rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance I Ruined Karen's Life with a Phone Call

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

0:00 Intro 0:06 Costs 4:00 Comment 5:23 Leaving early 8:11 Off the clock 10:35 Death in the family 12:01 Comment story 12:38 Yes chef 14:34 Overtime Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This holiday season, let's swish Shalai to the cooking so you can enjoy spending time with those you love. Their iconic festive special includes the famous quarter chicken dinner. Now with cranberry sauce, stuffing, lindor chocolates, plus a scratch and wind card, where everyone's a winner. Grab your loved ones and hurry to swish Shalai today. Visit swishshalai.ca for contest details, while supplies last. This episode is brought to you by Chambers Plan.

You won't find two businesses with the same challenges, but you will find 30,000 businesses with Chambers Plan employee benefits. They've all chosen value-added features that evolve with the times, with industry leading rate stability, so there won't be any nasty surprises come renewal. All from a not-for-profit local provider. See how Chambers Plan can benefit your business at hellochambers.ca. That's hellochambers.ca. Welcome to our slash malicious compliance, where a caron gets fired. Our next reddit post is from Ginny. So I work for a maintenance and renovation company in Finland. My work consists mainly of customer service, answering the phone and talking to customers

in person in the rare case that they show up to our office. Maybe 70% of all the calls we get are from the same few people who are impossible to please and usually very rude. The woman in this story was one of the worst people I have ever had the displeasure to deal with. She wasn't reasonable in any way whatsoever and usually just resorted to shouting at me or my coworkers. What made the matter worse is that she was the chairman of the board of her condominium,

which is in no way impressive since usually no one wants to do the job. For some reason, it still boosts the ego of some people so much that they think everyone else is beneath them. This brings us to the malicious compliance itself. The apartment building she lives in has a big garage, and it says in our contract that we have to wash it once every year. It's a pretty big job that takes two people 10 hours to do. Even then, our company washes it twice every year instead of once every year. And as a result, no one remembers that technically, we only have to wash it once a year.

About a month had passed since the last time we washed the garage and we got this phone call. I said, hello, this is company customer service, this is Jenny speaking, how may I help you? What the hell is going on here? I'm not exactly sure what you're talking about, ma'am. The Effing Garage you idiot! It's dirty and making my car dirty.

Well, the contract says that we need to wash the garage once a year and... I don't effing care about your BS excuses. It needs to be washed twice a month if you idiots can manage it. But, ma'am, that's gonna cost. I don't have any care, just get it done. And she hangs up on me. Since she did have the authority to make this kind of call, I decided to take her request seriously.

I knew that it was an absolutely ridiculous request, and it would 100% bite her in the butt at some point. I talked to my boss and he gave me the green light. I confirmed to request via email because I wanted to cover my butt and have the order and writing. Now, typically, washing a garage of this size cost about 1,000 to 1,500 euros when it's embedded inside of a bigger contract. But since this was extra work, it cost a lot more. So every month, we build them for about 5,000 euros more than usual. I don't know how it took them so long to notice, but after 3 months they

noticed their costs had dramatically increased. Obviously, many of the other buildings residents had asked us why are you washing the garage twice a month now? It was a pretty big inconvenience to them since they all had to move their cars. We just answer that it's a new policy of the chairman of the board. When the board finally noticed they contacted our CEO and me. We explain the situation and the woman tried to cause a big fuss calling us liars. I wish I could have seen her face when I sent her and the whole board a copy of the email, in which she had, with quite colorful wording, demanded us to watch the garage twice a month in writing. She wrote,

I don't care about the costs, try to effing understand. She was immediately replaced on the board, and no longer has any say about the buildings affairs. Most of the other people in the apartment building know that she's a colossal grunt. Me and my co-workers absolutely loved it! We have a statement prepared for every time she calls about something other than her own apartment. Sorry, ma'am, but we've been informed that you no longer have any say regarding the business of the apartment building. If however, you have a problem regarding your own apartment, feel free to contact us

again. This drives her absolutely insane. I'm pretty sure she's gonna murder one of us, but it is so worth it. Down in the comments, we have this story from Technos. One of my brothers, old bosses, pulled the same thing. He missed an entire afternoon of landscaping work because one of his employees drove a trailer over his foot, and by the time that he was out of his emergency, he had something like 20 pages of work waiting for him.

Every single one of those pages was just from one douchebag, president of a dinky little homer's association. When he got back to his office, his answering machine was basically the same story. Dozens of messages from the H-O-ay president, culminating in an angry message full of name-calling and demands. Mr. H-A-Way president wanted our next appointment to be free. He didn't like how long the grass was, even after it had been cut, and the ages were getting shaggy, etc.

And here's the kicker. He said, I expect you out here first thing in the morning to get everything back up to spec and I don't care if you have to have people every day of the week to keep it exactly that way. So what did my boss do? He popped the answering machine tape in a drawer and he scheduled a crew to mow and trim every single day. At the end of the month, the bill that my boss did this douchebag was $1,700 instead of $250. This made the H-O-A treasurer flip out so hard that she actually showed up to my boss's office. So, my boss played her the tape. Our next reddit post is from Can3. I was working for a small-ish company about 60 employees across several locations.

I was doing IT support for hardware and software. When I was hired just under 9 years ago, it was verbally agreed that instead of clocking any callouts is over time, I would just take the time in loop. Callouts were always minimal, and there were never any issues with me taking the time here and there to make up for it. If I ever had calls in the middle of the night, they were quickly resolved, and I had no problem getting back to sleep. This worked well for most of my entire time there. I also always started early, depending on when I left the house, gotten to the office and got my coffee. So, by the time I started work, I could start anywhere between 5 minutes and 30 minutes early. I just didn't really care,

it never bothered me. They got some free hours out of me, but I didn't really care because honestly, what else did I have to do? Overhaul, it was a great job, until it wasn't. One weekend I was working on some hardware maintenance. This was understood, approved in advance, and appreciated. The following week, I decided to take time off to compensate for those overtime hours. I still came in early, but I started leaving an hour early for my regular end time every day if there was nothing else going on. I left one hour early for the first four days. On Friday, my boss comes to me and gently says, people notice that you've been leaving early this week. I'd like to make sure you stay in your

office until you're scheduled end of day in case someone needs you. I explained to him that I was taking time off because I did overtime and he just reiterated that it looks bad to others. Seriously, you can't tell the other people that I've worked over 40 hours a week and I'm taking up early to compensate? Fine, cue the malicious compliance. I immediately submitted four hours of overtime for my remaining overtime that I hadn't taken off yet. I still showed up at the office whenever I got there, but I didn't start any work until 8 a.m. If they asked me, I would say, sure, I started 8 a.m.

If I ever got a call outside of office hours, depending on how long I spent on the issue, I logged it as overtime. A user calls me at 7 p.m. to ask a question. I answer him in 30 seconds and log one hour as overtime. A user calls me at 7 p.m. to ask a question, I answer him in 30 seconds and log one hour of overtime. When my boss then started asking, how come you're submitting all this overtime? I responded with a simple,

some people don't understand or likeny taking loo time, so I need to claim it as overtime since I'm at my desk eight to four, because I wasn't available at his back-and-call, it ended up costing them more money. 95% of my job could be done from home because of full remote access, but that stupid old-school mentality

means that people in the office need to see you at your desk all day long. I left the company very shortly after that for a much better-paying job with full work from home. Our next reddit post is from DragonfireKitten. I used to work in a trade shop run by a great boss, and everyone got along great, except for one of the department heads. Let's call them B.

For reasons unrelated to this story, the boss decided to sell the shop to B. And after that, the majority of the staff quit within months, leaving us understaffed. I naively decided to stick it out and I assumed that B would hire more people to fill the empty positions, but they didn't. We went from a 15 person company down to a 5 person company within a year, and that also includes a 6 people who turned over. One of the many, many issues that developed was B's inability to schedule or think through actions to the end and plan ahead. During the two years that I worked there under my previous boss,

I came in 10 to 15 minutes early due to the nature of my commute. I'd come in, unload my stuff, make some coffee, small talk with my coworkers, but never really started work until everyone scheduled start time. When bee took over, the moment you stepped into the shop, B immediately started barking orders at you, regardless of if you were in the building 15 to 20 minutes early. When I would point out that we technically weren't on the clock yet for another 15 to 20 minutes and I wanted to make coffee, B would just snap at me, telling me to do it right now because of some stupid reason.

So after that, I started to just wait in my car and bring in my coffee from home. I would only walk into the building as the last minute was changing. I was technically never late to work and I was ready to work the moment I stepped through the door. I don't know if B caught on but the rest of the staff did and they followed suit, especially since I told them to. For the remaining months that I lasted there, all of my co-workers would still often show

up early to work, but still wait in their vehicles. At some point, one of them had a minivan and we started just hanging out in there as a group. Anytime a new person joined, we would warn them what would happen if they came in early. It's been several years since I worked there, and I don't know any of the current staff besides B. One day, I happened to be nearby my old shop at around the time that it would open,

so I went over to the parking lot to see what was up. Like clockwork, a minute before the shop was scheduled to open, about six people got out of their vehicles and hid it in. I may not work there anymore, but it's nice to see that my resistance still exists. Our next reddit post is from see somewhere. This happened a few years ago, but I'm still salty about it. I was doing out of school care with kids.

Also at the time, my grandma's health was going downhill. I informed my work that in the near future, I would need to take some time off and drive the 12 hours to my hometown to see my family. I got a call a few weeks later that the time was coming and I needed to say my goodbyes. I told my work and at first they were fine. Then when I got to my hometown my grandmother passed away. I was very close with her and I took it very hard. My work told me I could take three

unpaid days off and I had to come back in after that. Now keep in mind this is a child care company that values religion and family. I told them that I wasn't mentally ready to come back, that I didn't want to deal with all these kids questions, and even when you try to hide your sadness, the kids know. They're so smart. So I went to a walk in clinic and explained my situation to my doctor, who was beyond pissed that she even needed to write a note for me to take time off. I told her a week should be fine. She said, I'll write you two weeks just in case. I emailed a copy of the doctor's note to my work and took the full two weeks. They were so salty after I came back.

Don't sit there and praise your amazing family values when you don't have basic human decency. Down in the comments, we have a similar story from Sailing Spark, a friend of mine worked for a religious nursing home. His grandmother lived with them. When she died, he wasn't allowed to take time off because she wasn't immediate family. His choice was to go to work or get fired. This same place went into lockdown after a snowstorm. One of the nurses lived only a block away and she had some young, like early teen to 10 year old kids at home alone. After working 48 hours straight, she wanted

to go home, get changed, and make sure her kids were okay. She was told that if she walked out the door, she would get fired. She walked. Our next reddit post is from Little Snugglet. Months ago, I was in charge of overseeing a transfer of ownership for a bakery. My primary duties were teaching the new staff how to use the equipment. Everything was going well for the most part.

The new owners were all receptive and willing to learn. Then, one day during the two week training session, the newly hired pastry chef comes in and I was asked to train him. This is where the fun begins. I said, so let me show you how to use the oven. It's imported, so it can be temperamental. The pastry chef said, I graduated from Lakwardam Blue. I don't need your help. Have you had formal training in baking? No, I haven't, and I have no doubt that you're a capable baker. However, the oven can be temperamental. I'm just here to give you tips.

I don't need your help. I've been trained to bake on many types of ovens. This is no different. I'll be fine." Okay, I understand. However, the owners have asked for a demonstration. They would like to see a batch of cookies and croissants. The ingredients are over there.

The owner said, Have you taught the new guy how to use the oven? I said, I tried to, but he said that he's fine and he doesn't need my help. Okay, let's see how he does. A few hours go by, and we come back to two batches of charcoal. The owner said,

what happened to the croissants and cookies? I don't know, I followed my recipe exactly. It must be the oven. I don't think so. The oven has been repaired and maintained. There's nothing wrong with it. Did you follow the pointers that he gave you? Of course I did. I pointed out no you didn't. If you hadn't brushed me off so quickly

then you would have learned that the oven is imported so it uses Celsius not Fahrenheit. Also the bottom burner runs a few degrees hotter than the top so you need to either use a baking sheet or double-pan the pastries to avoid this. I swear the absolute arrogance of some people are next reddit poses from Canadacian. As a unionized employee, I get every third Friday off. On one such Friday, I'm playing some video games and I get a text from my boss. I know what your day off, but whatever, it's easy to ignore his text. But then I get a second text, and after I ignore that, I get a phone call.

My boss tells me, I know what your day off, but our phones are down. I tell him, no worries, I'll handle it. We hang up and I call our phone provider. I'm the IT expert in the contact there, and this isn't my first call ever to them, so I literally have their service department saved in my phone. I call, register their problem, and they say they'll look into it. I provide them my boss's name and extension, and I tell them to call them when it's fixed. I then call my boss back to let them know that they'll

call them back ASAP. But now, for the malicious compliance bits, our contract stipulates a minimum call in a four hours, meaning that you cannot pay me less than four hours for one day's work. If you call me in for one hour and send me home, I get four hours of pay. But wait, there's more! We also have an overtime clause that pays overtime at 150%. And lastly, we have a clause that says all overtime must be approved by the boss. Otherwise, I get free vacation time. Combine all that into a delightful batch, and from a 10 minute phone call, I get 6 hours in bank time off. I went right back to my video games, filled out my time sheet the week after, and I wrote down that I know what your day off, but implies consent for over time.

So, I get almost an entire day off at Exchange for a 10 minute phone call. Thank you very much. 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.