rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance "I DON'T PAY YOU TO THINK!" "Ok, I won't."

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

r/Maliciouscompliance A hotshot manager thinks that he's the most important person in the factory. So when the manager catches OP thinking about a problem instead of working, the manager yells at him, "I DON'T PAY YOU THINK!" No problem, boss! OP stops problem-solving and starts doing grunt work. Well, it turns out that OP is the most experienced worker in the factory and everybody relies on him to fix machines when they break down. When OP refuses to do his work because his manager specifically told him not to, the manager suddenly ends up in a world of trouble! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best post from a cross-reddit. Today's subreddit is R-Slash malicious compliance, where students get back at their toxic vice-principal. Our next reddit post is from Executor Axon. This happened years ago when my school took us on a two-day field trip up to a hill station close to the city. All the kids on the trip were in the 6th to 8th grade. The trip was a blast, and everyone had fun. This event happened right at the end of the field trip. So our school had this weird policy where after every field trip they would gather all the students in one room and then pick out a random group of students and ask them to

say a couple of sentences about the venue and experience. This time five students were chosen and we were asked to wait in a adjacent room and come out one by one. It was all cool until the first girl went up to the mic and said, the experience was nice, but I felt that the food that was served was stale. I think if you people got sick.

As soon as the student finished speaking, the vice principal flew into a rage as she descended on this poor girl and started screaming, how do you think you are? These guys have been working super hard for us all weekend. If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all. Now the Vice Principles reaction might not make sense, but the hotel where we were staying

belonged to some relative of hers, which is probably why we were there in the first place, so she felt pretty strongly about it. The student almost started crying as she walked back to us. I was next up, so I was standing by and waiting, but the vice principal went on this long rant about being well behaved and setting a good example. I think at this point it's worth talking about one of the other kids chosen to do this pointless exercise. He was an older kid in the 8th grade, and he had an accident on the trip, so his arm

was in a sling. The accident was, I'm pretty sure, caused partly by negligence from the hotel staff, and he was fully prepared to talk about it. So the vice principal's tantrum made him especially pissed, because that same vice principal had refused to send him home early because it would cost too much. The guy grabs my arm and tells me, hey, she said don't say anything if it's not good, so don't say anything. So I went out, stood there for a few seconds and said, I don't have anything to say

and came back. Each of the other kids who went after me did the same. Then this guy went last. He goes up to the microphone, and at this point the vice principal is shouting, did you do this? Don't you dare say anything, or something like that. He said, I loved being here. I'm glad that I was able to be here even after I hurt my arm. I'll be really sad now that I have to go back to my parents and an actual doctor. The Vice Principal lost her mind at that. Most of the students were too young to really understand the sarcasm, but they definitely did start laughing at the Vice Principal.

She threatened to suspend all the students and she delayed the buses back to our town by two hours as punishment. A few days later, they called my parents in for a disciplinary hearing and the vice principal narrated the story to them. When she got to the point about the complaint from the first girl my dad said, wait, so the hotel was serving stale food? I think the vice principal kind of got shook by that because I was asked to go back to class shortly after and nothing else came of it. And OP clarified down in the comments that this happened in India where schools are much more disciplinary and in nature, so this is kind of standard behavior for teachers and

principals. Our next Reddit post is from Big Fat Baza. So recently, a customer at my work told us that they were no longer going to use us to manufacture their products for them. We felt like this was quite out of the blue because they had used us for 40 years without any problems. We got over this. However, the customer then asked us to give them the recipe for their products so they

could take it to a competitor to make for them. Now, for context, when they started using us in the 70s, they provided us with their recipe to make their product the right texture, firmness, and look just how they wanted it. Over the years, we've spent time and money finding new chemicals when certain ones have been discontinued. Altering the mix of chemicals so that the customer's product was still how they want them, and we developed the recipe further to make it more efficient and provide better results. The way that we were making the customer's product now is completely different

to how we were at the start. Because of this, my boss was unhappy with what they were asking of us. But, complying with their request, he gave them the recipe to their product, the original recipe. It's fair to say that they are not happy, and that they're going to have to spend their time and money to update it just like we have over the last 40 years. Down in the comments, we have this story from Not Sorry. I was supporting a review of a huge supply project and one of the new potential suppliers from China sent us a 50% cost savings. Naturally everyone was skeptical

so we asked for samples. Samples that they sent us in our own packaging. It turns out our American manufacturer had been buying their product from these guys for years and just switching it out from one shipping box to the other. We saved $6.5 million by identifying this little game. Of course, the American supplier had been doing it for so long that he was already rich, so... Honestly, I feel like I can't even fault the American supplier here. He saw an opportunity to exploit someone's stupidity because they didn't do their due diligence and the guy made $6.5 million off it, so props to him, I guess. Our next Reddit post is from Anzalous. To clarify a few things, this took place in Europe. I was a salary employee working 40 hours a week. I left that job about 10 months

after the event took place. I didn't get in trouble and nobody tried to fire me. So about 4 years back I started a new banking job. All was well, it's just that management was pretty strict about timekeeping, which was weird because we were all back office. But rules are rules, so I followed them. I learned all my tasks and I got to know the wider team. Anyway, about 4 months in, I started to realize that my senior manager didn't like me. I'm pretty assertive as a person, and I do know how to stand up for myself. He hated it!

I would speak up during meetings, ask questions, give suggestions, and so on, while the rest of the team would stay quiet. The week everything went south, I was working overtime, which was obviously unpaid. On Thursday, I did nearly 2 hours of overtime. So on Friday, I thought I would leave a few minutes early because I was all done for the week. My manager had already left, so I left 10 minutes early. On Monday, I came into work and I got called into a meeting straight away.

There were 3 of us in the room, myself, my manager, and my senior manager. Our conversation was as follows. My manager said, I heard you left work early on Friday. I did, I left 10 minutes early. Did you ask for permission to leave early? It was 10 minutes.

You know I did about four hours of overtime last week. Why are we even having this conversation? The senior manager said, because you left early without asking for permission. As a senior, you should be setting an example for the rest of the team. Is this a joke? You're working hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Not 9 a.m. to 5.50 p.m. You shouldn't leave early without asking for your manager or my permission first. Is that clear? Got it. Perfectly clear. So I listened and I started coming into the office at 9 a.m. and leaving at 6 p.m. on the dot. At first they didn't realize what was happening, but the week after the meeting was the last week of the month. And let's just say the last week of the month was intense, especially the final day. All of our reports had to be completed, signed off, and submitted before the month's end. We covered multiple jurisdictions, and we would deal with Southeast Asia in the morning and the Americas in the evening.

Our team was expected to work overtime due to this. So then came Friday, the last day of the month, showtime. I met my desk at 9 a.m. sharp. Most of my team has already been at the office for at least an hour. I, of course, have a cup of coffee from the cafeteria because I was a bit early. My manager looks at me and raises his eyebrow, but he doesn't say anything. I work, work, work. Break time. We had two 20 minute paid breaks and a one hour paid lunch.

I was the only person to go on my break. Lunch time. Everyone was eating at their desks while I go to meet my friends for lunch. On my second break, I once again leave my workplace and go for a short stroll. Back to work. At about 5.45pm, I get a call from one of the senior managers in the US. She needs a report to be amended. There were four people on that call. I was doing the amendments while we were talking, and I

was closely monitoring the time. I see it's two minutes away from 6pm. One minute away. Then 6pm. While the American manager was rambling about the report I said, apologies, but I have to stop you right there. Yes? It's 6 p.m. here. My day's over. Huh? Has per my management, my working hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. So I have to leave. Have a great weekend and we'll catch up on Monday. I logged off, got my coat, wished everyone a great weekend and left. It was 604 pm. Both my manager and my senior manager were dumbfounded by what was happening. They looked pale and they stared at me in disbelief.

It was a glorious sight. I wanted to apologize to my senior manager that I wasn't able to leave at 6 p.m. on the dot, but I thought that would have been way too passive-aggressive, so I just left. I relaxed a rule a bit after a few months, but still, I never did more than 30 minutes of unpaid over time. Ironically, once my stakeholders understood that I wasn't going to be available for over 10 hours a day, they started collaborating earlier in the month. As a result, I would always have most of my reports done and submitted by the last day of the month. OP, this is perfect malicious compliance because what are they going to do about it?

Fire you for refusing to work, unpaid? Pretty sure that's illegal. Our next reddit post is from Magnus 40. My company went on a cost savings kick and decided to look for ways to shave pennies. Now they could have looked at the amount of money that was being squandered by people jetting all over the country on company time at a huge hourly rate, or the number of strategizing away days that HR went on, but no, they came for the lowly engineers. When the company starts counting paperclips, you know that you're about to have some fun. We were called to a consultation session.

What that actually meant was management was gonna tell us what they decided based on what they think goes on and not what actually goes on. The session was about saving money when we rented cars. In our company, if you have to drive out of a home site, then you can use your own car and choose a mileage rate up to about a 40 mile journey. If it's longer than 40 miles, then you should hire a car. Hired cars are usually dropped off at the office by a transporter, or you can pick up one

at a hired office, or you can get a car dropped off at your home for a small fee. The travel department announced that there would be no more home drop-offs to save money. The engineers knew how this was gonna pan out, but we said nothing. The thing to know here about the travel department is they don't actually do any traveling, so none of their knowledge is from the real world. The travel department announced that,

instead, we had to pick up the rented car at the office or at the nearest rental location. It sounded simple, and all the engineers who travel a lot could instantly see the issues. But we were told this was a new policy, so we had to comply. So we did. Maliciously. I had a job where I had to work 300 miles away at a customer site. I traveled down on Monday morning starting at 6 a.m. and back up Thursday so I was home by 6 p.m. Because of the travel time I got the Friday off, I also lived a 100 mile round trip from

the office and my nearest herds office was at the airport. This was not an unusual situation and a lot of people I worked with traveled to client locations. The weekend arrived. Usually at some point over the weekend the rented car would be dropped off and the key and paperwork would be left behind in my letterbox for the small price of 14 pounds. I've been driving for a long time, but I've been driving for a long time, so I've been driving for a long time, so I've been driving for a long time, so I've been driving for a long time, so I've been driving for a long time, so I've been driving for a long time, so I've

been driving for a long time, so I've been driving for a long time, so I've been driving for S-PRO company policy and spent 35 pounds traveling 40 minutes. Then I picked up my car which took about 30 minutes and drove home for another 30 minutes. On Thursday evening, instead of hitting home and getting the car picked up on Friday, I headed straight to the airport, dropped off the car and took a taxi back. That's another 40 pounds and about 40 more minutes on the road due to busy traffic. Our expense reports are done monthly. So, by the end of the month, I have three weeks traveled to account for, which would have been three times 14 pounds, plus a small refueling charge for the trip back to the Hertz office. Instead, they got billed for 200 pounds per taxi fare and an overtime bill of about 4.5

hours at about 80 pounds per hour. And I wasn't even the only person doing this. We all put in our overtime at the end of the month. The travel department doesn't have an overtime budget, so it all got claimed from the project. The project manager went ballistic and went all flaming torches and pitchforks on the travel department. The new travel department policy didn't last the day. Our next Reddit post is from ourol, while working in a job that I've been working for 15 years. The company brought in a freshly graduated degree waving manager. If there were any problems with the production area, I was always called into troubleshoot

for them and get things moving again. The new manager, Mr. Knitwood, asked me what I was doing one day, and I told him that I was just thinking about how to resolve a reoccurring issue in production. His response was, we don't pay you to think, get back to your own job. Okay Mr. Knitwood, I'm on my way. CUME LITIOUS COMPLIENCE. Two hours later I got a call from the production supervisor asking for help because Line 6 was down again. Sorry man, call Mr. Knitwood because he's in charge and apparently I'm not paid to thank.

So Mr. Knitwood calls me into his office and he's red with anger. He informs me that I need to go sort out the issue in production. I say sorry sir but I can't do that because I don't get paid to think and I leave his office. I smile the whole way back to my own department. That production line was shut down for two whole shifts with people just standing around scratching their heads. The managing director comes to visit the next day and he wants to know why the line is off. The maintenance guy tells him that he can't understand why it won't work properly.

The director says, have OP take a look at it. The maintenance guy says that OP won't come over because apparently he's not paid to think. The managing director says, who the hell said that to him? The maintenance guy told the director that Mr. Nittwitt told him that when OP was trying to help the other day. The director calls Mr. Nittwitt to the line and tells him that I've been with the company since he founded it, and that I know more about the production facility than the people who designed it.

And what the hell are you doing telling long-term staff that they're not paid to think? The managing director calls me to ask if I can help out as a favor to him. I came over and spent five minutes realigning a couple of sensors, and the line was restarted. The managing director took me to lunch, offered me an extra $150 a week, and told me that the only person I answered to in the future is him and him only. To this day, that manager still scals whenever I see him around. That was our slash malicious compliance, and if you like this content, you can sponsor my podcast to unlock additional episodes. Also, be sure to follow my podcast because I put

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