rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance Wash Half the Dishes? LOL OK!

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

r/Maliciouscompliance I feel like teenagers are the best at malicious compliance, aren't they? In today's story, OP had to split household chores with her lazy older sister. The older sister kept slacking off, forcing OP to do extra chores. So, when it was OP's turn to do half the dishes, she did exactly that and washed 50% of each individual dish, so there was no way for the lazy sister to escape her responsibilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where I read the best posts from across Reddit. Today's subreddit is R-Slash malicious compliance, where OP gets his micromanaging boss fired. Our next Reddit post is from Nerd Fury. My new manager at work is one of those people who absolutely has to be in control. Even when you're exceeding your responsibilities, keeping your head down, not putting a toe out of line, she still asked you to come to a meeting room to discuss some minor issue or another. Recently, she pulled me into a meeting to discuss me being late to work. The protocol is to call in, say that we're going to be late, then submit a schedule

adjustment request when we arrive. She accused me of not calling in or submitting a request, but I was able to prove that I did. Only, instead of leaving it at that, she insisted that I now had to call her and explain why I was late. I told her that's not our process, and she said that she was making a new process. So now I call her at 6am on her day off to let her know that I'm gonna be late. She also had to have a meeting with me because my scorecard for a stat was 99 out of 100 when the target was 50 out of 100. She just had to point out that one point that I missed. She also did the same for a handling time issue where I was averaging 600 seconds when our target was 1500 seconds. She just had to tell me about

one call that I took too long on. Suffice to say, people have been complaining to her manager. Following an incident where she was asked to follow up on something for me and claimed, if it's not in writing, it didn't happen. I've been asking for everything in writing, and I repeat that mantra back to her when she claims to have told me something. Last week, she asked me to see her after my phone call. I walked over and she wasn't there, so I went back to my desk. She asked why I didn't stay around, and I reminded her of the time that she put in writing that I wasn't to spend more than one minute waiting for her if she asked to see me, and that I was

to go back to my desk and take calls, not waste time. She asked me to come over again, and when I did, she wasn't there. This repeated twice more before my shift was over. Every single time I documented something like, logged out at 2.14 pm and 35 seconds. I came to your desk, you weren't there, so I spent 45 seconds waiting, returned to my desk, and took another call at 2.16 and 38 seconds in chat. She messaged me, asking me what time my shift was desk, and took another call at 2.16 and 38 seconds in chat. She messaged me asking me what time my shift was over, and I told her I was done two minutes prior, and she says that we can catch up now. I told her that my shift was over, and I asked if she would approve overtime pay for an

out-of-hours meeting. She told me not to be silly, that it'll just take ten minutes. I refuse, and say that if I'm not getting paid then we can do it tomorrow when I am getting paid. She's typing, then not typing, then typing, then not typing, clearly choosing her words. I know that she's angry at being challenged and she decided to employ one of the tactics she used when she managed a team for a company where this was standard practice. Okay, well, if you'd like to go home now, I can always make it a formal meeting. A formal meeting where I work is code for a meeting with HR, documented on your record

for misconduct and repeated issues. She thinks that she's one. I say, not a problem, make a formal meeting, ensure that I have 24 hours notice, send a formal invite, and I'll bring a support person with me. I log out and leave, but not before grabbing screenshots and saving a copy of the chat logs. The next day she's called my bluff and has a meeting scheduled. I send it over to my union rep who shows up for the meeting. HR sits down with us and opens up with. So, we're here today to discuss some concerns. Your team leader asked you to attend off the cuff meeting three times, and for some reason you refused? I quickly clarified what actually happened. My manager claimed otherwise, and I repeated her mantra. If it's not in writing, then it didn't happen. Then I supplied receipts.

Her demands that I put things in writing, her chat, my timestamps, my call logs, and her message to me afterwards. My union rep shares at the two of them with a small smile and asks, so do you maintain the position that employees should attend meetings unpaid and that misconduct investigations are a good use of resources if they refuse? HR said that there may have been a miscommunication and that I could return to work. I have them put in writing that I am not accused of any misconduct. I've been cleared of any false accusations and I have nothing documented on my staff file. Yesterday my team was told that our manager had decided to pursue opportunities outside the company and that we were getting a new manager.

Honestly, OP, I'm not surprised at all that that manager got canned. Not only was she illegally demanding that employees stay after work for unpaid work, but she was dumb enough to put it down in writing. Our next Reddit post is from the Pettiest. I was working over 50 hours a week for a huge corporate bank on salary pay. My apartment was one mile to my office, and they both had rental bike stations that I used regularly. My boss at the time was a time cruncher, and he regularly disregarded the overtime I was

working to point out a few minutes here and there. One day I went home for lunch, walked my dog, got on my bike, and within 30 seconds I was hit by a car. EMTs were called to the scene, but nothing was broken. My clothes were ripped and I had road rash. I called my boss to let her know that I'd be back a little late due to the crash, and she told me lunch was to be 60 minutes only, and I would face repercussions if I was late. So I didn't go home to change. I went right back into work where the hit of the department

immediately called me in seeing my ripped bloody clothing. I explained what happened and I told them I would never take more than 60 minutes ever again regardless of circumstances. My boss was pleased, but I was in home to change. A few weeks later, they asked me why I stopped working 50 hour weeks. Well if lunch is only 60 minutes, then work is only 8 hours, and I haven't worked over time since. OP, when you were telling this story, when you got to the part about you showing up to work like bloody and with ripped clothes, the way I thought this story was going was that the head of the department was going to be horrified at this overly strict policy and that he was going to blast your boss for

being so strict and careless and heartless. But instead, they were happy with you for complying with a 60 minute deadline? Oh, P. I think it's time to seek employment elsewhere. That is insanely toxic. Our next reddit post is from Rexie. So this happened to me a few years ago when people were allowed to walk around the city without a mask.

I'm one of three co-owners of a local tech company that also provides tech supports. Now one of our big time clients was in office for whom we had deployed three to four servers and provided special technical support because they were one of our OG clients. Now the storage service that we had deployed in that firm were old and they'd started to wear down and get slow. So we suggested they replace them with newer, more reliable and faster servers. And the owner, a major douchebag, decided to wait until the weekends because they had a huge and critical project going on, and they didn't want to waste any time near the deadline. Basically just put together the new servers and install the software so that we could go

ahead and swap the servers and use the remaining time to check for errors and stuff. And he told us to get the new servers ready to go so that when he had an opportunity, we could come in and swap them over. So his office had this employee, Elliott, who would look after and improve all repairs related to the servers. We also had to get his approval for any repairs related to the servers, unless we had direct consent from the owner. So around 4 to 5 days before the new servers had to be deployed, we went and did our routine checkups on the servers. We found a major issue with the servers that could lead them to crash hard hard, like not being able to work again hard hard, like not being able

to work again hard. So like anyone would, we wanted to resolve the issue. Luckily it was nothing we hadn't seen before. In fact, we predicted that this might occur, and it would only take a couple of hours of downtime. So we sent an email to Elliott that contained all the details of the issue and asked for approval to shut down the servers for repairs. Within seconds, Elliott responded with a flat out NO.

We sent him another email asking, are you sure? And we gave more details about the issue and how all the servers might crash if the issue wasn't resolved. He again responded with a NO. So, I called the owner and the owner said to just do as Elliott said. When I told the owner that Elliott said NO, the owner said, then don't do it. I asked that he get me that in writing. He said okay and around 10 minutes later we got an email stating the conversation I had with him. So we left it at that.

The next day we got a frantic call from the office saying the servers had crashed, how they were behind schedule and how they couldn't do any work. And how it is your job to make sure there's no issues in the servers, and how we're responsible to pay for their losses. I then calmly told them that we in fact had told them about the issue and how serious it was, and that their servers may not work anymore, and they had to wait until the weekends for the new servers to be deployed because they weren't yet completed. The owner went insane and said that we hadn't told them about the issue, but when I sent

him the email chain between us, Elliott and his own email, he shut up because he knew he couldn't do anything. He asked us to just hurry up the new servers and hung up. The next weekend we deployed their new servers. The best part is what would have cost them only one hour of downtime in repairs, cost them four days of downtime, and possibly a bunch of money because they were late to finish their project. And yeah, Ellie was probably canned because I never heard from him again. So one of the things I like to say on this channel is don't mess with the IT guy.

The second thing I like to point out is when someone asks you to confirm what you said in writing, then whatever you just did is probably a bad idea. So I feel like the worst possible combination is when the IT guy asks you, hey, can we get that in writing please? How does that not send off alarm bells in your brain? Like hmm, the IT guy is saying I shouldn't do it, and he wants me to confirm it in writing. Maybe what I'm asking him to do isn't a good idea after all.

Our next reddit post is from Bob Dinn. I have three older sisters, and the middle one, Pat, passed away a few years ago. I was thinking about her this weekend, and I remember the story that I believe fits here. When we were kids, we had chores that we had to do around the house. The oldest two, Judy and Pat, had to do dinner dishes. This was back when dishwashers were a luxury item that most families couldn't even dream of. Judy, being the oldest, would try to manipulate things so she got off light.

Generally, this meant that Pat would have to wash and rinse while Judy would dry and put dishes away. The washing, and particularly the scrubbing of pre-teflon pots and pans, was a real task. And finally, Pat complained enough that mom and dad stepped in and said the work needs to be equally divided. If one of them washed and rinsed one night, then the other would the next night. Well, Judy did not like that, so she offered an alternative. Each of them would wash, dry, and put away half the dishes. This was deemed acceptable. Pat agreed, so the first night Judy went first, doing barely enough to qualify as half, and leaving all the heavy scrubbing to Pat. The next night, Pat went first, and the malicious compliance began. With mom watching, Pat carefully washed and dried exactly half of the dishes.

As in, the bottoms of all the plates, the handles of all the utensils, and the outside of the bowls, glasses, pots, and pans. When Pat finished, mom smiled and agreed that she'd done her half, and she sent for Judy who had to wash all the tops and insides. And if some soap and water got on the part that Pat had cleaned, well, that was Judy's fault, and she had to clean what she messed up. After that, they did the dishes together, and they alternated who washed and who dried. So, I did one of these things kind of like this when I was a kid. So when we were young, my family would often get those boxes of drumsticks, which are like these prepackaged ice cream bar things,

and they came in a variety of flavors. There was vanilla, there was vanilla with caramel in the middle, and then there was chocolate. And my mom, me and my brother all really liked drumsticks. But for some reason that I don't really understand, my mom and my brother weren't like a big fan of chocolate ice cream, which is weird because they like chocolate in general, but they just didn't like chocolate ice cream specifically.

So me being a little sh** when I was, you know, 10, 11, 12 years old or whatever, what I would do is whenever it came time for us to get a drumstick, I would intentionally get one of the vanilla or us to get a drumstick, I would intentionally get one of the vanilla or the caramel ones because I knew that my brother and my mom wouldn't eat the chocolate ones. So then we would all burn through the vanilla ones and there would be like three or four

chocolate ones left and they'd be all left to me. And then once my family figured out what I was doing, my brother was like, hey, that's not fair. He's eating all the vanilla ones so that we have less and then he's left with all the chocolate ones. And then my mom was like, to have me, you know that you're being unfair. You should just eat the chocolate ones.

And me, like I said, being the little turd that I was, I had this all planned out. I was like, well, that's not fair. How come you guys only get to eat the vanilla ones? And I have to only eat the vanilla ones? And I have to only eat the chocolate ones. I like vanilla ones too. But unfortunately my mom forced me to eat the chocolate ones, which I tried to act like

I was unhappy about, but to be honest, I was perfectly happy with chocolate. And I just wanted to scan my family out of extra ice cream cones. It's a little, like, cruel and selfish I get it, but, you know, like I was 12. And that's what 12-year-olds do. They try to get as much ice cream as. It's a little like cruel and selfish I get it but you know like I was 12 man that's what 12 year olds do they try to get as much ice cream as they possibly can. Don't hate the player hate the ice cream game man that was our slash malicious compliance and if you like this content be sure to follow my podcast because I put on new Reddit podcast episodes every single day. single day.