rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance Stop Working? LOL OK, If You Say So!

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

0:00 Intro 0:06 Man 1:23 Plate 3:47 PTO 6:42 Late 9:00 Comment 9:31 Hired 11:37 No Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to r slash malicious compliance, where your wish is my command. Our next reddit post is from goofball. I worked in a mid-sized hardware store as a salesman. I'd been working in the construction industry for 15 years, and I was at that store for at least 10 years. I knew almost everything about how to do home repair projects and what was needed to fix the problems. At the same time, we had a girl at the sales counter named Bonnie.

She was also very knowledgeable and one of our best salespeople. We were both behind the counter one day. She was standing at the counter and I was at a desk doing paperwork. An older guy comes up to the counter and Bonnie asked if she could help him. No! I need a man that knows what he's doing to help me! Bonnie was pissed. She turns to me and asks me to take over. Sure, no problem. Cue my warped sense of humor. Sir, what can I help you with? He states the problem. I immediately turn around and restate the issue to Bonnie. She casually answers, and I turn back around and repeat exactly what Bonnie had just said. He asks another question, and I repeat the

question to Bonnie, then repeat her answer to the customer. Every question he asked me, I turned and asked Bonnie, then repeated her answer to him. Yes, I knew all the answers, but the guy was being a prick, so I decided to give him a little lesson. He wanted a man to help him, okay. Our next Reddit post is from Visual Session. This happened when I was around 13 and it still cracks me up to this date. Every Sunday we had lunch at my grandma's house. She always went all out. Pot roast, collard greens, spicy gumbo and whatever else she felt like making. But she also made a separate batch of kid food, usually some mac and cheese, chicken tenders or grilled cheese sandwiches for the younger cousins who were picky eaters.

Now I was the oldest of the kids, and one day I decided I was too grown for children's food. I dramatically pushed away my plate and said, I don't want kid food anymore, I want what the grownups are eating. My grandma gave me this long slow look over her glasses and asked, You sure about that, sugar? I nodded like I was signing a contract with the president. She didn't argue.

Just scooped a huge portion of her extra spicy gumbo, poured some collard greens with vinegar, added some cornbread on the side, and handed me a big glass of unsweetened iced tea. That gumbo lit my soul on fire. My nose was running, my eyes were watering, and the vinegar from the greens wasn't helping. But my pride wouldn't let me ask for help. And you better believe I wasn't about to admit that I missed the mac and cheese. Grandma walked by, patted my shoulder and whispered, next week I'll fix you some chicken nuggets again unless you'd rather eat like the adults.

The nuggets were back on my plate the next Sunday. Most people think this is like a funny story down in the comments, but there are a handful of people who think that this is unnecessarily vindictive, like the grandma is being mean to the child, which I don't think is the case at all. She's not being mean, she's just treating OP the way OP asks to be treated. OP wants to be an adult? Okay, I'll treat you like an adult. And you might say, oh well, the grandma knew that the spicy food would be too painful, so that was like unnecessary punishment. Well, that's not true at all, because you never really know what kids are going to like until they try it. Like I was shocked when my four-year-old's favorite food became

pickles. No one else in the family eats pickles. I hate them personally. And I would have expected her to like more typical food like chicken tenders or mac and cheese. So as someone who grew up with a southern grandma like this one, this was not mean. This was sweet. Our next Reddit post is from Jessica Ergay. This happened a couple of years ago at my old job. It was a pretty demanding corporate gig where we were always juggling tight deadlines, constant emails, and way too many meetings that could have been Slack messages. Around early November, HR sent out one of those all-staff emails with a bright red banner and urgent tone. It read something like, Reminder! All unused paid time off must be taken before December 31st.

We will not be allowing rollovers this year. Please schedule your remaining days immediately or risk losing them. No exceptions, no flexibility, no consideration for project timelines. Now, I wasn't one to take a ton of time off during the year, mostly because every time I tried, something urgent would come up and I'd get guilted into postponing. So by November, I had 10 full days of paid time off

just sitting there. And according to HR's big red warning, I had about six weeks to use them. Naturally, I did what any burnt-out, underappreciated employee would do. I opened the calendar and booked myself off from December 18th to December 31st. Two full weeks, right before the new year. Smack in the middle of the most chaotic time of our project cycle. A week later, my manager, came to me in a mild panic. Hey, I saw your paid time off request. I was hoping we could shift that a little.

December's gonna be a critical time for such and such project, and we really need all hands on deck. I said, yeah, I get that. But HR sent out that paid time off deadline. If I don't use those days, I lose them, and I've already worked through enough vacations this year." My manager looked uncomfortable, but couldn't argue with the logic. I even forwarded him the HR email with the subject line, using my days as required. He escalated it to HR, of course. HR's reply?

We understand that it may be inconvenient, but our pay time off policy is final. Managers are responsible for planning around employee availability. That reply felt like Christmas came early. So I prepped my team as best I could, left detailed notes, and on December 18, I logged out stress-free. While they were scrambling to hit deadlines, dealing with last-minute client requests, and working late, I was sipping hot chocolate, watching Netflix, and actually enjoying my holiday season for once.

When I came back in January, the project had been completed... barely. The team was exhausted, mistakes had been made, and the post-mortem meeting was basically 45 minutes of finger-pointing. But no one dared say a word to me. After all, I was just following HR's rules. Moral of the story, if a company insists you follow policy to the letter, don't feel bad when you do,

even if it means up watching the ship catch fire from your cozy vacation cabin. Our next Reddit post is from icycomputercoop. I've always been the kind of person to arrive at work and events early. I hate the stress of running late, so I always allow more than enough travel time on my commute to avoid lateness. I always stopped for a coffee first thing on my morning commute to work.

It was a half hour drive to work on the highway, so I like to sip my coffee and listen to tunes to relax before work. Even though it's only a half hour commute, I would leave for work an hour before my start time just in case there were unexpected delays. One particular day, there's a massive jam on the highway. Now normally, I get to work 20 to 30 minutes early because of the extra travel time, but the traffic jam was bad enough that it made me 6 minutes late for work. The supervisor starts giving me flack for coming in late but having a coffee, publicly

calling me out in front of the other employees. Hey everyone, look at OP, his morning coffee is more important to him than respecting his coworkers. No amount of, I bought the coffee before I knew there was a traffic jam, would get him to stop hassling me. He wrote me up for being late. Now, my company had a policy that less than 5 minutes late is okay, but 5 or more minutes late means a potential write-up. Doesn't matter if it's 5 minutes and 30 seconds or 2 hours late.

The punishment was the same. However, supervisors were given leeway on this and were encouraged not to penalize people unless they were consistently late. I was almost never late, almost always early, but my supervisor decided to punish me anyways. So fast forward a couple of weeks, there's another delay, and looks like I'm going to arrive at work about 15 minutes late. So knowing that I'm going to get written up no matter what, I pulled off the highway, found a nice little restaurant, and had a leisurely two-hour breakfast. I showed up at work two and a half hours late, and I got the same ride up that I would have

gotten if I had been fifteen minutes late. But at least I also got to relax and eat bacon. I still showed up at work early 99% of the time, but every now and then there might be a delay that would mean I'd be 6 minutes late, or 10 or 15. Rather than take the penalty for a lousy couple of minutes, each time I'd extend the late time a couple of hours and have a nice relaxing breakfast. Down in the comments we have this story from Underground Noises. I had a very boring sales job that they would write you up for being one minute late, but

have absolutely no effing problem if you called out. Several times I would go to clock in, see that I was one minute over, and then turn around, walk out to my car, and then call out. I loathe the mentality of clock watching. And stupid managers like this are the exact definition of Pennywise dollar foolish. Our next reddit post is from velvetxglimmer. I'm part of a small hiring team at my workplace and I take my position very seriously. Some time ago, we were looking to fill a key role that required someone sharp, organized,

and ready to work under pressure. We had a solid shortlist after several interviews, and then my department supervisor pulled me aside. He told me flat out to hire one candidate in particular. Not because she was the best fit, but because he wanted me to. I later heard through office rumors that this candidate was an almost girlfriend. Basically, she was someone that he had a thing for and he was trying to impress. He said that I should just make it work and that he'll

take some heat if needed. I refused at first, showing him her results of the interview. She was one of the lowest ranked candidates. She was late to the interview, gave vague answers, and couldn't explain industry terms. But he wouldn't listen and said that it was a direct order. So I did exactly what he asked. I hired her, gave her all the support that I could. I even offered extra onboarding help. Within a month, she accidentally sent a confidential client file to the wrong company.

Then she once approved a purchase order for 10 times the budgeted amount because she obviously didn't read through all those numbers. It was from one mistake to another. We lost a major client over an email slip. Another pulled back on their contract due to delays on her end. When upper management started asking questions, my manager tried to dodge responsibility, but HR already had the hiring records. I made sure all instructions, including his, were documented, which was intentionally in

case a situation like this came up, and it did. He was reassigned within the quarter. She quietly disappeared not long after. Turns out, hiring your crush isn't as cute when the company starts bleeding money. Right, when a manager says, don't worry, I'll take the heat. What he really means is, don't worry, you'll take the heat. Unless you properly document my request, of course. Our next Reddit post is from deliciousp.

So my mother-in-law has a very cute, but very bad dog I'll call Fred. Fred has never heard the word no in his life. Whenever he does something bad, my mother-in-law will just laugh and shrug her shoulders. When I visited recently, Fred did a couple of naughty things, and I told him no, which of course he didn't understand. After about the third time, my wife angrily pulled me aside and said to stop telling him no, since it's not my dog and my mother-in-law was getting upset. Fast forward to dinner.

I'm sitting at the table alone while my wife and mother-in-law finish some last minute things. Fred jumps on a chair and knocks over a whole plate of pot roast on the floor. And of course, I say nothing. During the cleanup, my wife asks if I saw Fred at the table. I said, yep, I saw everything. And you said that I can't tell a no, sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo