r/MaliciousCompliance

Context: I was out in my city, and I was taking a walk around with my roommate.

While passing through the main square of the city, we both witnessed a movie-like chase where three police officers managed to corner a guy who was probably dealing nearby.

I had never seen anything like that involving law enforcement before, so I decided to tell my girlfriend about it live by sending her a WhatsApp voice message.

So I raised my phone to record the voice message, but then something happened.

On the other side of the street, exactly where they had cornered the guy, a young policeman noticed I had my phone in my hand and shouted at me: “HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

I froze, confused. I didn’t process it. I just stood there, looking at him, thinking he couldn’t possibly be talking to me. After three seconds, I saw him running toward me, still shouting: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

I got seriously scared, so I stretched my arms out toward him, without touching him, and went: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down!”

From that moment on, the conversation went more or less like this. The police officer starts, I’m the second person. The dialogue alternates.

“What are you doing? Did you make a video?”

“I didn’t make any video. I was sending a voice message to my girlfriend.”

“Go to your gallery immediately and delete the video. In front of me.”

At that moment, I got embarrassed. “Why?” you may ask. Well, I remembered perfectly well that the last photo I had taken was a photo of my di*k that I had sent to my girlfriend.

I wasn’t afraid. I don’t mince words. If there’s something embarrassing to say, I say it. The damage was already done.

“Look, I’m not joking, but the last photo is a photo of my d**k.”

“I don’t care! Delete that video immediately!”

He didn’t hesitate. For him, in that gallery, there was THAT video. Except THAT video didn’t exist. A non-video.

So I humored him. I opened the Gallery. I showed him the latest media. I opened it. He saw it. He stood there for about two or three seconds, maybe to process what he was seeing. Then he closed his eyes and looked away from the phone.

“Get out of here!”

So we left.

I was crying with laughter. My roommate was too.

All in all, it was a pretty great evening.

In early 1971 my family moved to a new home on a street paved with asphalt that was more patch and potholes than intact pavement. In 1999 the city came through and patched the concrete curbs where the curbs had been broken.

That was the precursor to the next year when they finally closed the road for weeks while they tore up the old pavement, rebuilt the road bed and then of course repaved the road with fresh asphalt (or recycled, which is just as good).

Everyone in the neighborhood was forewarned and couple Churches offered their parking lots for use except on Sundays for the residents to park their vehicles and walk to their homes because the road was completely closed and blockaded.

Despite that there was always and individual or four who just couldn't abide with the closure and would go around the barricades anyway.

About half-way down the block from my parents house (I had moved out in the late 70's) there was the low point where water always filled the road from curb to curb after every rain and of course while the pavement was out we had one really hard rain which of course filled the now empty road from curb to curb with water that went downhill to the low spot and created a very nice mud pit.

I was visiting my mother that day (father having passed) and we were sitting on the front porch enjoying the lack of traffic when one those entitled idiots came down the street and found the mud pit was much deeper than his pickup tires were tall and got himself nicely stuck.

So after amusing us for a while with his efforts to drive out of the mud he got out of his pickup and walked back down the block and stopped to ask the neighbor across the street if he had a chain he could borrow to get himself unstuck. The neighbor said "no" so he crossed the street and asked us if we had a chain and we answered "no" then he walked off to call a tow truck (this was before widespread cell phone use though by that time I was carrying one but I wasn't volunteering).

We then talked across the street with the neighbor who noted that he DID have a chain but not one he'd loan to that idiot and we told him we had one too and that was also our thought on loaning the chain as well.

We watched as he got a tow truck to come and haul him out of the hole. Mother later told me that three other vehicles managed to get trapped in that hole as well before they got the new pavement in.

But still, while it was petty it was also malicious as we both had chains, but neither was up for loan to someone who wasn't smart enough to stay off of a closed road.

I work as a head of Quality Assurance team in a really small dev department - we have 1 Product Manager, 3 Back End developers, 2 Front End developers and 2 Quality Assurance.

We got new overloads with different cultural expectations; we always focused on quality and now we are expected to 'push for deadlines and then extinguish fires in production'. And surprisingly everyone (team lead and PM) decided to play little bitches and go with it.

I will never say fine to this, because it goes against my whole being, not just business me.

However, another criticism of my team is that tickets stay to long in our columns and it should be ~1/2 developer time in status. And allegedly our tickets are waaaaay longer in Quality Assurance columns.

Firstly, i don't like 'us' being pitted against 'them'

Secondly, two can play that game.

So this is where malicious compliance came into play

- All those tickets in our columns that are waiting for some minor fix? forget it.

- All those tickets where branches do not check out? forget it.

- All those tickets where we are waiting for input or tweak? forget it.

- Waiting PM to say A or B? forget it.

- Sorting privileges? forget it.

Now anything that cannot be worked on goes back to developers, Product Manager or blocked, flooding their queues.

In one day I flooded 'their' columns with more than 50% of all tickets currently on the board and am yet to hear from Product Manager.

EDIT: updating acronyms so it is clearer

Hi all. Longtime lurker, and I've been sitting on this story for years.

Once upon a time I worked at a wendy's back in high school, and at the time they had just started to experiment with breakfast foods like coffee and muffins.

The muffins came frozen. At the time, The way to prepare them was to put it in the microwave for about 30 seconds.

It's a regular morning shift, and this karen who had already ordered comes back to the counter and says "this muffin is too hot. I want one that isn't heated up"

" I'm sorry Ma'am , but we have to microwave them because they come in frozen"

" I don't care. I want muffin that wasn't put in the microwave" and in a classic move, she turns around and goes back to her table. I could be mistaken since this happened so long ago, but I think the conversation went longer than that, and there was another coworker there to back me up on Telling this lady that the muffins were frozen.

I brought her the muffin. It was cold as ice, hard as a rock, and you couldn't even peel the paper wrapper off because it was all frozen together.

I set the muffin down on a plate by itself in front of the lady and her three friends and said , in my best customer service voice " here is your muffin that has not been pit in microwave, just like you ordered".

The look of defeat on her face before I turned around and walked away.

My only regret is not waiting longer to see more of the aftermath. I wish I could have seen her friends laughing at her, the look of disappointment as she tries to bite into a frozen baked good, But the cool guys never turn around to look back at the explosion as they're walking away from it. That and being the timid little teenager i was, I went back to hide behind the counter before she had the chance to rage at me for another incorrectly temperatured muffin.

When I went to clean off that table after they left, the muffin was still there, wrapper half torn off of it, a piece missing like she tried to tear it off with her fingers. A small packet of margarine beside it opened but untouched. In the amount of time it took her to complain and get her new muffin, the original muffin would have been cooled off enough to eat. But instead, this lady ends up wasting two muffins and her own money.

Edit to say that's all happened in the late 90's so my memory's a bit fuzzy. I had to bring the muffin out on something so I assumed it was a paper plate , but it was probably a napkin.

Not my story, a friend of mine's. He works in IT and has a manager that has fully drank the AI Kool-Aid. He's been a pain forcing the staff to use AI wherever possible, even when it doesn't make sense. The mandate is "Even if it's faster to do it manually than with Claude, get Claude to do it". The staff is demoralized and quiet quitting, and the manager is oblivious to why.

The malicious compliance comes in when the manager told the IT staff "Get creative with using AI for other tasks! It doesn't just have to be with coding!". The company writes HIPAA compliant software, so the staff has to take those dumb online courses that force you to watch videos and do quizzes that are super boring, so my friend had an idea.

He pointed Claude at the site, logged in for it, and got the AI to do the course for him. It used Puppeteer (a framework for pressing buttons and navigating web pages in code like a human would) to go through the test, watch all the videos, and take the test at the end, all while my friend sat back and watched.

During the biweekly scrum, the manager asked the staff how they were able to creatively use AI outside of their coding tasks, and my friend proudly announced it got it to do his HIPAA compliance test for him. The rest of the team laughed and the manager ate his own words having to admit that there are some things he doesn't want AI doing for the team.

Best part: the online course provider charges by the number of students who take the course, so the manager would have to lose face by buying another seat, so my friend is free and clear and doesn't have to take the certification again till next year (which he's hoping, by then, to find a better place to work).

So we have this guy on our team, been here nine years. Knows every system, every shortcut, every vendor contact by first name. The kind of guy who fixes things before you even know they're broken.

Six months ago, upper management decides they want to "distribute knowledge" across the team. Sounds reasonable. What it actually meant was: make Jake train someone cheaper to do his job.

Jake figured this out within about a week. Said nothing. Just started training.

And I mean actually training. Thorough, patient, detailed. Showed the new guy everything. Walked him through the vendor relationships, the workarounds for the broken software nobody's replaced yet, the unwritten rules about which clients need extra hand-holding. Even wrote up guides.

Management loved it. Started making noises about Jake "moving into a strategic role" which everyone knew meant absolutely nothing.

Fast forward three months. New guy is fully onboarded. Jake gets pulled into a meeting and told his position is being "restructured."

Here's the part nobody saw coming though.

Jake smiles, says he completely understands, and offers to stay on for a full transition period. Very professional. Very gracious.

What management didn't know was that Jake had trained the new guy on how things were documented but not why. Every process the new guy learned had the steps but not the logic. So when something breaks in a way that isn't in the guide, he has no idea what to do.

Jake knew that. He documented it that way on purpose.

It's been two months since Jake left. The new guy is drowning. Three of our biggest vendor relationships are rocky because nobody knows how those contracts actually work at a practical level. We lost a client last week that Jake had personally kept happy for six years.

Management asked if anyone had Jake's personal number.

Nobody gave it to them.

The funniest part is Jake didn't do anything wrong. He trained exactly what he was asked to train. He documented exactly what they told him to document. He was professional and cooperative until his last day.

He just understood that nine years of context isn't something you can extract in three months and hand to someone else like a file transfer.

They tried to make him replaceable. Turns out they just made themselves fragile.

He's a consultant now, and he’s doing fine.

I work as a freelance designer, mostly brand identity stuff. This particular client, a small wellness business, was someone I'd worked with for about 4 months. She had a habit of texting me directly at odd hours with small requests and changes, sometimes at 10pm, sometimes sunday morning, always framed as "just a quick thing." I'd usually respond because it felt easier than letting things pile up, but it was starting to bleed into every part of my week.

About six weeks in I raised it professionally - said I'd prefer to keep all project communication in the project management tool we'd set up together so nothing gets lost and everything is documented. She agreed. Then texted me that same evening asking if I could "just quickly" swap a font on a mockup we hadn't even started yet. I responded in the tool saying I'd noted the preference for the project's later stage. She texted again. I answered in the tool again.

Then in a call two weeks later, she brought up that she sometimes felt like I was being "slow to respond" and said going forward she'd appreciate if I could be more accessible through "all channels." I said I wanted to make sure I understood - should all communication go through the project tool as we'd agreed, or through multiple channels. She said "well official channels but also just be reachable." I said okay, and asked her to send me in writing which channels she considered official so I could make sure I was covering them properly.

She sent an email listing the project tool and email only. No mention of text. I replied confirming I'd monitor both. I have not responded to a single text from her since and have answered everything else within two business hours. She has not raised it again. The project is nearly done and every single decision is fully documented. When she asks where something is I send her a link to the thread.

The paper trail is the real product at this point.

I used AI for translation, as English is not my first language. TLDR at the end.

This is a story from my time in the Air Force. We took part in an international exercise in Spain. For this, we deployed several aircraft and around 200 personnel to a Spanish air base. I myself was there ahead of the main contingent with a small advance party of about 15 men to prepare everything for their arrival. One of our tasks was to register roughly 50 rented vehicles at the base gate and bring them onto the base. To do this, the Spanish authorities introduced a rule that each of us could only register five vehicles under our name. So we drove the vehicles up to the gate and then each of us gradually brought in three to five cars, including registering them in our names, which was noted on the vehicle’s access pass.

At first, this went smoothly and we were able to hand over the vehicle keys to the comrades arriving later. However, after two or three days, problems started. An official notice was issued stating that from now on, each person was only allowed to have one vehicle registered under their name. So we gathered additional people and drove to the gate to transfer the excess vehicles from one person to another. The whole process took about two hours, but eventually it was done.

That arrangement lasted for about a week. Then suddenly, cars trying to leave the base were being turned back. The guards would no longer let them leave unless the person under whose name the car was registered was actually sitting in the vehicle. We then sought talks with the local authorities and explained that we assigned vehicles according to current operational needs and that it was impossible to comply with this new rule. However, we were dismissed rather smugly with the explanation that if it was absolutely necessary, the vehicle could simply be re-registered. From that point on, it very much felt like deliberate harassment to me.

But we still had good old malicious compliance! We instructed all soldiers that whenever time allowed, they should drive to the gate in pairs and have vehicles re-registered. Either from a person who already had a car to someone without one, or, if both already had a registered vehicle, simply swap them around. Within a very short time, the guard office was completely clogged up, and the official probably had to process around 50 vehicle registration changes a day. And what can I say, after two days of the guard office being blocked by endless vehicle re-registrations, it suddenly no longer mattered whether the registered person was sitting in the car or not!

tl;dr: During a military exercise in Spain, the local base kept introducing increasingly absurd vehicle registration rules for rented cars. After soldiers were forced to constantly re-register vehicles just to move around, they responded with malicious compliance by flooding the guard office with nonstop registration changes until the authorities gave up and dropped the rule.

At the time this happened, I was a 33 year old woman working with a bunch of mostly misogynistic middle-aged men. This happened in 1985 (I know, I know, I’m old).

I was working for the USDA Forest Service in the Rocky Mountains as an engineering technician designing logging roads and supervising a few surveying crews surveying in said roads. But part of my job, as was all FS employees, was to fight forest fires during the summer fire season wherever they needed us. This fire happened on the District next to ours, so I was familiar with most of the roads since I liked to go four-wheeling on weekends, Instead of digging line as normal, I was assigned in the communications room manning the radios, taking requests for resupplying equipment as needed, and any other various jobs. These jobs were rotated to give a person break from sitting at a desk for twelve hours.

One day, instead of a helicopter dropping lunches to the line crews way up the nearest mountain, someone decided that a truck could make the trek up to deliver the lunches to them on an old dirt-track road. I was chosen for the job. For some reason, some higher-up from the Regional Office decided he wanted to go along to see what was happening up close. Now, in my regular job, I was used to traveling on a lot of back country roads, (been doing it for nine years) so I was very comfortable and skillful on most roads. He had me drive, since I was familiar with these roads, and hadn’t been sitting on my backside in the Regional Office.

A mile or so up the mountain, the road started getting narrower and narrower, until, it was basically just two tracks in the side of this steep mountain. I told my passenger that I was getting a little nervous because there was nowhere to turn around to go back down. He said to keep going, and, basically being my boss, I did. Until the road got so narrow and with boulders too large to go over there was no way to keep going. I was NOT looking forward to backing down this narrow road two miles, but knew I could. He insisted I turn around right there - ON THIS NARROW DIRT TRACK! I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted. Now, when turning around with a steep mountain on one side, and a dropoff on the other, you always point the front end toward the dropoff and the back end toward the mountain. I knew it would take a lot of mini turns and time to maneuver the pickup around, but again, was confidant I could do it.

In about the middle of all the turnings, (with the front end pointing out) the guy insisted that I could move just a “little” bit farther forward. Again, this is some big, high muckety-muck who could make or break my career. So (internally rolling my eyes) I inched it forward, with the truck tipping just slightly down the mt. But when I tried to put it in reverse, we didn’t move because I didn’t have enough weight in the bed of the truck to get any traction. I just turned and stared at him. At least he had the decency to look a little sheepish. We ended up having to call on the radio for another truck to pull us out, and a helicopter had to deliver other lunches to the fire crews, albeit late.

When the fire superintendent later asked me what happened, I told him the truth. He told me I should’ve trusted my original instincts, but didn’t totally blame me. From what I understand, the desk jockey wasn’t allowed to “visit” any more fires.

I worked for seven years at a mid sized logistics company. My official job title was logistics coordinator. But my actual job, as it had evolved over the years, was significantly larger than that, I was managing key client relationships, troubleshooting carrier issues in real time, handling escalations that should've been my manager's job, and essentially acting as an unofficial account manager for our three largest clients. I was paid as a logistics coordinator. I had asked for a title change and compensation review twice in two years and both times I was told "we'll revisit it next quarter." Next quarter never came.

Then we got a new HR director, let's call her Sandra. During a routine review she flagged that I was "operating outside my job description" and sent a formal memo to my manager and me stating that all employees must "perform duties as outlined in their official job description and refrain from taking on responsibilities outside their designated role."

Her reasoning, as she explained it in a follow up meeting, was that employees doing undocumented work created "liability and process gaps." She was not wrong about that, technically, but she just had no idea what she was about to unplug.

My job description said:

• Coordinate shipment scheduling with carriers
• Maintain shipment logs and documentation
• Communicate status updates to internal teams
• Escalate unresolved issues to account managers

That was it, four bullet points. Written in 2017 when I first joined and never updated. So I stopped doing everything else, completely, professionally, without a word of complaint.

I stopped taking calls from clients directly, not my job, that's account management. I stopped troubleshooting carrier delays in real time, I logged them and escalated to the account managers, exactly as bullet point four instructed. I stopped attending the weekly client strategy calls I'd been running for two years, not in my job description. Every email from a client that landed in my inbox got a polite, prompt reply: "Hi, for account related queries please reach out to your account manager directly. I've cc'd them on this email."

Then I went back to scheduling shipments and maintaining logs, meticulously. I was, on paper, the most compliant employee in the building. The account managers, who had quietly offloaded almost everything onto me over four years were suddenly drowning. They had gone so long without managing day to day client contact that they'd essentially forgotten how. One of them didn't even have the direct contact numbers for his own clients, he'd always just asked me.

Two weeks one of our significant client, a regional retail chain I had personally managed the entire logistics relationship with for four years, sent a formal escalation email to our VP of operations. Missed shipment updates, unresolved carrier delays going on days without response and nobody picking up when they called. Their account manager, to his credit, tried. But he was also suddenly dealing with two other accounts he'd ignored for years, both of which were now also on fire simultaneously.

Two weeks of missed updates and unanswered calls was all it took. The retail client sent formal written notice to exit the contract, $400,000 a year, walking out the door.

This is where Sandra enters the picture again. The VP called a meeting, my manager was there, Sandra was there and I too was there. The VP wanted to understand how a seven year client relationship had collapsed in two weeks. My manager, to his absolute discredit, suggested I had been "unresponsive" during the crisis period.

I had brought documentation. Every escalation email I had sent to the account managers, timestamped. Every client email I had responded to and cc'd the relevant account manager on, timestamped. My shipment logs, immaculate. I had followed bullet point four so thoroughly there was a paper trail the length of my arm showing I had escalated every single issue exactly as my job description required.

Ans then I put Sandra's memo on the table. The VP read it, then he read my job description and then he looked at Sandra.

Sandra tried to explain that the memo was intended to address process documentation, not to literally restrict experienced employees from using their judgment. Which may well have been true. But that's not what the memo said, and she knew it the moment she saw it on that table. She left the company about six weeks later, I was never told it was directly related, and I won't claim it was. Restructuring was the official word, but the timing was what it was.

My manager was put on a performance improvement plan for his dependency on informal arrangements that weren't documented or supervised, essentially for building a house of cards on my unpaid labor and calling it a team.

I got a new title, a 34% salary increase, and a revised job description that actually reflected what I'd been doing for years. The retail client did not come back. I heard through an industry contact about a year later that they'd signed with one of our competitors. I don't blame them.

TL;DR: HR told me in writing to strictly follow my job description. I did exactly that. The account managers who'd been offloading their work onto me for years collapsed under their own clients, we lost a $400,000 contract, my manager got put on a performance plan, HR director left the company, and I got a 34% raise and a title that matched what I'd actually been doing for seven years.

My cousin owns a fancy sea kayak and has made it his entire personality this year. He brought it to our family’s little coastal cabin last month and kept talking about how he was finally going to do a “proper solo morning paddle.” The thing is, that inlet is calm for about five minutes and then turns into a conveyor belt when the tide changes. I grew up there. He did not. The night before, I told him the tide would turn hard around 8:40 and that if he launched late, he should stay inside the cove. He laughed and said I was acting like a nervous tour guide. At breakfast he was still moving slowly, making coffee, filming his gear, checking his sunglasses in the window, all that. I said once, “You’re cutting it close.” He snapped back, “Stop dramatising the water. I asked you to help carry the kayak, not manage my morning.”

Beautiful. Crystal clear instruction.
So I helped carry the kayak. He pointed to the outer beach instead of the sheltered cove because it looked “more cinematic.” I said, “That’s where you want it?” He said yes. I put the kayak down exactly there, handed him the paddle, and shut my mouth. No tide lecture, no final warning, no “are you sure.” Just supportive silence.
About twenty minutes later he was not paddling majestically along the coast. He was sideways, furious, and getting pulled toward the marker buoys while trying to pretend he meant to go that way. A local fisherman ended up towing him back with a rope while half the beach watched. He was soaked, shaking, and suddenly very interested in tide charts.
He told everyone I “let him do something dangerous to prove a point.” I said I followed his exact request: carry the kayak, stop managing his morning. My aunt thinks I should have warned him one more time. Maybe. But some people don’t hear advice until it comes with saltwater in their shoes.

So this happened about a year ago at my old job, I was working at a mid-size logistics company, basically coordinating shipments and dealing with a lot of paperwork. Our office had a dress code policy that said, and I quote, "employees must wear formal shoes at all times on the office floor." That's it. Formal shoes. Nothing else was specified in that section, it was literally one sentence.

Now our manager, Karen (not her real name but honestly it fits), had this thing where she'd nitpick everyone's outfits if she was in a bad mood. One thursday she pulls me aside and goes "your shirt is too casual, you look unprofessional, read the dress code." I went home, actually read the whole thing, and realized - she was right. I should follow the dress code. To the letter.

Next monday I show up in a full tuxedo. White dress shirt, bow tie, the whole thing. Shiny oxford shoes, obviously. Technically every single item I wore was either explicitly required or not prohibited. Three coworkers asked if I had a job interview somewhere. I said no, I just take the dress code very seriously. Karen walks by, looks at me, opens her mouth, closes it, and just keeps walking. She never mentioned my outfits again.

The best part was our regional director was visiting that day for a routine check. He saw me, laughed, and said "finally someone around here looks sharp." Karen had to smile and nod. I wore the tuxedo two more times that month just to make sure the message landed. It did.

I work for a hotel and my chief engieer had a meeting about me asking him for help moving stuff and essentally he was "doing my job". So my gm said am no longer allowed to ask for help. Yesterday while working I had to move a 600 pound and a 760 pound cart of lenin. I ended up pulling my back out and got sent to the e.r. now am in bed out of work for 2 weeks. The best part is our h.r lady asked me how I injured myself and I told her it was because I was moving 600+ pounds all by myself. She asked me why didn't I ask for help? And I proceeded to show her the group chat and text messages between me and my gm. Now an email went out to all employees today saying we are not allowed to push, lift or move 100+ pounds without another person. Guess am allowed to ask for help again, but it took me getting injured.........

At my last job, there was a new manager who was very focused on tightening procedures. One of the rules he introduced sounded simple enough. Every task request had to be submitted in writing through the internal system and had to be completed in the exact order it was received. No switching priorities, no taking verbal requests, no exceptions.

At first, people thought it was just a formality. The system was already being used, so it did not seem like a big change. But the manager started enforcing it very strictly. Even if something urgent came up, we were told to ignore it unless it was logged properly and placed in the queue.

I worked in a support role where we handled internal requests from different departments. Most of the time, common sense naturally guided what should be handled first. If something was clearly urgent, we would adjust. That flexibility disappeared overnight.

One afternoon, I received a phone call from another department asking for immediate help with a system issue that was stopping them from continuing their work. It was something I could fix in a few minutes, and it would normally be handled right away.

As I was about to assist them, I remembered the rule had been reinforced again just that morning in a team meeting. Everything must go through the system, and everything must be handled strictly in order. Even verbal requests were not allowed to be acted on without a ticket.

So I followed the instruction exactly.

I asked the caller to submit a formal request through the system. They sounded frustrated, but they did it. A few minutes later, the request appeared in the queue. Unfortunately, it landed behind several low priority tasks that had been submitted earlier that day, including minor password resets and general inquiries that were not urgent at all.

According to the rule, I was not allowed to move it ahead. So I did not.

I continued working through the queue exactly as instructed. The urgent issue sat there while I processed each request in order. Every time someone asked about it, I simply pointed out that it was in the system and would be handled in sequence.

About an hour later, the situation in that department got worse. What started as a small issue had now stopped multiple people from continuing their work. Their supervisor eventually came over to our area, visibly frustrated, asking why nothing had been done yet.

I explained that the request had been received and was being processed in the order it arrived, exactly according to the rule that had been set. There was no way for me to prioritize it without breaking instructions.

That was the moment things became uncomfortable. He went straight to management, and within a short time, the original manager who created the rule was called in as well. After a long discussion between them, the rule was quietly reversed later that same day.

We were told that while the system should still be used for tracking, urgent issues could be handled immediately if they affected ongoing work.

The interesting part was that nobody directly blamed me. In fact, I was told I had followed the procedure correctly. But after that day, everyone understood that strict rules without flexibility do not always work the way they are intended.

I work at a café where the owner is obsessed with “maximizing profit.” We already charged extra for oat milk, syrup, takeaway cups, basically everything except breathing near the espresso machine. Not too bad.

But one day he decided we were going to start charging for tap water.
Not bottled water. Tap water.
Like, someone buys a sandwich and asks for a glass of water? Boom. 75 cents.
Everyone on staff thought it was stupid, but he acted like he’d invented modern economics.

He even printed little signs explaining how “cups, dishwashing, and labor have costs.”
The funniest part was that he and everyone knew customers would hate this. Which is fair. I would too if I was a customer.

So I decided that every single time someone asked me for tap water, I’d smile and say something like
“Oh, my boss actually handles all questions about the water policy. One second.”
And then I’d go get him.
Every. Single. Time.
Didn’t matter if he was in the office, unloading stock, eating lunch, or pretending to do accounting on his laptop. If someone wanted free water, I summoned him like a cursed spirit.

At first he’d come out all confident with his rehearsed explanation:
“Well, unfortunately there are operational costs associated with-“
And customers would immediately hit him with:

“You’re charging for TAP WATER?”

“Are you serious?”

“I just spent €14 here.”

“Every other café gives it for free.”

“Is this legal?” (I looked it up, it’s not, lol)

Meanwhile I’d just stand there pretending to wipe the counter while enjoying the show.
This went on for like two weeks before he completely lost it.

One afternoon a few days ago he pulled me aside and went:
“You need to stop bringing me out there for this.”
I said, “But you made the rule.”
And he goes:
“Yes, but it’s degrading having to explain it to customers all day.”
I genuinely had to look away so he wouldn’t see me smiling.
Like… my brother in Christ, if explaining your own policy humiliates you, maybe the policy is the problem.
Anyway, as for now, the tap water charge disappeared. No announcement. No apology. The little signs just vanished overnight like they’d never existed.
Still one of the funniest acts of malicious compliance I’ve ever committed.

In every university in my country, and probably most other countries, there are mandatory subjects everyone has to take regardless of their major. My friends and I are Mass Communication majors, for reference.

About two weeks before the semester started, we registered for classes and were allowed to choose which faculty section of the mandatory subject we wanted. Since the syllabus was identical across faculties, we picked the Management faculty’s Monday 6–8PM class instead of the Mass Comm faculty’s Friday 8–10AM class because it fit our schedules better. I work part time on weekends and whenever else I can squeeze any shifts in, so the Friday morning slot was rough since I had a 2 hour travel time to head back home before work.

And this wasn’t my first rodeo either. I’d been in mandatory classes that were in a different faculty section two or three times over the past two years that I’ve been in university, with no issues.

Then, in Week 4 of the semester, our lecturer, Mrs.N, suddenly emailed my friends and I saying she’d just found out that we supposedly weren’t allowed to be in her class and had to switch back to our own faculty’s section.

Confused, we went on a full wild goose chase between two different departments. First, the division handling mandatory subjects, then the Mass Comm faculty admin. When we finally met the admin officer, she was super rude and condescending. She even called us selfish, kept interrupting us, refused to explain anything properly, and just kept repeating, “You can’t, you can’t, you just can’t.” when we asked her anything.

She’d also ask us questions like, “Why would you choose another faculty’s class?” but every time I tried to answer, she’d cut me off mid sentence.

At that point, I realized what she was doing. She was just to wear us down until we gave up. Honestly speaking, if she had been polite, I probably would’ve relented. But she was so unnecessarily rude that I dug my heels in out of pure spite.

Eventually, I cut in and calmly said, “Ma’am, you’ve asked us several questions without letting us answer, and you haven’t answered ours either. We’re willing to comply, but we’d like to understand why we’re being asked to switch classes in Week 4, and whether there’s another option since this schedule accommodates us better.”

That actually made her stop cutting me off! When she regained composure, she snapped, “It messes up the end-of-semester report! You students should manage your schedules better.”

And I replied, “I thought university was supposed to accommodate students from different circumstances. I work part-time, for example.”

She huffed, and switched to this fake sweet tone and said, “Fine! Email your lecturer and see if she agrees to let you stay. But if she says no, you come back here, drop the class, and register for your own faculty’s section. Okay? Okay.”

I just smiled, held back how pissed I was with how she was treating me and my friends, and said, “Okay, thank you,” and we all left.

So we emailed the lecturer and CCed the admin. Mrs.N replied saying she had no issue with us staying in the class. The admin, despite literally saying she’d allow it if the lecturer agreed, suddenly responded with a long explanation about why we still shouldn’t stay.

That’s when I pulled my final move: I contacted the lecturer teaching the Mass Comm section, Ms.Z.

Ms.Z and I are close! I helped her a lot over the past two semesters since I met her during the middle of my first year, and she’s always been really supportive of me. I messaged her personally to let her know I might be joining her Friday class, and she was immediately confused because she thought I was staying in the Management class section. So I explained everything to her, and she was absolutely appalled, and told me that apparently the system auto-collects grades across all divisions regardless of the students’ majors, so it doesn’t affect the report in any way. The admin was basically lying, and apparently the only reason why she wanted me and my friends to switch classes was due to a few students from Ms.Z’s class who requested to switch to Mrs.N’s class because Ms.Z’s class was too early for them, but they requested after the third week, which wasn’t allowed anyway.

Then she told me that as the lecturer, she had to approve any new students registering for her class, and because of what happened and how it happened, she promised that she wouldn’t approve my transfer.

No approval, no class switch!

To make it even better, she doubled down and personally told the admin that she didn’t want additional students in her class and to let us stay in our current class since it was reaching the 5th week and nearing the deadline for our first assignment, so we had a very valid reason to stay.

Sucks to suck, admin.

TL;DR

Uni admin tried to make me change class sections and I complied with all her directions she gave in order to not make the switch but despite following everything, she ultimately switched up at the end and put her foot down because she realized that her orders weren’t working out in her favour.

My class lecturer was fine with me and friends staying in the class, the lecturer for the other class section (who I’m coincidentally close with) heard my story and decided to not allow the switch to happen by refusing to sign off on it, resulting in my staying in the class section i originally registered for.

I started working at McDonalds. It’s a job. My job is primarily service which means I’m bagging the orders, making drinks/boxing fries when cook staff is busy, handle customers, and cleaning.

Worked here for two weeks now and I’ve been getting used to the flow of things.

Today my last hour during lunch rush, my manager told me to focus on customer orders. So when there was no more customers I went to the back to help and got told to get out and focus on customers. I told her there was none and she said she didn’t care. She needs me out there.

I stand by the register for 5 minutes and go back again and get told the same thing but she’s more forceful this time “I mean it, you need to stay out there.”

Okay. Fine. So I stood there by the register for a whole hour.

A customer was waiting for their bag that was right there and I knew what she needed. She was getting upset and I told her “I’m sorry, I would get that for you but I’m not allowed back there right now”

I ran out of medium cups and asked a coworker to get them for me. She assumes I don’t know where they are and offers to show me so I say again “no I know where they are, (manager) doesn’t want me back there right now.”

Someone else tells me that I need to give customers their drink cups even if they order on the kiosk. Again, I say “I would love to but I’m not allowed to go back there and see what they ordered so I don’t know if they ordered a drink unless they tell me.

It’s been 30 minutes and I’m basically begging now to help because I’m so bored but told again, I’m needed out here.

So I sit more and just wait for my shift to be over. Eventually a shift lead said I need to help and not “shrink my duty” so I fully explained the situation to her and a general manager over heard. Who said she would talk to the manager that told me that.

My manager pulled me aside and apologized, saying she just felt overwhelmed so that’s why she “kicked me out”

As a military spouse, you find ways to keep yourself busy when your other half is deployed, especially when you’re a sub wife and it’s weeks if not months of no emails. I got a notice while we were living in base housing (during the pandemic) that I could not have my garden in pots, everything had to be in the ground.

Background: We were supposed to move but then COVID happened, the gardening started pre-pandemic but then I got more into it when I found out we couldn’t leave. I originally did some basil, oregano and tomatoes in pots, but got a notice that I couldn’t have potted plants.

Reason I was petty: I got notices for things like the AC units still being in October first, but it was still in the mid 80’s.

However, if I needed THEM to do anything it was like pulling teeth. A hornet’s nest twice the size of a basketball? The fire department ended up taking care of it because they were tired of waiting. When the pipes burst in our house? They berated me and the following conversation happened:

Housing: If you’re letting the dog pee in the house, there’s going to be an extra cleaning fee.

Me: (yes, I know my comment probably wasn’t the right thing to say, but I was furious) One, even if he DID pee in the house TODAY, that sound was fucking loud and it probably scared him. Two, I have seizures! There are probably more piss stains, and blood, in the carpet from me than him. (That almost got my husband to laugh… not that a pissed off wife is funny)

But long before the incident with the pipes there were other small issues that after 4 years I just ended up going. My garden goes in the ground? We’re staying here 3 more years? I’m growing oregano… and you’re going to have to deal with it when I leave. It’s been 2 years, I wouldn’t be surprised if it has taken over half the front yard. You see, oregano can be very invasive and VERY difficult to get rid of. It really took root while I was there. I was constantly going out and, well, not pruning… just getting little sprigs for cooking. But when we left, I pulled up the little mini dividers that were keeping it from taking over the yard. They’re going to have to get REALLY creative to get rid of it.

A recent phone call to my next door neighbor there? A new family has moved in, and when he told the wife what the plant was, she was ecstatic! So, plant’s still there and HUGE! 😈

Edit: Getting a lot of comments about mint, there was already mint when we got there as well as strawberries.

I work in a mid -size marketing agency, maybe 60 people. Our director decided after a particularly chaotic quarter that meetings were out of control and that going forward every meeting required a written agenda submitted to all attendees 48 hours before it started, no exceptions, or the meeting would be cancelled. Reasonable policy in principle. I took it literally.

Weekly 15-minute team standup where we go around and say what we're working on? Agenda sent. "Catching up briefly" message from a colleague who wanted to chat about a project for ten minutes? I replied asking them to send me an agenda 48 hours ahead or we could schedule it for later in the week. My director asked me to "pop by her office for two minutes" and I sent her a calendar invite with a formal agenda that said "Agenda item 1: Director-initiated discussion, estimated 2 minutes, expected outcome TBD."

She called me on the phone to ask what I was doing. I said I was following the new meeting policy. She said it wasn't meant for things like that. I asked her where in the policy it specified which types of meetings were exempt. There was a pause. She said she'd clarify the policy. The clarification came three days later and included a list of meeting types that were exempt from the agenda requirement. The standup was on the list. Informal check-ins under 10 minutes were on the list. Essentially everything I had been sending agendas for was now officially exempt.

I have continued sending agendas for everything else though, which is now just good professional practice