u/MandoMan1973

I'm an easy going guy. I've worked in an office for just over a year and everyone knows I can joke and take a joke. I'm a large guy (currently working hard on losing weight) and I'm okay with people calling me fat in jest.

We just recently got a new guy in the office that came in on day 1 talking about his lazy-eye as being one of his best features. Of the 10 people, myself and this guy included, in our office, everyone except me makes constant friendly natured jokes about the lazy eye.

Only twice have I made a comment, and both times were during group conversations where someone had just made a joke about him as well. Both times though, this person singled me out telling me to shut up about his disability. So, to make sure I can keep my job, I never talk to him unless directed to do so I don't talk to him about anything, not even the weather.

The day he noticed and asked why I had changed, I told him the truth: that he seems to be fine with everyone but me saying anything about his eye. He even posted a "thank you" in a group text where someone had made a comic book cover calling him the "LazyEyed Loon."

I told him I didn't appreciate being singled out as the only one in the entire office not allowed to contribute to the friendly ribbing. But if that's the way he wanted to play it, that was fine. I ended the conversation by telling him we weren't there to be friends but to do a job, and that's all I would ever do with him.

I worked remotely for an auto parts company for almost 4 years, finally getting a promotion after the company merged with another. But even though I performed my duties better than the others in my department, I was effectively punished for being so good.

I started working for a company founded in my area that had a reach around the world for classic auto parts. Sure, we had supplier issues, shipping delays, you name it. But the reputation of this company for being such a large source of hard-to-find car parts - from Model-T and A Fords all the way up to modern muscle cars and everything in between. One of the brilliant minds in the management team decided to purchase a new sales/parts/service program for us, and it went downhill from there. Where one program would say we had 10 pieces of one item, inventory would say we had none, and where our accounting program would say a vendor was due payment, another would say nothing was owed. No one really knew what was going on until after the culprit manager had left with a hefty severance package.

We started losing business, customers, vendors ... and I - as a case manager - had to field calls daily trying to give whatever company line I was told to give to make the customers happy. We had a high turn-over rate because of this and the company almost went bankrupt. Enter Big Auto Parts (name changed for reasons), and BAP came in with promises to fix everything. They did, for the most part. They paid off vendors, closed out accounts, worked to repair bad relationships with everyone, and let go 60% of the staff from the building in my town. Sad, yes, but unfortunately that's the price of business.

About 6 months after the merger, I was promoted to Customer Operations Specialist. I no longer took calls, but I had to make them for any number of reasons. When I started this new position, there was another person there (I'll call her Lucy) as well. We had different duties in the same department - I would research the issue that came up and she would call the customer to work out a solution. For a quick example, if an item they ordered was out of stock or delayed, I would find a different part or call the supplier for an ETA. This would go to Lucy and she would call to ask the customer if they wanted to wait or accept a comparable item.

It only took three weeks for Lucy to decide she didn't fit in and left the company. This left a big hole to fill, and because I was used to calling customers, I was asked to do double duty. It worked out surprisingly well because I was already familiar with the situations and could make better suggestions while on the phone with the customers. My supervisor did recognize my success and put me in for a small raise, which I did get. I was making good money doing something I really enjoyed.

The company started growing, and with it, more work needed to be done by everyone. We had a ticket system that, while not perfect, was adequate. Occasionally there would be a hiccup in the system and hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of irrelevant tickets would come across my desk. I started noticing patterns and would call them out to my supervisor so someone with a higher pay scale than I could fix the underlying issue and we could all go home happy at the end of the day.

Part of this growth meant that there were some areas in my department that would get too many tickets for the assigned person to handle solo, so I was asked to cross-train and learn these other areas. It didn't take long and soon I was doing other people's jobs better than them. I think it was a combination of me wanting to succeed and them wanting to do the bare minimum - and this plays into my malicious compliance near the end of this story.

We had a point system that tracked how many tickets we worked, how long we spent on them, and whether the ticket needed a follow up or could be closed as satisfied. The majority of my tickets could be closed because of one reason or another and I always hit the metrics asked in order to secure a weekly bonus of $2.50 more per hour. Meeting my bonus put me at above the $20 per hour range every week with very few exceptions, so I was satisfied thinking I was doing a good job. They required me to make a minimum of 200 calls to customers and pass 2400 points to make the bonus, and every week, I would make between 300-500 calls and hit nearly 7000 points.

In my youth, I got a degree from a local community college in video production and that has always been my passion, but I was good at my current job and happy to be there. I got to take bi-annual trips to the corporate office (spring and winter) up north, made lots of friends, and even the owners of the company knew me by name due to my performance. My wife had changed jobs and was working for the local sheriff, and one day she emailed me that there was an opening in the media department. I applied and went through the 3 month process for possible employment, letting my current employer know they would be receiving a background check call. The process went smoothly, even resulting in me getting a call from the Sheriff himself saying he was excited that I had applied.

Back to my current company - I had been "talked to" several times about my numbers, with my supervisor telling me they were "too high" and "no one else makes nearly that amount of points." When I said I was just following the metrics and doing my job, he let me know that changes were coming. On the day I received my call from the Sheriff about being accepted as a new employee, I had a meeting with my supervisor. Before I could tell him I was leaving, he announced that a new point system was going to be implemented and if my current week's numbers were applied to the new schedule, my 7000 points would only equal 1800 - far below the minimum for the bonus. When I mentioned this was essentially punishing good performance, he said, "well, that's what the company wants to do."

As I said earlier, the bonus put me above the $20 per hour line. My new job was going to start me above what I was making with the bonus, which made my decision to hand in my two weeks notice right then and there so much easier. What cemented my decision was when I found out that even though I was going to finish my scheduled 40 hour work week on a Friday, since the end of the pay week was Saturday and I wasn't working that day, I wouldn't get the comp-time I earned. They were going to withhold earned sick and vacation time because of a technicality, after four years of faithful service.

I actually liked my supervisor - he was younger than my married son and was disabled - a good kid with a great heart, but hated that he had to follow "procedure" in punishing hard work. I told him as much and mentioned that I would do what my original job description required, and nothing more, for my last two weeks. It was glorious. We could take time off (if we had vacation or sick time available) if our work was done and we had nothing else to do for the rest of the day. I focused only on my originally assigned areas and once completed I would clock out - putting in my comp time to make up for not being on the clock. I was able to use up all my time by my last day there, and because I wasn't helping anyone else, their work began to stack up. Not that I was doing it to punish any of the friends I made at that company, but simply to get the point across.

I could still see every ticket menu in all the areas where I had access, and their numbers began to climb out of control. I was contacted by my supervisor's boss on more than one occasion, asking me to help out. And when I would point out that it wouldn't be fare to take points away from the other people when I was about to leave, and that per policy, I was done with my assigned duties and could therefore leave for the rest of the day, he would stammer, trying to convince me to "do what was good for the company." I simply said, "I'm doing what is good for me. Unless you can offer me more than what the Sheriff is willing to pay, I will only do what I am paid to do here until my last day."

On my last day, I checked the ticket queue once again before signing off. My area had zero tickets, and others where I worked that would average maybe ten open or unworked tickets daily, now showed hundreds. What made me feel better was about six months after I left, I got a Facebook message from one of my old coworkers that I actually liked wishing me a Merry Christmas and telling me they still had not found anyone who could do as much as I had done. But I am happy where I am and have plans to do this as long as I can, retiring one day after a long tenure here.