rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance Landlord Wants Me to Report Him... So I Did!

Episode Date: October 3, 2026

0:00 Intro 0:08 Office only 3:40 Dear landlord 7:32 Appliances 9:48 At your desks 12:32 Biking Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm Mike Barronholz. On my new show, Funny You Ask, Trivia starts the conversation, and then things immediately go off the rails. I ask a question. My guests think they know the answer. Sometimes they do. More often, they do not. And then the conversation takes a turn. One trivia question turns into stories about career highs, painful bombs, and behind-the-scenes moments that probably should have remained private.

You'll hear confidence, misplaced confidence, bold guesses, wrong answers, quick laughs, and the Slow realization that maybe this was a bad idea to say out loud. If you like smart comedy, sharp conversations, and trivia that exists purely to melt people's brains, this is Funny You Ask with me, Ike Barrenholtz. Follow Funny You Ask with Ike Barrenholtz on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to R-slash malicious compliance, where OP gets his scummy landlord into big trouble. Our next credit post is from Cinnamon Moon. I work as a senior database administrator for a mid-sized tech company.

When 2020 hit, our entire department went remote. We crushed our metrics, rolled out major infrastructure upgrades ahead of schedule, and saved the company a fortune in operational costs. For six years, my setup worked like a charm. Then a new VP of operations was hired. This guy was a classic butts in seats manager. Two weeks ago, he sent out an all-hands-eats. declaring that to foster collaboration, all remote exceptions were revoked.

Everyone had to report to the office full-time starting Monday. I emailed him directly to explain my situation. I live three hours away from headquarters. This was a setup approved by my former director years ago. I pointed out my performance reviews and asked if we could compromise on a hybrid schedule. He replied, The mandate applies to everyone. You're expected to perform your duties from.

the office starting Monday. I was furious, but then I remembered my employment contract. I dug up the original remote work addendum that I signed back in 2020. It stated, the employee agrees to perform all official duties from the designated primary office space. Any change to the employee's primary office location must be submitted in writing and approved by HR. Right below that was the form that I filled out in 2020, formally changing my designated primary office location from headquarters to My Home. HR had signed off on it, stamp and all. My home was officially reclassified as my company approved office location. Technically, my home office was the office. So on Monday morning, I didn't get in my car. At 8.54 a.m., I walked 10 feet from my bedroom to my desk,

booted up my rig, and logged into Slack. At 9.17 a.m., the VP messaged me. You around? You around? we have a standard 9 a.m. start today. Yep, I'm logged in and good to go. I mean at headquarters. I sawed by the fourth floor and your desk is empty. Oh, I'm working from the office today. What's? What office? My official primary office location on record is such and such address, my home. Per my 2020 HR agreement, this is my designated workspace. The VP doesn't respond for a minute, then replies, that's not how this works, OP. This policy means, headquarters, you need to be here tomorrow. I'm just following the written contract on file. I attach the signed location form here so that you can have it. He didn't reply after that. Around 3 p.m.,

I got a mass automated email from HR with the subject line. Update regarding remote work designations. The body was standard, dry corporate speak, saying they were currently reviewing all legacy remote contracts, and that existing designated locations would remember. valid pending individual review. Translation, the VP ran to HR to complain, HR took one look at my contract, realized forced location would trigger a mess of legal headaches and stipend requirements, and told them to back off for now. My home office remains open for business. You know, if it weren't for stories that started and then a new manager got hired, I don't know if I would have enough content to make a channel, because I feel like, I don't know, 40 to 60% of all stories start

that way? Our next Reddit post is from October flavor. A few months ago, I noticed the paint on the ceiling in our bathroom was starting to peel in our new apartment. In general, asking my landlord to address things hasn't gone as smoothly as I would like, and this was no different. The paint got progressively worse, until it was falling in bits and pieces on the floor. It's like the ventilation fan doesn't really do anything, and the moisture is making the new paint come off in huge chunks. I've had a lot of bad landlords thanks to the slumlord issue in my city so I have a pretty good handle

on what my landlord is supposed to do when something like this needs to get done. I'm not dealing with a slumlord though. Just an out-of-state owner of the home we rent who doesn't necessarily like us bothering her. I get it. So I went ahead and took the timeline she legally has to fix the issue

21 days. Multiplyed it by three to be super patient and round it up to three months. In those three months, the contractors she said would come fail to show up a whopping six times. And she started blaming me for not being able to plan with them even after I showed her they aren't answering my calls or responding to text to confirm when they actually come and do the repairs. I work from home. The issue was not my availability to let someone into the unit. Finally, after three months and some

change, I asked her if the repairs were ever going to get done and dropped the hint that I knew the legality of these things by mentioning our city's code enforcement offices. I've used them before. They've helped tremendously and put fines on the landlord when they didn't fix things after they inspect the unit and tell them to get it together. I showed her the document from the city website that lays out the timelines for different repairs, and that she was well outside of the 21 days she was given for defective paint. Her response surprised me. She said, that's not relevant to me. File your claim with the city. I responded, oh, okay. It took about five minutes to fill out the form on the website, and about an hour before I got a call

scheduling an inspector to come out and take a look. I genuinely have no clue why a landlord would welcome one of these inspections. If you're guessing the inspector took a look around and found way more than just peeling paint that the landlord needed to fix, you would be so right. They found a fire alarm that wasn't working, took note of the garbage around the property, and found windows that were boarded up in the basement that needed to be real windows to satisfy the city's at least two real windows in basements rule, or whatever. While we were down in the basement, I figured I would ask the inspector about our breaker. A few weeks ago, my upstairs neighbor had the power go out in one of her rooms. She asked us to turn our breaker off and on to see if that would work,

and it did. The inspector told me that something like this needed to be a phone call to the utility company. Well, I can make a phone call. The electric company scheduled someone within two days to come out and take a look. And what do you know? The wires are way more mixed up than we thought. My upstairs neighbor has been paying for the basement and the kitchen and the bathroom in my unit. I've been paying for the entire top floor of her apartment. I didn't know this, but it turns out that when this happens, the landlord has 21 days to have a licensed electrician come out and unscrew the wiring, before the entire electrical bill for both apartments legally goes into the landlord's name. All I needed was the peeling paint fixed. But now, I'm going to enjoy living in a unit that's entirely

100% up to code and maybe save some money in the process. Sounds good to me. Well, OP, clearly she did not welcomed the inspections. She just assumed that you weren't actually going to call her bluff. Our next Reddit post is from Oz the Me. Several years ago, we rented a nice house in a nice neighborhood. It came with a laundry room, complete with a very premium washer and a gas dryer. After about a month, the dryer burned a load of laundry. It actually singed and charred the clothes. I immediately took pictures and emailed the landlord to try to recoup the cost of our clothes, about 300 bucks, and have the dryer fixed. He responded, The lease is clear and does not include a washer or dryer. If those appliances are present,

they were left from a previous tenant and are not mine. I'm not responsible for anything I do not provide, which would be documented in the lease. I was pissed and paid out of pocket for the repairs and to replace the clothes. About three months later, we met a few former tenants and started talking about the house. The previous tenants actually did quite a few improvements to the home and left the home in better condition than when they moved in, and the landlord still refused to refund their deposit. A neighbor confirmed that he hasn't returned a single deposit and suggested we read the lease to the letter, because this guy was a jerk about everything. Apparently, it was a nice house because of the tenants, not the landlord. Well, fast forward 10 months to the end of our lease, and I read that

document carefully. I then listed and sold the washer and dryer. Not even two hours after we turned the keys in, I got an angry voicemail demanding we return his overpriced washer and dryer. My response was a simple reply to his email, declining his ownership of the appliances. I wrote, I received your voicemail, and I'm not sure what appliances you're referring to. As you stated, the lease clearly states there was not a washer or or dryer included, and you confirm that below. The lease also states, tenant is responsible for all reasonable costs incurred by landlord to remove, hall, store, or dispose of property left behind. He still refused to give us our deposit

for a plethora of other negligible things. But I still came out ahead because I pocketed about the same as our deposit, the repair costs, the were burnt clothes, and maybe a hundred bucks extra for my troubles. Our next Reddit post is from plain text coder. I work for mid-sized business-to-business software company. The unspoken deal was simple. We only had to work a couple of days in the office, and if a product broke at like 9 p.m. or a client panicked on a Saturday, someone fixed it from home. That work was unpaid, but nobody minded. We worked on goodwill. The new chief technology officer arrives from a much more rigid company. During his second all-hands meeting, he kills our flexible days off. He wants nine to five.

in the office, no exceptions. When we asked him about after-hour emergencies, he said, If you're not at your desk actively working, I don't consider it work. I don't care what you do at your couch at 9 p.m. Someone half jokes, so nothing outside 9 to 5 at our desks counts? He did serious, says, exactly, glad we're aligned. Oh, we're aligned. So we complied fully, literally.

Slat got muted at 5 o'clock sharp. Nobody checked emails after leaving. A project manager tried to make a phone call at 6 p.m. about some kind of issue, but he got silence until 9 a.m. the next day. Then one Friday, we send out a deploy at 452 p.m. Under the old system, somebody would have caught the issue from their phone by 5.30. Under the new system, an alert was fired at 506 p.m. Nobody was at their desk.

And per the chief technology officer himself, that meant nobody was working, so nobody looked. The problem ran the whole weekend. Our biggest client had a fully broken dashboard for 61 hours. By Monday at 9 a.m., there were 200 support tickets, a furious VP of sales, and a client using the word churn a lot. The CTO demanded to know how nobody noticed for two and a half days. Our team lead, completely deadpan, pulled up his exact quote from the all-hands meeting. If you're not at your desk actively working, I don't consider at work. Nobody was at their desk all weekend, so by his own definition, nobody was working.

Nothing to notice. I've never heard a room, go that quiet. Things got fixed pretty quickly. The hybrid work-from-home schedule quietly came back a month later as a pilot. Nobody has said, if you're not at your desk, out loud since. Turns out a lot of not real work had been holding the place together for free. Sending out a major tech update at 452 p.m. and then telling your employees not to work on the weekend is asking for a disaster. Our next Reddit post is from Vikings.

I live in a city and rather than own a car, I bike everywhere. It has its ups and downs, but for the most part, it works pretty well. I also have a small trailer for my bike, and sometimes, make grocery runs with it. Usually, when that would happen, I would lock my bike up and trailer up at a bike rack, then do my shopping like normal, and after paying, I would load my bike trailer up with the goods. Well, one day I arrived at the store, which is in one of those classic business plazas, and the bike racks were gone, all of them. Each one had been removed. There was nowhere to lock up my bike and trailer. Well, that didn't sit right with me. So I rolled my bike through the doors and into the store itself, with the trailer behind me,

and I waited at customer service. I then asked, since bike racks are no longer provided at this plaza, can I just use my trailer as a shopping cart? The manager looked down at my bike, and then, without hesitation, said, yes. Apparently, the plaza owner had decided they no longer wanted bikers using the plaza or shopping there and had removed the bike racks to discourage bikers from coming, which the store manager disagreed with. So I shopped using my trailer as a shopping cart, took it through the checkout, and then rolled out. I've since had to do this once or twice more, as other places nearby have also removed their

bike racks as property managers wage a silent war against bikers, while the city is trying to make biking more attractive. It's a minor malicious compliance, but I'm not about to leave my bike outside or stop buying food. Instead, I'll just take my bike into the business, trailer included, until they ask me to leave. 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.