rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance My Boss Fired Me, Then Nearly Went Out of Business!

Episode Date: May 16, 2021

r/Maliciouscompliance Here's a general tip for you: if you plan on firing an employee, make sure that your entire business doesn't depend on that employee to function. That's exactly what happened to OP in today's story! OP is the only person who manages a massive warehouse of tires. So when his idiot manager fires him, they suddenly don't have a clue where anything is and their business struggles without him. A few months later, they beg OP to come back! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Booktickets at ROM.ca Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best post-romer cross-reddit. Today's subreddit is R-Slash delicious compliance, where your wish is my command. Our next Reddit post is from my on. A number of years ago, I worked for a small local outsourcing company.

I was assigned to work with a particularly high-profile client of theirs. The client's office was just around the corner for my employer, but my employer insisted that I remain within the office to do work. So the client provided me with a laptop that connected to their network remotely. It's important to note that while my client was decent, my employer had a totally fear-based management culture. The managers wanted eyes on employees at all times

because they assumed people would slack off given half the chance. After almost a year of working there, I got a call from the client notifying me that my client given laptop needed some critical updates, and I would have to bring it into their office so their IT could apply the updates locally. It all sounded very reasonable to me. I brought this to the attention of my manager and warned them that I would be out of the office for a while so I could take my laptop to the client side around the corner for critical updates. No way no. My manager ignored everything about the critical updates part and focused instead on the

out of the office for two hours part. They insisted that they knew that I had a remote connection to the client's office, so any updates could be applied without meeting to leave and taking my laptop. I got the impression they thought that I was lying to get some free time off. I decided that this had the potential to teach my managers a great lesson about not trusting their own employees. So, like the model employee I was, I shrugged, you know best boss, and complied with the request, continuing working as usual. Until the following morning when I switched on my laptop and nothing would work.

My laptop refused to connect to the client's remote network. The various software applications I used for my job also went run due to the lack of a connection. Error messages flashed up on every file that I tried to access, warning that my credentials have been blocked. I was left holding a very expensive brick. My manager was livid when I explained that I couldn't do any work. They clicked around on my laptop trying to fix it themselves, but there was no other solution

to be had. They sent me around the corners of the client's office so I get hand in my laptop to IT. I took my time, enjoying a coffee and breakfast in the client's on-site cafe while IT worked on my laptop. But when I went to check on it after an hour, I believe the client IT's manager's words were. It's f***. The critical update mentioned before wasn't intended to repair something wrong with the way the remote connections worked. When my machine didn't get the update to repair something wrong with the way the remote connections worked. When my machine didn't get the update, it lost connection with the client's network and immediately locked me out of everything, effectively blacklisting my credentials.

The IT manager explained that they would have to build me an entirely new machine and set up new accounts. A process that would take about a week to ensure that everything filtered through correctly and could be tested. The client was fine in understanding about it, but when I returned to empty handed to my employer's office, my manager got extremely snotty with me. And he insisted that I still had to work, somehow. I pointed out that I had no client laptop to work on.

So instead of sending me home, they forced another employee to share her computer with me. For the next week, me and my colleague shared her computer one hour each at a time. Since I didn't have access to my files, client data, etc, all I could do was the barest minimum of work, sending a few emails from my colleague's account. After a week I got my new client laptop, and things went back to normal. But the week of sharing that computer meant that my employer lost around 40 hours of productivity from two employees. The shared pain of the experience with my colleague brought us closer together, and when my employer lost their contract with the client a few years later, she helped me get a new

job with my employer's competitor. So OP, you worked for an outsourcing company that wouldn't even let their employees outside? It's no wonder they lost that client. Our next Reddit post is from Madeboxer. I'm a secretary for a medical facility that funds other medical institutions. I'm also responsible for their travel to conventions and conferences. There is this very large, very highly attended conference each year that invites her medical professionals to give presentations. One such presenter, who's a huge Karen, has to be incredibly difficult because she feels

that she's above us, drags, and she never lets us forget it. As a presenter, they're given certain hotels that are reserved for them at a reduced rate. However, most of these hotels are nowhere near the convention side and they end up spending a bunch of money on caps. I set up the travel for at least 10 different people and I realized that through a loophole I could book them into a hotel where the conference is actually held. So I started doing that instead of allowing the conference coordinators to book them in Heaven knows where at the last minute, which they're prone to do. Karen comes up to me, and she demands that I only book her into the hotel's listed on

the conference coordinator's website. And if I don't, she'll have me written up. So that's what I did. The day before they all left for the conference, which was clean across the country by the way. Karen found out that she was the only one who wasn't booked in the conference hotel, but instead she was booked 9 miles away. She was hopping mad and sorm to my desk, screaming about me putting her far away in a two star hotel. I looked at her and calmly stated that she was in one of the three hotels the conference coordinators reserved, and she distinctly instructed

me to only select those hotels and nothing else. She ended up spending more than 70 bucks in cab fare to and from the venue, while everyone else only had to go downstairs from their hotel rooms. She also missed giving her presentation because she was late. After that, when I booked everyone for trips, Karen no longer demanded that I give her special treatment. And instead, just let me use my best judgment when booking hotels.

Down in the comments, we have this story from Ogeone. I remember a comment by a high-end corporate executive. When he changed jobs, his secretary went with him. It was even in his contract and she was very well compensated. He said, she makes it possible for me to do my job. And when asked if he had to choose between his wife or a secretary, he said, my secretary, Alex has been with me through four marriages. And then beneath that, we have another story from Living Complex. The story I heard was that in the 80s, corporations asked, why are we paying so many secretaries 10 bucks an hour? So they fired

most of them. It took a few years to realize they were now paying executives 150 bucks an hour to do the work that secretaries were doing and doing it worse than the secretaries would. So they tried to hire back the secretaries, but half of them had found other jobs and the rest demanded double the wage and a better title. Fandule Casinos' exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling. Winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling.

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Our next reddit post is from Leith Chin. I used to work as a dedicated inventory guy for a tire and wheel store that dealt only in tires and wheels. It was a big chain. All the employees wear black, not by choice, even on the most blistering of days. Nearly 10 years working there, and I was the only one handling their nearly 5,000 to 7,000 tires. Along with several hundred wheels, nuts, bolts, tire loop, replacement parts, etc.

Basically, I organized the entire store in terms of what was bought, sold, or used. I also processed all of our incoming shipments, whether it was a single tire delivered by FedEx, or one of our twice-weekly shipments of 4-800 tires. Technically, my job was supposed to be divided among 3 people. The manager I worked with for most of those 10 years was very happy and supportive of me, trying to make sure that I was taking care of if I needed help. Unfortunately, the company underwent a bunch of terrible changes after the owner of the whole chain died. It shifted from a family company to a for-profit, micro-management type of thing. My awesome manager became stressed

and went from great to not so great. I won't deny that some of the things he did got me pretty pissed off. Ultimately, he was transferred to a new administrative position to finish out and tell his retirement, and we got a new manager and a lot of extra salesmen. I was left on inventory, because everyone agreed that I was the only guy for the job that knew anything. They tried giving me newbies to learn the ropes, but I only got a couple of days with them before they were pulled for more, quote, important things. Eventually, they gave up caring

and figured that I would do inventory for the foreseeable future. Well, at the end of 2018, I started looking for other opportunities. It wasn't entirely because of the changes at work, but instead doing a three person job after 10 years was starting to take its toll on my back. I can't deny, I was getting kind of scared

that I would do something irreparable to my back, and that would stick with me forever. Management kept resisting my plans to reorganize the stock because different brands don't need the same amount of space. For example, that major tire brand that did really well three years ago and took up 1,000 tires worth of space was now only taking up 400 tires worth of space. But hey, I have this one brand that we used to carry 250 tires for, but now we're ordering hundreds of them weekly, and we really need an extra 750 units of space. So one area will be overstocked, and another area will be understocked. As I'm in the final weeks of my lovely 10 year there, I remind and manage

me that they should find someone I can give their rundown to before it's too late. My new manager tells me in very business-y and polite terms, just do your job and let us worry about it. I then realized that really, this is their problem, not mine. Cumalicious compliance. I found a lovely time when management was busy. Two were in meetings with corporate for three days, and one was on vacation for the rest of the week. This was perfect timing because it was my last

week as well. I worked like crazy that week. I reorganized the whole place to my OCD specifications. I wanted everything to fit. I wanted everything perfectly presentable. I did it my way and I got everything to fit. Brands were moved and I left notes. I let all my favorite co-workers who pulled my inventory know what was up. They adapted instantly because really it's not that hard. They commended me on my effort and thanked me for doing that before leaving. However, I knew what was coming. A couple of months into my new job, I started to start getting calls from my former co-workers.

Apparently, they never tried to replace me at all, and things started falling apart. Tires were shoved into the racks with no regard for where they belonged. If there was an empty space, they just filled it with whatever tire was on hand. After three months, I heard three longtime employees walked out because a lack of organization was killing their bay times for dealing with cars, which led to a domino effect of stressful work and a toxic environment. It used to take on average just 15 minutes for us to deal with one car. However, now it was taking 15 minutes just to find the correct tires. And sometimes they

even gave up looking and had to drive to another nearby store to find the correct tire, thinking they had an inventory error. Obviously, the delays in inefficiency made the managers angry at everyone, and service techs usually got the heat. I wish I could say that I had more juicy details about the aftermath, but after a certain point, all of my ears in that store left. I feel like that's enough said in and of itself. Four or five months later one of the managers called me on my personal phone. They asked how I was doing and wondered if my new job was

working out. I was very happy and I energetically told him how great I felt at my new job. He inquired whether I might be interested in helping out with the store again. I declined. Now I'm not the best at reading people, but this person seems so lost in their tone that I can only guess they had so little luck of finding a replacement for what I did. I'm far more appreciated now in my new job. Our next breaded post is from Cleefish. So a few years ago, my dad was moving out of his house and in with his parents due to some health problems with my grandma. This was over summer break and I was just out of high school at the time about to go into college. So I had

absolutely nothing to do all summer because I was just waiting to move out of state. My dad was never super organized and still isn't, whereas I'm the type of person who would alphabetize my entire bookshelf with a full system. I'm just really type A and I like keeping things in order. Call me weird, but I just really enjoy reorganizing things and cleaning. It just hits that button for me. So, being that my dad had about two months until he closed on the house, I just start to pack up some of the house for him. His basement was a disaster, and I wanted to clean it up for years.

So, within the first day, I had made a significant dent in the basement, which ended up being a very involved process. I didn't realize when we had moved in that a lot of the stuff from our old house was still packed haphazardly because my brother and I were too young to really help. So I went through the process of unpacking the still packed boxes from the old house, labeling the boxes in a way that made sense, and then repacking those boxes appropriately. After about 3 days of this, I get about halfway done, including cleaning and packing my room

in some of the garage. Here's the build up to the malicious compliance. My dad comes down to the basement to help me, which is all good with me. I start explaining where things go, and my dad wants to change my system. I resist, explaining that I already have a system, and that I've been doing the bulk of the packing already. So he should probably just go with me on this one, but that's when he hits me with, my house, my rules.

So I relent because I know what'll happen. Anyone who's really type A will agree with me that the only thing more frustrating than things being really chaotic and out of order is when things are slightly out of order. Which is what I knew would happen. Regardless of the fight that Dad and I had, He ended up almost following my system.

Mostly, the things that belonged in the labeled boxes were where they were supposed to be, except for a few very important nods and ends that got put. Well, not where they were supposed to. I noticed that, but because of my dad's, my house, my rules, clearly he is a plan, so I didn't say anything. I knew that payoff was going to be a slow burn, and it came several months later when I was in school across the country and unable to help. My dad calls me one day very flustered because you can't find something that he needed. He had been in his rented storage unit for the better part of 3 hours looking for it.

Now the storage unit got packed horribly by the moving crew. I've been in there a few times and I feared for my safety. It's a legitimate labyrinth slash jungle gym and a nightmare to get through. Not to mention this was mid-summer and there was no air conditioning. So my dad is madden on the phone with me asking me where this item is and I ask him if it's in the box that I labeled in big red sharpie, important stuff. He says no and I smile a bit. Then he says, well you were in charge of packing all this stuff and now I can't find it.

That's when I calmly reminded him of the blowout fight that we had over this exact issue and how he commandeered my operation afterwards. I told him that if I had actually been in charge, then the item would have been in the box labeled important stuff. He hung up on me after that. I loved my dad, and I had no problem helping him out. We laugh about that incident nowadays. But I can't say that I didn't get a good chuckle at the thought of him sweating and cursing,

climbing around in that effing storage unit death trap. He recently found another place to live now that my grandparents have more in-home assistance and I've already worked out that I'm going to come help him move. We already agreed that this time I'm in charge. So, when it comes to this story, I'm like O.P.'s dad. I'm chaotic, disorganized. My wife, on the other hand, is the complete and total opposite. One of the best things about my wife is that she's an amazing organizer. And one of the worst things about my wife is that she's an amazing organizer. I totally sympathize with OPs dad.

The thing is, with people like us, it's just in our nature to resist organization at every possible turn. However, the unfortunate reality is that the world just wants to be organized, and it's better when it's organized. So having to suffer through organization projects is just pure torture for someone like me. And it's made even worse by the person who is organized telling you what to do. Put this here, put that there, that doesn't go there. What are you doing?

You're doing everything wrong blah blah blah blah. But in my experience, unfortunately, the best thing to do is to just swallow your pride, bow your head, and just do what the organized person tells you to do is to just swallow your pride, bow your head, and just do what the organized person tells you to do, because in all cases, they're always right. That was our slash malicious compliance, and if you like this content, check out my Patreon where I publish extra episodes. Also, be sure to follow this podcast, because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes every single day.

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