r/MaliciousCompliance

I work as a supervisor at a grocery store, and part of my job is basically making sure things keep moving, helping customers when the self-checkouts decide to develop free will, fixing register issues, voiding orders, and generally putting out the tiny fires that happen during a normal shift. This particular day had actually been going pretty well.

I was helping customers, answering questions, assisting with checkout issues, and everyone was being pretty normal.Then I noticed one customer at the self-checkout who had arrived on an electric bike. He was having trouble ringing up some produce. Specifically: Red bell peppers.
For whatever reason, these things seem to give people trouble constantly. I don’t know if it’s the produce lookup or what, but I’ve helped enough people with them that when I see someone staring confused at a red bell pepper and the checkout screen, I already know what’s happening.

So, naturally, I walked over and offered to help him. I barely got the chance to do that before the guy looked at me and said: “I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help.” Alright. Fair enough. I said, “Okay,” and walked away. Now, normally, if I see someone obviously struggling, I’ll circle back or ask if they need assistance. But he had made himself extremely clear. He did not want my help. So I decided to respect his wishes. Very, very thoroughly. Cue Malicious Compliance.

For the next several minutes, I went about my other duties. Another customer needed help? I helped them. Someone couldn’t figure out their checkout. Helped them. Register issue? Fixed it. Question? Answered it. Meanwhile, this guy was still fighting for his life against the red bell peppers.
I could see him trying different things on the screen.
Still not working. He’d look around. Then he’d look at me. And for some reason, he was staring absolute daggers at me. Which confused the hell out of me. Because… Sir. You specifically told me you didn’t want my help. I’m doing exactly what you requested.

At one point I helped another customer who was only a few feet away from him. He watched the entire interaction. I helped that customer, got their issue sorted out, and went right back to what I was doing. I could practically feel this man’s eyes drilling into the side of my head. But I wasn’t going over there. Because I remembered his instructions:
“I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help.”
Understood. Message received. Your checkout experience is now a solo campaign.
The red bell pepper is your final boss. Godspeed.

Eventually, after several minutes of struggling, he apparently decided that accepting help would be worse than abandoning the entire purchase. Because he just… gave up. He left the register. Walked out of the store. And left.
So after watching him ride away, I calmly walked over to the self-checkout he’d abandoned, looked at the unfinished transaction, and voided the entire order. And that was that.

I still don’t understand why he spent the whole time glaring at me. I offered help. He explicitly told me he didn’t want it. So I complied. Apparently he expected me to ignore what he said, continue offering assistance, and eventually rescue him from the horrifying technological nightmare known as…
ringing up a red bell pepper. But I’m a supervisor, not a mind reader. You say you don’t need help? No problem. Enjoy your peppers.

This just happened to me.

I went into a Walgreens to pick up a prescription. The pharmacist put in my info and insurance, leaving the total at twelve cents. I went into my wallet and plucked out a dime and two pennies.

PHARMACIST: "I'm sorry, we don't take those anymore."

ME: "You don't take coins?"

PHARMACIST: "Pennies. They stopped making them."

ME: "Yeah, I know, but they're still legal tender."

PHARMACIST: "We don't take them anymore."

ME: "Can I speak to someone about this?"

PHARMACIST: "I'm the only person here."

I know that's not true, but fine. I put the coins back into my wallet and pull out a twenty. The pharmacist gives me a filthy look, but takes it and goes to ring me up... only to discover that they are short not just coins, but singles.

PHARMACIST: "I don't have exact change."

ME: "I do."

A moment and another filthy look. The pharmacist puts the change back in, hands me my twenty, and takes my coins without another word.

I work in IT for a large corporation. We're deploying a new version of software where the vendor changed a lot of the underlying infrastructure so we have to rebuild the whole thing. The first part of this is the design phase. We document everything and the design team (DT member) draws it all up and does whatever it is they do with it.

Well they start asking me about the ports the application uses because they need to know what ports to make sure are open on firewalls. It's a lot. The application is high availability so each server communicates with the other servers to keep information updated across all the servers. This data will never traverse a firewall. But for users accessing the application, it's just port 443 for the web interface. I tell the DT, there are about 100 ports to use depending on which server does what. None of that will touch a firewall because all the servers are in the same datacenter subnet. Well no, it HAS to be documented. That seems excessive to me because it just seems like it will never matter. Those servers only talk to each other and per vendor documentation, there CANNOT be a firewall in between them. I'm told STERNLY we have to have that info. ooooooooookay.

I create a spreadsheet with each server function and all the ports that server function uses to communicate with the other servers. The columns end up going to KK and the longest row is about 55 if i recall. It took me 2 days to research it all and create it. This is going to break the DT, i know it.

We get on our next meeting and I share the sheet out. the DT says AWESOME! just what i needed. I'll incorporate this into the design document.

My disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined. When I make a spreadsheet built to ruin your visio document and it doesn't, i've failed as a human being.

On our next meeting the DT presents the visio and it's woefully lacking in port representation. I point out he's missing some stuff. He says well i put what you had in the spreadsheet you provided. I said, uuhhhh....it goes to column KK. You need to scroll to the right.

He scrolled then said:

oh...oh!....OOHHH!!!! uuhhhh.... hmmm.....

silence. The smile slowly crept across my face. Yes, cameras were off for this meeting. more silence. The DT finally sighs heavily and says "well, uh....i'll need to figure out how to represent this. Um, is this REALLY how this works?"

I reply, "Yes, that is everything that is documented by the vendor. All of those ports are used for all of the application modules we have."

He says "ok...i'm gonna need.....some time."

you want ports? I got your ports right here buddy. My spreadsheets WILL ruin your day.

I remember a small act of malicious compliance I had whenever I was still living with my parents when I was in high school. I had to leave for work and I realized my younger sister‘s car was parked behind mine. I asked her if she could move it for me so I could leave. I figured if she moved it and I pulled out then she could simply pull back into the driveway and park where I was. Easy peasy.

But nope. She, for some reason, had an attitude and said “No, you move it.” In a rather snippy tone. She couldn’t even be bothered to give me her keys. Irritated, I grabbed them and left.

One thing to note is that our grandparents lived across the street from us. They owned a few acres of land and their house was one of those houses that was built on top of the hill that was a solid 100 to 120 yards away from the main road. And the entrance to their long runway of a driveway was another hundred yards away from our parents’ house. So as I was moving her car, I had the thought to drive up their driveway and park it by their house.

Took me a couple minutes to walk home, drop her keys off and leave. She never refused to move her car again.

I'm not sure how many people will be on my side here, because the victim technically doesn't deserve it, but here goes. So I work as a utility locator, meaning I drive around to houses and construction sites to find where the underground utilities are on the property and then mark them with paint and flags. There is a very common problem when contractors call in a locate. We receive what's called a locate "ticket" that includes the address, the type of work that is being done, and any specifications on where they want utilities located (I.e. front yard, back yard, left side of property, etc.)

So, this consistent issue is that contractors will call in a ticket, and in the locate instructions they simply put "mark entire property." Sometimes they even say "confirmed working throughout." I've been doing this job for over four years now and it's very easy to know where the contractor is actually going to dig in most cases. Keep in mind that the only places that utilities actually need to be marked is where any digging will occur. So no marks are needed for simply mowing the lawn. So there are certain jobs where I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are only working in a certain area. For example, when people need their septic tanks repaired, 99% of home's septic tanks in my work area are in the back yard. Again, years of experience with this. But I will frequently have a ticket for that exact type of work that says in the instructions to mark the entire property, and sometimes it even specifies that they will be working throughout when I know they are not.

Needless to say we can get in trouble for not marking everywhere they tell us to, even though we sometimes still do that. But recently I decided to send these contractors a message in really the only way I could without being fired. I marked the entire property. Heavily marked it. Not literally every square inch, I'd be fired for sure. But everywhere that the utility ran, I put down those painted lines following it, and I used up several cans of paint to do so.

We use water based paint, so usually each painted line along the utility path gets two pass overs and will fade in maybe two weeks. Not this time. I layed on so much paint over each line that it's sure to be there for a couple months at least. And I know for a fact that homeowners HATE this. Now this is where I do feel a little bad, because the homeowner didn't tell me to mark the whole property, the contractor did. But a sure fire way to get a message through to the contractor is for the homeowner to complain to them about the markings in their yard. I've seen it happen before. And boy did they complain.

My supervisor let me know about a call they got from the contractor saying that the homeowner was livid about the markings. But there's nothing they can do about it. I didn't break any work rules or laws. My supervisor just told me to be careful and we both just laughed at it. Obviously I can't be doing this every time. But we're treated as garbage men who have to just take shit from everyone. Contractors frequently will tell us to mark sometimes thousands of feet when they literally only need about a 50 foot area marked. They don't care. So it definitely felt good to give them a headache for once.

And as far as the homeowner is concerned. Yeah it wasn't really fair for them, but homeowners cause headaches too. And at the end of the day, the paint will eventually fade. They can chill out and learn to relax and not care about the small things. No harm done.

When I was in the Army, I discovered that the best way at to get even with incompetent NCOs was to follow their orders exactly as stated. This would follow with, “that’s not what I wanted you to do!”

That’s what you told me.

“But that’s not what I meant!”

Eventually, they’d leave me alone.

Onward to the malicious compliance. While assigned to Germany, we lived in an apartment provided by the post. In the summer, mowing the lawn rotated among the apartments. When it was my turn, they decided that the hedges needed to be trimmed. They were VERY overgrown. I pointed out that apparently no one else had been trimming them, as they were about 6’ tall and growing wild. They said, “too bad. It’s your turn. You have to do it.”

I did. I trimmed them to about 12 inches from the ground. When I was questioned later, I said, “you told me to trim them. I did.”

I wasn’t required to trim them again. Then again, after 2 summers, I don’t think they needed it.