‘Management Had A Fit’ — Manufacturing Plant Worker Plans 20-Person Meeting No One Attends, Then Outsmarts Every No-Show
Nobody sets out to be a malicious complier. You show up, you do your job, you try to act reasonable. And then management does something so spectacularly silly that you have no choice but to say fine. You want it done that way? Great. Consider it done exactly that way. That is the beautiful, petty, deeply satisfying art of malicious compliance.
The stories in this roundup run the gamut from a manufacturing plant worker who scheduled a meeting nobody attended to a logistics employee who hasn’t answered the phone in over a year. Every single one of them followed the rules. Every single one of them won.
1. “Have you ever used malicious compliance to deal with ridiculous work rules? How did it turn out?”
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. Readers celebrated this act of malicious compliance.
Turns out “all in attendance agreed” is the kind of management-speak that management just can’t argue with.
7. Others Shared Their Similar Stories:
8.
9.
10.
11.
When management tells you to focus all of your efforts on the metrics, the only logical move is to focus all of your efforts on the metrics.
12. When The New Boss Makes New Rules, Be Careful What You Wish ForYou said: now for this: Not me, but a fellow teacher.
13.
14.
15.
16.
When your new manager decides to flex her authority by making you run every single request through her, including the 40+ you get every day, sometimes the best move is to just follow the rules exactly as stated.
Especially when the COO comes knocking.
17. Teacher Follows The Photo ID Rule To The Letter And Nobody Can Say A Word About It
Sometimes the best malicious compliance is the most technically correct kind.
A photo ID is a photo ID. Nobody said it had to be recent.
18. Company Tells Employees To Log Every Single Task, Immediately Regrets It When The Data Starts Rolling In
19.
Be careful what you ask for. Especially when you’re asking a bunch of people who have a lot of tasks and a lot of time to log them.