rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance You Want More Eye Contact? OK! 👁️👁️

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

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Welcome to our slash malicious compliance where OP gets a fat paycheck. Our next reddit post is from Executor Axon. This happened a while ago and I've since moved jobs. Basically, every employee in my department was supposed to log their work hours in the projects they were working on. When I first joined the company, I noticed there was an inbuilt time where in the software which you could start and stop to get accurate logs. But I asked my bosses and other employees and everyone told me that no one uses it. Instead, everyone just manually fills out the log at the end of the day or the first thing in the morning the next day. I was cool with that, so I started logging my time just like everyone else.

Things were fine for quite a while, until I started putting in more and more hours to get work done. Fast forward to that fateful day and I get called by management. They tell me that my logging seems dishonest and deliberately misleading. I get told off saying that they rely on these numbers to plan deadlines for the future and that I'm cheating the company. They instructed me to only use the software timer from then on and nothing else. I should probably mention that the way that

I logged time till then was I rounded down to 30 minute increments just out of personal preference. For example, if a meeting lasted 45 minutes, then more often than not, I would just log 30 minutes. On top of that, I used to remove an hour off the top just as like an eyeball figure for lunch and smoke breaks because on average, that's how long it took me. And I should add that everyone, including my bosses, used to log time the same way. The company had trusted us to not be dishonest with it, and generally, it worked out fine. Anyway, from that day on, I started using the timer for everything. 10 minute briefing, going into log.

5 minute company call, logged. I started eating my lunch in 15 minutes instead of 30 and I cut my smoke breaks down from 2 to 1. Basically, I made sure that almost every minute between my in and out times would be accounted for. They also maintained a time stamp of all the time someone enters and exits the office, which they combined with the logs to check. I made sure that I wasn't being dishonest in any way and just logging my actual work times. As you can guess, all the 11 hour overtime days piled up pretty quick, and at the end of the month I got called by management again.

My boss and his boss were there. My boss was furious, demanding to know how my overtime hours had nearly doubled from the previous months. I just said, I don't know, I'm using the timer just like you told me to. I told them to go through my in and out times, my breaks, my deliverables, and when the timer was started and stopped to check if I was being dishonest or not. They sent me away after yelling at me a bit more, threatening termination if I was wrong. The next day, my boss told me to stop using the timer again, and apologize for calling me dishonest. I stopped using it, but I told him that now I knew more

accurately how long my stuff takes, so I'll be logging accordingly even if I do so manually. Our next Reddit post is from Will Palmer. I once worked in a nice bar slash restaurant slash hotel in the UK and at the time I was a smoker. Also, this establishment had a digital clock and clock out system and each employee had their own card. I was just a simple bar man pouring pines, running food and cleaning up. My direct manager, Steena, was lovely and we got along very well. But above her was a bit of a bell end of a manager.

Let's call her Margaret. Steena and I both enjoyed a cigarette break out in the back in the car park. But Margaret didn't think that we should smoke during work hours unless on break. So to combat this, Margaret said that we would have to clock in and out for each smoke break. Not a problem. Now something that we had worked out with the clock in clock out device was that it rounded to the nearest 15 minutes. It would round to 15 minutes,

30 minutes, 45 minutes, or one hour. So we figured out that if we clocked out at 11.53 and then clock back in by 12.07, it would round both to 12.00. We tested this, and sure enough, on our next pay slip, it showed that we never took a break. So we just kept doing this, and we were sure to tell everyone else earning minimum wage, working awful hours about this hack. I left a few months later, and I found out from a friend that Margaret left, and shortly after the new manager changed the clock and clock out system. However, I thoroughly enjoyed those 14-minute paid cigarette breaks. Our next Reddit post is from ExpensiveTheme.

Background I used to work retail in a DVD and CD store. We had computers that we could use to see if we had certain merchandise in stock. Or we could even order the merchandise from the other 300 plus stores in the country and have it shipped to this store. Many people would use this feature to find older CDs or collector items that were harder to get. One day, an older gentleman came in asking for a certain smaller 80s rock band that I can't remember.

I looked up the band in the computer, helped him figure out which albums he wanted, and I located those albums and stores around the country. I then took down his detail so that we could call him when the albums arrived. He thanked me and said that he was so happy that we could get those albums in for him and he left the store. The next day I got called into the boss's office because of a customer complaint. It was, and is, my only ever complaint in any job over the past nine years of working. Apparently, that customer called up and complained that while my service was lovely,

I didn't make enough eye contact when I was using the computer. CUME LITIOUS COMPLIENCE. Three days later, that customer came back in because he had another band that he wanted to order. Luckily, I was working. As soon as he walked in, I greeted him with the biggest smile and looked him straight in the eyes. When he asked me if we had a certain band in stock, I typed it into the computer while maintaining direct eye contact. It took me about four tries to find the right keyboard letters because I'm not great at touch typing. He was starting to get annoyed,

but he didn't voice it. Then I had to search what store locations those albums were at. That took another couple of attempts to type. I had to move the computer monitors around, but finally I had it at such an angle that I could read it off with a quick glance, but also still maintain eye contact. At this point, he started to squirm and look away, but I was only beginning. Next was his details and taking his deposit. It took me a solid six attempts to enter his details into the system, because you had to select each box to type in, and that was hard considering that I wasn't looking. At this point, he had gone rather quiet and was looking at his shoes.

When he handed me his money, I still maintained direct eye contact and even dropped it accidentally out of my hand, which then led to me awkwardly slap around the counter until my hand found it. I wouldn't want to break that eye contact looking for a few coins. Because of all my typing attempts, it took me an extra 10 minutes to serve him, all because I couldn't look at what I was doing. To this day, I've seen that customer a couple of times, but he won't come to my register and he doesn't make eye contact, or he just hides in the aisles until I'm busy with another customer.

It's a shame, really. He had such lovely brown eyes. Man, like in my head, I'm picturing this as like an SNL skit. You know, you go to Kadoba and the person gets chewed out for not having eye contact, so they're like trying to put together a burrito, but they're doing it blindly because they're staring ahead with a giant smile on their face. It's kind of like comical and weird when you think about it. Our next reddit post is from nerdy husband.

I work for a company that has service contracts with lots of different municipalities across the country. Essentially, we go to a town and service important equipment to make sure that everything is running smoothly and it meets regulations. My team's job is to call an email department hits to have them renew their agreements so we can keep coming to service or equipment.

We send a lot of reminders because in some places it takes a while to get things approved and people tend to forget about the agreement. Recently, I had a client. Bill respond to one of my emails saying that he doesn't need a reminder unless the contract expires. Okay, easy enough. So, two days after the contract expires, I send Bill an email. Bill is very frustrated and says he asked me not to email him unless it expired, and I tell him that it expired two days earlier. We email back and forth for a bit, and it becomes clear that he can't find his contract. So I ask him if he would like me to send him a copy of the contract again.

He responds, send it to someone who cares. Okay, so I call the main line of Bill's municipality and find out who's above Bill when it comes to decision making. They give me the person's email and I send it off. I get an email back very quickly asking why Bill hadn't handled this. I respond, explaining that I've contacted Bill a few times, and he said that he would handle it, but nothing ever got taken care of. Bill's boss then asked me to forward my email chain with Bill over to him so that he could take a look at it.

I was so excited that he asked for this. About 10 minutes later, I got a phone call from a very upset Bill. He was asking me why I would contact his boss and how he got into a bunch of trouble. I responded, Bill, it wasn't my intention to get you into trouble, I just did what you asked. I sent the contract to someone who cares. I don't take a lot of pleasure in getting someone in trouble at work, but I did what he asked me to do, so it's not really my fault, right?

Our next reddit post is from MittendethFinger. I work for a company that does commissions for clients. I'm the manager of my department. This comes with a number of responsibilities. One of them is bidding on work. Last fall, I evaluated the current global situation and how it would be affecting the cost of our supplies and possible shortages as well as inflation.

As a result, I priced a few of our pieces of work to help prepare for the price increases that I predicted, giving us an 8-10% profit upon completion. A well-known client came in and contracted us to do a rather large and time intensive project. This individual is very well off and is in no danger of going broke anytime soon. However, the client still complained about the new prices. He had contracted us in the past for cheaper, but seeing our new prices, he complained to the boss and threatened to go elsewhere. The owner, MyBoss, decided that I'd price the work too high based on the complaints of this one customer. Other customers didn't bat an eye. MyBoss asked me to adjust the price down to be the same as the competition. Just so you know, our competition doesn't carry the same quality standards and often has it 2-3 year turnaround.

I explained to my boss that my numbers were based on increase in prices from suppliers and subcontractors, who I speak to regularly. These other companies that we work with warn me beforehand about what was coming and I took it all to heart. I passed the warning on to my boss at the time, but it appeared that he either blew it off or forgot about it and at the time of making the new priceless, he didn't complain. It wasn't until this one somewhat well known local client, Rosa Stink, that he decided to bring up the issue with me. So the big boss insisted that we should be pricing lower to keep up with the competition or we would lose this customer. Of course, I argued that this would hurt

us in the long run, but my boss stood as ground and I didn't have the energy to fight him on it. In the end, he's the boss and he got what he wanted. So, the time came to order supplies and paid the subcontractors. The material and labor costs were 10% lower than what I had recommended. The boss sees this bill and gets really upset and asks me what the customer was paying to have the work done. I gently reminded him that this work was for the rich client, and I warned him well beforehand. But because he wanted to retain that client, he got what he wanted, but the company didn't make any profits. The boss later came to me and asked me to make up a new price list.

I told him I didn't need to because I'd already done that! My boss is listening to me now. Down in the comments, we have this story from the helicopter guy. I'm the chief inspector of a helicopter maintenance facility. We have a few high net worth individuals. I'm talking billionaires, not multi-millionaires, but multi-billionaires whose helicopters we perform annual inspections on. One of them has over-the-top documentation requirements, well above and beyond what the FFA minimum requirements are, which already aren't anything to scoff at. For the last

two years, I've been telling our sales and contracts people to bid higher on that particular customer to help recover the cost of the man hours associated with the additional documentation requirements. The sales and contracts people always say, oh no, we can't do that, we would lose the customer that way. For the last two annual inspections,

our profit margins for this customer were negative. And one time, we almost made a 1% profit. All because we refused to charge the billionaire's flight department a little extra for an irrational fear of losing them as a customer. Man, I don't get it. If the customer is not paying you, why would you care if you keep them or not? Right? Our next reddit posted from Jehudi.

Many years ago, I used to work for Best Buy and part of the uniform was a black belt. Now, I worked the night shift, stocking the shelves with about 10 other people. For months, no one cared, but right before Christmas, they changed to our managers, and the new one was a humorless, dried up sack who was a dick to everyone.

If she couldn't find anything wrong with your performance, she'd find something to write you up for. Admittedly, I never followed the dress code exactly, but my pants stayed up just fine, so screw-wearing about. One night, she, of course, comes up and essentially throws the employee handbook, or whatever the hell the document was with the dress code at me. You need to put a belt on. I don't have one. I'm super broke. Well, go buy one before work tomorrow or you'll be sent home. Sure, I don't need to eat. I'll get a belt instead of lunch.

She clearly missed this archasm and walked away, leaving me with a dress code. Upon inspection, I realize that it says something like, belts must be worn with all pants that have belt loops. Clearly, my work pants weren't the best quality, so I took pleasure in sawing off my belt loops when I got home. The next day I get to work and she comes up to me and asks, where's your belt? I stare at her and say, where are my belt loops? She was effing livid! Our next word it poses from Umbrella. So at the old company that I used to work at,

I had a co-worker who would consistently push their work onto me and then claim they did the work. He'd volunteer me for late shifts and then would basically say, it's because you're still new, you need some more practice. At some point over the three months working there, I got really annoyed at consistently writing their copy for them and them taking credit, and they'd constantly attribute it to me being new. One evening when I was packing up to go home, they came over and gave me a 10-page document and said that I had to write copy for all the assets before I left. I was annoyed, it was Friday night, I made plans, and I wanted to leave. I told him I had plans and he said, you're new, I'm doing you a favor. This is how you learn what it takes to lead a team and then he left. So I started making errors.

Nothing too hectic. For example, we were running a competition and the poster was supposed to say, stand a chance to win your share of $1 million worth of prizes. I wrote, stand a chance to win $1 million. This is a huge legal issue because of false claims and the company could be sued. So this person took my work as usual and published it the following morning. He didn't bother reading what I wrote. He just copied and pasted and that was that. Monday morning comes in, and I got called into the Big Boss's office. My coworker had told them that I'd written a copy and that I'd made the mistakes. Except when he told the Big Boss about this, the Big Boss scolded him for being incompetent and

not doing his job. And instead, pushing it on an intern and then also not reading it before he posted it. Apparently, the big boss saw the post after they'd been live for like 10 hours and lost it. She called marketing and told them to pull down all the posts. It was a small victory, but he never asked me to do any of his work again after that. 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.