rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance I Tricked Bullies into Failing

Episode Date: October 26, 2025

0:00 Intro 0:07 Server 2:25 Time sheets 4:14 Fire department 7:54 Group project 11:04 Refund policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here.

Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at OnePeloton.C.A. Welcome to R-slash Malicious Compliance, where Karen learns an important lesson. Our next Reddit post is from Illustrious Report. I used to work IT at a mid-sized logistics company.

Our warehouse ran 24-7, but the corporate office was open Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. I was responsible for maintaining the internal server that handled everything from payroll to inventory management to shipping labels. One Monday morning, I got an email from a higher up, Karen, demanding that we take the server offline immediately for scheduled maintenance. Now, I had scheduled that maintenance for Sunday evening, sent out three notices, and got no objections. But Karen hadn't read those emails and was now insisting we do it right now during her working hours. I replied that taking the server offline during business hours would temporarily halt access to the shipping system, inventory, time tracking, and payroll. Please confirm if you'd like me to proceed. She replied, and I quote,

Yes, you should be working on my schedule. Get it done now. All right, malicious compliance time. I looped in the warehouse manager and let him know the system would be down per Karen's urgent request. Then I pulled the plug at exactly 10.30 a.m. Within 15 minutes, the office was in chaos. No one could clock in or out, print labels, track shipments, or even check inventory levels. Phones were ringing off the hook. The chief financial officer stormed into my office asking what the hell was going on. I just showed him the email thread. Less than 30 minutes later, Karen came to my office, red-faced and yelling. I calmly pointed out that she had approved the server downtime, in writing, despite warnings. I offered to restore access early, but I reminded her that it would

take time to reboot and check for errors from the forced shutdown. Was there fallout? Oh yes. She got dragged into a meeting with the chief operations officer and chief technical officer that afternoon. From what I heard, it didn't go well for her. After that, all urgent IT requests from management had to go through a change management process with multiple approvals. I also also got a little bonus on my next paycheck for handling the outage with professionalism. Sometimes, the best way to teach someone why we have procedures is to let them break one once. Our next credit post is from Joey Jojo. At our work, timesheets have to be filled in every fortnight on a Friday by close of business to be processed first thing Monday morning.

Our manager was a really chill woman who would sign off on timesheets Friday morning and then send them to payroll before 5 p.m. She went on leave because her daughter was having a and we got some young dude to temporarily fill in his manager. This guy was a total D-bag. One of the things he did was insist we complete timesheets only after we'd worked our fortnightly hours. This meant that we had to work until 5, then get our timesheet signed, and then get them to payroll. Except payroll closes at 5, which meant we wouldn't get our timesheets to payroll until Monday morning, and they'd be processed late.

So we decided we'd take our time filling in timesheets. A lot of us hang around chatting on a Friday because there's a bar across the road that does cheap drinks 6 to 7 p.m. So we'd leisurely do our time sheets and the doucheback manager would have to hang around and sign them all. One week, we didn't give them to him until right before 6 p.m. He was pissed. This lasted about six weeks.

I guess something got flagged somewhere that our whole department wasn't getting pissed. paid on time. D-back manager was quickly identified as the culprit and given the boot. They ended up getting one of my coworkers to take over until our real manager came back. Okay, down in the comments, the top reply was the first thing I thought. Surely you added the hour overtime you spent to fill out the timesheet on your time sheet, right? O.P. replies, oh yes, and he had to approve the overtime as well. which means O.P.'s boss paid O.P. to piss off his boss. Our next Reddit post is from ProFriends Owner.

I worked in retail in between jobs way back in the early 90s. Yeah, I'm old. Get off my lawn. It was December, and I was working for a major department store that's no longer around. I know that doesn't narrow it down. Anyways, they tried to cram as much product on the floor as possible, to the point that you couldn't walk through the aisles and had to twist and turn to get past the pictures set up with product. I casually mentioned to a supervisor that if the fire department ever came in, they would close us down for hazards and lack of egress. She was highly stressed

and blurted out to me. You know what? Then call the fire department. I held up my hands and said, Easy. She assigned me my duties, and that was that. Well, she did tell me to call them. On the way home, I stopped by a government building that had all sorts of agencies in it. I told the receptionist my plight and she pointed to a phone on the wall. I tell the operator I want the fire department and they would patch me through to the station's non-emergency line. The fire chief himself answered. I told him how crowded it was at the store and what the supervisor said. He had a good laugh and said they'd check it out. I was off the next day, but I heard about it when I got back. The fire chief and a station house full of firefighters show up to do an inspection. The fire chief tells the store

manager that egress is being blocked, and he'd have to remove a lot of the fixtures in the aisles. The store manager says that he has orders from corporate, so the fixture stay. The fire chief assures him that he will win the argument. The store manager stands his ground. The fire chief says, all right, boys, close them down. They evacuated the store, all three levels, and closed the entrances in December, prime Christmas shopping season. Although it wasn't a week. weekend day. It was during the week, but still, the store manager tried to protest and suddenly the sheriff's department start showing up. Long story short, they were closed for five and a half hours while the chief, store manager, and employees rearranged the store to acceptable levels.

The supervisor never treated me differently, so I'm guessing she didn't remember the conversation. The store manager, surprisingly, did not get fired by corporate, but corporate wasn't happy. About a week later, I'm working with the store manager and supervisor when she asks why we can't do something a certain way, and the store manager replied, the fire department won't allow that, and that was it. Down in the comments, we have a similar story from Inside Finish. Back when I was a volunteer firefighter, we had an issue with a recurring alarm at a large home improvement store. It was always canceled three to four minutes after dispatch, no matter what hour of the day or night. It was getting old.

I asked the chief if anything could be done. An hour later, we got dispatched there again. The chief radioed, send every truck we can. So we emptied the station and made quite a presence in the parking lot. The head cashier came out angry. We canceled you. The chief said, nope, you asked us to cancel. The chief then threatened that the next time it happened,

we'd need to evacuate the store while we did an investigation. He turned to the one guy who could be a great ally when needed and said, Hey, Bill, how long do you think that would take? Oh, three or four hours, probably. Obviously, that was the last time we went there for an alarm. My mom spent most of her life working as a county administrator for this county or that county, and she told me that one thing you never mess with is the local fire marshal slash fire chief, because they have total unrestricted power to shut down your business, and there's basically nothing you can do about it. Our next Reddit post is from Where's My Chin? In high school, I was in a

science class that I did very well in. I was top of the class and scored nearly 100% on every test and assignment. The teacher assigned a big group project that would take about a week to complete with a team of four students. Groups were randomly assigned, and unfortunately, I was paired up with three kids who were barely passing the class. In class, we were given time to make plans together as a group to divide up work, examine the instructions, schedule times outside of school to meet up, etc. It was at this point that my teammates decided to tell me that they weren't going to do any work on the project. I asked why, and they said they knew that I really cared about my grade, so they figured I would do it on my own. They were so lazy, they were banking on the

fact that I wouldn't tank my own grade, so they could benefit off my hard work when I inevitably got a good score on the project. I got pissed and said that was unfair. They dug in and said, Too bad. Now you either do this project yourself or you'll get a zero percent. Q malicious compliance. Now, I could have gone to the teacher and he probably would have sorted this out, but a better idea struck me. So I said, fine, you win. I'll do what you say. They smiled smugly and thought that was that. But you see, this teacher had a policy that at the end of the semester, your lowest grade, excluding finals, would be taken off your record. So if you forgot to turn in an assignment or did really bad on one test, you got a mulligan so it wouldn't ruin

your final grade. I had never done poorly on an assignment all year, so I never needed my mulligan. However, I knew that these turds all did. If they got a big fat zero on a crucial assignment, they would probably fail the class. So I did exactly as they instructed. I did no work on the project all week. I just sat on it and bided my time. At the beginning of the next week, all the students turned in their assignments. My team watched as I sat in my chair, unmoving. Finally, one said, hey, O.P., aren't you going to turn in the project? I said, oh, I didn't do the project. They were shocked and asked why the hell I didn't do it. You said, do all the work or get a 0%. I choose 0%. They were all royally pissed. They all had to do

credit recovery over the summer. They hated my guts. But I couldn't have cared. But I couldn't have cared less. It was the most satisfying failing grade of my entire life. Then another story in the comments from Sunfire Alpha. I've done this before even without the mulligan. I just ate the zero. I was written up and sent to the principal. The principal said, you'll get a zero. I replied, that's fine. I'll take a zero. I have straight A's in the class. I don't care. He says, go back to class and take your zero then. I got a zero. The rest of the group also got a zero. They failed the class and had to repeat it because that zero dropped their already low grades below the cutoff. I got an A in the class anyways because I A-st all the tests.

Our next Reddit post is from Greens. So my Spotify premium renewed today because I forgot to cancel. I immediately checked the refund policy online and I confirmed that I was eligible, so I canceled the plan, literally within minutes, and hopped on support chat to ask for a refund. Seemed simple, right? Wrong. The agent, Christina, gave me the classic runaround. She said the 14-day refund period only applies to your initial sign-up,

and since I'd been a member for months, I was out of luck. She even sent me a link to the policy to prove her point, telling me to read it. This is where the malicious compliance comes in. I did exactly what she said. I read the policy, and then I went deeper and found their full legally binding terms of use. And what did I find? And in Section 3, under withdrawal right, it clearly states you have 14 days after your purchase to withdraw for any reason. A monthly renewal is a new purchase.

My own research before the chat was correct. I went back to Christina and quoted the terms of use directly. She put me on hold to check backstage, then came back with the same denial. Her team was doubling down on the incorrect script. So I played my final card. I sent this message. Since this dispute is specifically about the legal interpretation of the withdrawal right in your terms of use, could you please provide the contact information for Spotify's legal department or the appropriate office for handling formal contractual disputes?

The change was instant. Suddenly, she had to see what she could do. Five minutes later, I've managed to ask some support with our backstage team, and we can go ahead and process a refund for you. They folded like a cheap suit. Their business model counts on you giving up. Don't. You're entitled to your money back. Down in the comments, we have this story from Aluminatus Prime.

Every business model for a subscription service counts on you giving up on requesting cancellations or refunds. My friend tried to cancel his gym membership by phone, but was told he had to make the request in person. So he went in person, and the person behind the counter told him he needed to mail a certified letter. The certified letter came back with directions to call their helpline. My friend had set up an auto pay from a credit union account. His next step was to simply close that account. His gym membership was eventually canceled for non-payment. That was our slash malicious compliance.

And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast. 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.