still available. I grabbed my backpack, walked out of Starbucks, and spent the rest of the afternoon and every afternoon thereafter hiking. My team status never went away again. The next time I heard for my boss, he was once again reviewing status times and thanked me for my dedication. Our next Reddit post is from Abject Dad. It was fall a few years back and I just bought my house, so I wanted to decorate. I ran to the Ross that's right down the road and grabbed a cart and started shopping. Right away, I noticed I was being not so subtly watched and followed by a certain employee.

I did try to approach and ask a question, but when I got closed, they took off to another section. But as I continued to shop, I would notice they weren't too far away. When I get to checkout and load everything from the cart up, I notice I probably spent around 500 bucks on clothes and decorations. I noticed that the employee was waiting at the end of the checkout section, but I didn't think anything of it. After I already paid in everything, this employee tells me they've been watching me and wanted me to dump my purse out. It was a tiny handbag that fit a wallet and keys. I laughed and asked if they were serious considering I just bought so much stuff. They said if they didn't, they would call the cops. So I emptied it in front

of the employee and the security guard, and all that was in there was my wallet and keys. After I put the items back in my purse, I looked at the employee and said, take me to the returns because I'm returning everything I bought here today. They tried to backpedal and say it wasn't needed, but I said, neither was stalking a customer and accusing them of stealing. So you can either return this stuff now, or I'll make a scene and go to corporate. They said that this would look bad on the store for having a massive return. I reiterated, that's the consequences.

They returned everything very begrudgingly, but I have yet to set my foot in the store since. This comment from Odang Raptor, This would look bad in the store for having such a massive return. Yeah, that's the point. Right, you want to accuse me of a crime and also take my money? Not a chance, I'll take my money elsewhere. Our next Reddit post is from Numerous Hawk.

The company that owns my building emailed us that inspectors were coming by to look at our apartments, because there was possible structural damage from a recent storm. They told us that we had to let them in. It was mandatory and that we should cooperate with them. I tried to email back to ask when roughly today they'd be by and who'd be entering the apartment because it was possible I wouldn't be home. But the email was sent from an account that doesn't accept replies.

The inspector came by earlier, but it turns out they weren't inspecting the apartments for storm damage specifically. but looking at the general condition of the apartments because they represent a company looking to buy the building. I cooperated fully and answered all their questions, which included telling them how the fire alarm system goes off randomly and did four times in the first two weeks I was there, how there are electrical issues that cause one of my lights and my microwave to randomly stop functioning. How the walls are so thin that I can hear the subway and the people at the bar a few buildings down and my neighbor. They also asked me about my general experience here, and I told them that I'm leaving the day my lease is up, and that I could never imagine someone living in this building longer than their one-year lease, if that long.

I included that when I raised the possibility of moving out in my first month, the current owners offered to give me all my money back, including application fees, so that they were most likely used to people moving in and abruptly moving out. It was pretty satisfying to watch the lead guy's wheels turn. as he most likely lowered the build for the building in his mind. I don't think it was all me because talking to the tenants there must have involved a lot of negative comments. But I'm glad for the role I played in it because the current owners are terrible. 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. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.ca.ca.