rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance I Tricked Karen into Paying for Our $6,000 Party!

Episode Date: July 29, 2022

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So this whole thing started when I got an email from a VP who did not manage my departments. We'll call him Bad VP. He told me in the email that my team would be required to work on July 4th. I politely told Bad VP that our team had been scheduled to stay off and that people already had plans. My team is the IT team and as many of you know, IT teams always get shafted every time they can get shafted by every company. So over the course of the week, I let my team know what was happening. I let them know that I've been reaching out to higher ups to fix it.

I also tell them that if their plans are ruined, I will make it right at work. Over the course of three meetings, it starts to look like things will not go my way. In response, I sent an email to this CEO of the company. All of my higher ups knew that I was going to do this, and said that I should do this, because our CEO is very family oriented, and he said that he wouldn't allow anyone to work on a national holiday. Well, he was on vacation in the Bahamas until the 6th. His assistant told me that he would take a look at this after he got back.

This made me want to slam my head into the desk, so I told everyone that we could work from home on that day, and that we would be setting my cell phone as priority in the call routing. This meant that I would receive most of the calls. To be honest, I was expecting almost zero calls, especially since I was asked to send out a notification that IT support would cover on the 4th of July, but I never sent that email out. A day later, I was given another outrage.

I was told in an email that my employees would be required to be at the office, and no one was allowed to work from home. They would be checking the door badge ends to verify that we were in the office. I asked why in an email, and they said they wanted to make sure that no one was playing video games at work. We normally work from home like two thirds of the week, and video game playing is a normal occurrence at work. So I walked to the Bad VPs office. After a very long conversation where she was losing the logic war with me, she told me, it's just IT, you guys don't have lives. No, I'm not kidding you, this is exactly what she told me. I reported this to my manager who said, I'll take care of this. It likely won't be until after the fourth, so get creative. I know this man well.

We've worked together for a long time, and get creative is code for corporate BS. I asked the person requiring us to be at the office if they cared if we had an office party. She said no, as long as it doesn't interfere with the call flow. She even suggested using my new company card to pay for it. Go wild, she told me. Pro tip, never tell me to go wild. At this point, it was Tuesday the 21st.

I let all my employees know what's going on, but that I have something planned. I asked to had planned things for that day. Two people told me they were planning to shoot off fireworks with a family, but the rest were planning barbecues with friends. I write an email to the VP over my department as well as the bad VP. I tell both of them that I let my employees know they had to come in that day. We were all expected to work until 8 p.m. on that Monday. Also, as per the conversation that I had with the bad VP, I would be having an office party as a sort of apology to the guys and girls who got shafted by that decision. The bad VP, I would be having an office party as a sort of apology to the guys and girls who got shafted by that decision.

The bad VP replied again. Thank you for your understanding. Also, yes, I would expect an office party if I had to work on the 4th of July as well. So go wild and enjoy your time. Use your new company credit card if you need to cover a few expenses. Also, I shouldn't have to remind you or anyone else, but no fireworks are alcohol on company property. So now's the time to tell you about my office. You see, a while back, the IT team was moved out of the main corporation office and into a smaller building by itself. It has a nice

gaming break room, a decent sized gym, and a full-on drink bar. Soft drinks, mind you. No alcohol at work. Outback is a big patio that crosses county lines as soon as you cross a small creek. A creek that just so happens to have a footbridge over it, leading to an empty field. I start making phone calls. Days later, I call up everyone into an hour early meeting that morning. I explain to them that I would be making everything right. I asked everyone to invite their friends and family to the office. No supplies would need to be bought by anyone. I tell everyone that this would be a non-alcoholic event, but that

I would still be planning something for everyone. I told them to expect that all food would be provided and they don't need to bring anything unless they want to bring some fireworks. That is, they won't have to spend a dime. The Fourth of July comes, and for the entire day we did absolutely no work. No tickets, no calls, nothing. Well, seven calls did come in, but they were from the same person, the bad VP. She was calling to make sure that we were meaning the phones. All of us were playing video games or watching movies.

6 pm rolls around, and everyone was told that the food was ready. People were expecting hot dogs, hamburgers, maybe a bratwurst or two. What they got was a full on barbecue feast with pizza and other foods. There was smoked brisket, spare ribs, smoked sausage, smoked turkey, both kinds of potato salad, coleslaw, green beans with bacon and onion, potatoes all gratin, pizza from two different places. Excellent hamburgers and brought worst hot dogs. On the dessert side was cake, very good cookies, four different kinds of pies, and about two pounds of fudge.

Families and friends showed up at around 6 p.m. Some people brought alcohol, but I told them they would need to leave that in their cars because I wasn't that crazy. Some people weren't happy about that, but they agreed because it was a free dinner for random strangers. So let me set the scene for you. I'm out on the patio with all calls routed to my cell phone and

everyone's just having a good time. We have a ton of people there just enjoying the fun night chatting about random stuff, eating the food, and occasionally lighting off some sparklers or throwing some firecrackers into the stream. My VP, not the bad VP, mind you, showed up with this family and brought some water balloons for the kids, and the man children. Around 8.30 pm, it's getting dark, and people want to shoot off more than simple sparklers and firecrackers that we'd been using. RVP had everyone cross the footbridge over the county line and off company property

and we set up a big wooden board using it as our launch pad. We fired off what fireworks we had for an hour or two and sort of just hang out for a little while. At around this time, people were tired and ready to head home. I told people to take home leftovers within reason. We all clocked out at 8 p.m. and no one left until 10.30pm.

The bad VP did call once more while we were out back at the party. It was 7.50pm and she called asking for a status update. My exact words were, well, you were the only one to call us today. The rest of us are on the back patio enjoying the 4th of July Shindig. She simply said, as long as no alcohol or fireworks are on company property, I don't care. We ate roughly half of the catered food and the rest was taken home. A small group volunteered to stay behind to clean up, including my VP. We had a funny conversation about how this would make waves with the bosses.

But he said that he would have my back and he asked me how much it cost. I just gave him a sideways look, which made him laugh. Tuesday morning, I submitted the expense report to my VP. This email would inevitably make its way over to the bad VP and up the chain to the Chief Information Officer of the company. I'm not going to tell you the exact cost of this party, but I can tell you that because of this party, new rules were put in place. Any expenses over $4,000 must be approved

by the direct supervisor, the VP over the department, and the full expense report must be sent to the financial department for review after the fact. Okay, I'll give you a hint. The party cost over $6,000. The barbecue was the most expensive part. I didn't order from a low or mid-tier place. The place that I ordered from has consistently been

on the top 10 in the DFW listing for the last 30 years. I ate at that place so much that I made friends with the owner. It's the best barbecue that I've ever had. The pies and cakes were custom made by a bakery, and the cookies were made by a boutique cookie place. I had 10, 12 packs of Coke, Coke Zero, Dr. Pepper, Dr. Pepper Zero, Pepsi and Pepsi Zero. I bought 5 pepperoni, 5 sausage, 5 cheese, 2 Hawaiian, and 3 cheeseburger pizzas from one place, and nearly the same number from another place. The burgers were from

an excellent burger place it did catering. I know that owner well. That owner actually brought his own kids for a night of fun after he heard what I was doing. He was the one who brought the brought dogs because he had recently added them to his menu. This was the most expensive office party in the history of the company. The only things more expensive than this were some business meetings where the CEO rented private rooms in high-end restaurants.

As for the CEO, he was outraged. Not at the cost of the party, mind you. He knew the party wouldn't have been necessary if the people had been allowed to go home. He was outraged that IT was the only group required to work on that day. When I submitted the log showing that we received no real phone calls, no service requests,

and that basically we just watched movies and played video games during our shift, he had heard enough. He sent out a scathing email about work-life balance and the importance of our holidays to every upper management. It was kinda funny because some people wanted me to get in trouble for what I did, but the reality is other departments have done similar things in the past, just not on the scale that I did.

The bad VP was admonished and she sent me an apology email. I forwarded the email to my team with a strong hint to not reply. Then my VP let the CEO know what the bad VP had said. How she said, you guys don't have lives. The bad VP actually confirmed that she said that. That did not go over well. I have never heard people yelling in an office meeting like that before. The CEO of the company came to our office and yelled at her. I'm not sure if she was fired but she was not at work today. I do know that because of her

attitude she lost whatever clout that she had at this company. If anything more happens, I'll post an update. But so far, it looks like the fallout from this is that I caused a new rule to be put in place about how much you're allowed to spend at one time. The bad VP may or may not be forced to resign. I know that she got yelled at. Strangely, there's now no longer any pushback from my bid to get everyone back to working from home. Well, clearly, this bad VP isn't a fan of R-slash, because if she were, she would know to never, ever mess with the IT people. Our next Reddit post is from Priority. Our institution of about 2,000 staff had yearly dinner and

dance events. This was pre-COVID, of course. This is an educational institution where most of us are either teachers or administrators. I am part of a small group of teachers and staff at this institution that formed our own staff rock band. We're usually given a 30-minute performance slide at previous dinner and dances, thus we were invited to perform again for an upcoming one. The theme for that year was Superheroes. Our Mary Little Band came up with a full set list of songs, which included songs like Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler. We threw in Creep by Radiohead because we wanted a song to slow the pace down midway through our sets. None of us even considered that Creep was an

inappropriate song on stage. So now, let me introduce the antagonist of this story. I'll call him Ash. He was the main staff coordinator for the entire dinner and dance event, a role that was bestowed on up and coming staff who show potential for leadership positions. Ash and his committee were the ones who came up with the superheroes theme

and would oversee everything for the event, including our little 30 minute performance. Before this event, none of us in the band knew Ash well at all. He was a bit of a loner, and as we would soon discover, he also took his religion and values really seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he had no qualms claiming jurisdiction

over the whole event due to his values. We had given the event committee our song set two months before the event, after which we began rehearsing an earnest. No committee member said anything during those two months about the songs they wanted removed. At our last rehearsal before the event, Ashtas cited to drop into our rehearsal. Midway through our set, as we began to play creep, he suddenly raised his hand to object and said,

STOP, STOP, STOP! I'm removing this song from your set list. You can't play that song. We were stunned. This was two days before the show, and we had sunken dozens of hours of rehearsal by this point. Why, we asked. I read the lyrics of this song, the spirit of the song is offensive.

It has the wrong values for an educational institution such as ours, we protested. Some of our band members were very religious themselves and they saw no problem with this song, but he wouldn't budge an inch. You are not playing creep on stage. I'm going to escalate this to the deputy principal. The band members were fuming at this point, regardless of religion, but the band leader made the call. Okay, okay, we can't play this song on stage, right?

Then we won't. And just to be sure, this is a superhero themed event, right? And your committee is encouraging all attendees to come dress as superheroes, am I correct? Yes, he replied. And especially so for performers, so we're expecting your band to come dressed as superheroes to fit our theme. Cue malicious compliance. The day of the dinner dance comes around, and over a thousand colleagues showed up, some dressed in Superman t-shirts, some as Wonder Woman, and one person even in a full Deadpool costume.

But none of them grabbed as much attention as one very tall, very liggy, very conspicuous Sailor Moon. This Sailor Moon had a tight-fitting sailor uniform, a slim waist and a generous bosom, an extremely short skirt and a wig. It was none other than our band leader. Who, by the way, is a 40-year-old guy wearing a padded bra? Ash was livid. But since Sailor Moon was grabbing so much attention with so many folks clamoring to have photos taken with her,

Ash didn't want to spoil his own party by telling her to take it off. At one point, even the deputy principal grabbed a photo with Sailor Moon. The 30-minute performance was decent. We made a few mistakes here and there, but none of us are professionals and the crowd enjoyed it anyway. Sailor Moon, our bassist, was head-banging and swinging her wig wildly to the finale of holding out for a hero, ensuring that everyone had their eyes on her.

Naturally, there was a costume competition, and it was clear from the start that Sailor Moon was going to be nominated and destroy the competition. But Sailor Moon did something that none of us expected. When the events MC asked her why she chose to come as Sailor Moon and the entire event hall was focused on her, curious to hear her answer. She didn't answer, but instead started to sing. She sang out the lyrics of Creep, but I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here, I don't belong here. The crowd cheered and applauded, but no other table at the event was so overjoyed as the staff band table, who understood the deeper meaning behind what the band

leader just did. It's been a few years since that event, and we're not sure if Ash got the promotion that he was seeking. He was such a loner that nobody really saw him that much. Thus nobody talked about him either. The band leader, on the other hand, became a legend. He was once at a meeting where the folks across from him said that he looked very familiar, like they had seen him before somewhere. Then somebody suddenly burst out, you're a sailor moon, you're that sailor moon! They didn't even know his name.

Then down in the comments, Jazz Han says, not all heroes wear capes, some wear padded bras. That was our slashash Milicious Compliance, and if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.