From u/Throwinitawaymkay, MaliciousCompliance

I work(ed) as a housekeeper at a small local hotel. At the beginning when I started (about three years ago), things were pretty peachy. I got above minimum wage and worked in an environment with a more relaxed working pace. We had more time than your average hotel to clean rooms and it showed in customer satisfaction. We had stellar reviews with customers raving about how there wasn't a speck of dust anywhere, how everything from the lamp shades to the bathroom drain was always scrubbed squeaky clean.

I loved my job and took pride in it, and when we had extra time, (which happened from time to time,) we would do some deeper cleaning like scrubbing all the walls inch by inch, disinfecting the whole bathroom, cleaning the blinds etc. Even though we all had some extra time, we used it to make sure the rooms were always up to a very high standard.

As a result of this, we got a reputation of being an affordable but very clean hotel, so our popularity spiked. Even before we got so popular (in our prime we were booked full about 90% of the days) our boss made a pretty nice amount of money. We don't have a reception, we're self-service (you just get a passcode for your room via text message) so he saved money with that. He drives an expensive car and seems very well off. We were never struggling financially.

Then things started changing. We're a very close-knitted team of cleaners who have been in the house for years. A couple of us left at the end of last year (one moved to another state, another became a housewife after having a kid), and we started expecting newcomers to our team. They never came. Our boss claimed that it's hard to find workers for this kind of job. We never had anyone interviewed and I never saw ads anywhere that we're hiring, so I'm not sure he was even planning on replacing them. So our work pace got tighter. We managed somehow but there was no longer time for thorough cleaning.

Then, the boss opened a restaurant so that the guests could have breakfast. Cleaning it daily got added to our workload (and that place is massive, it takes at least 1½ hours to clean daily). At the same time, he also opened a separate airbnb-style apartment (three bedrooms, kitchen, living room and bathroom) for larger groups who wanted to reside together. Cleaning that fell on us as well.

So suddenly, we were down two people (there were seven of us initially) and shoved two massive new responsibilities. We asked our boss again to hire more people, but he said no and that "we've been having it too easy" beforehand. He also refused to add another hour or two to our daily working hours (currently 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.). We have six hours and everything needs to be done at 3 p.m. sharp because that's when the new passcodes start working.

Understandably, we were stressed out. There was suddenly far too much to do and our boss also simultaneously expected that we would keep up our usual cleaning standard. But when our time per room plummets from 45 min to 25 min tops (usually closer to 15), obviously we're not able to clean everything the way we did before. We would get yelled at when we got bad feedback because there wasn't enough time to clean thoroughly enough, customers who came in after our clean rooms were disappointed and took their business elsewhere. Also, my coworkers started calling in sick because they were burnt out. It was a mess, but our boss maintained the outlook that if he just pushed a massive amount of work on us, we'd somehow magically find an extra pair of hands and get everything done 100%.

Last week, we had a meeting with my coworkers. We discussed the current situation and to my surprise, everyone was considering quitting. Out of loyalty to our long-time employer, the five of us agreed to have a meeting with our boss and try to persuade him to hire more staff to bring the hotel back to its earlier standard.

A couple of days later, we had the said meeting. Our boss was still in denial and said that we just need to up our pace and do things faster. He cited that most hotels give housekeepers about 20 minutes to do everything. We pointed out that it's true, but in that case he can't expect us to clean better than those hotels.

He scoffed and told us "If you don't like working here, then leave."

That was all we needed to hear. That night we had another meeting amongst us cleaners. We checked our contracts and realized there was no agreed on notice for resignation as we're at-will. So, we were all going to take his advice.

This morning, at 9 a.m. sharp, the five of us paid our boss a visit. The look on his face when we simultaneously slammed down our resignation letters and marched out, leaving no one to clean the whole hotel today, will warm my heart for the rest of my days. He was absolutely stunned.

He tried to call us to talk things over. Nuh uh, we just did what you told us to. Have fun replacing what was a motivated, loyal and dedicated team of cleaners who made your business bloom.

--u/Throwinitawaymkay

From u/Danigirl_03, MaliciousCompliance

So this isn't my story but my mom's. Woman is the master of malicious compliance and pettiness when someone pisses her off.

So when I was about 9 my mom was involved in a car accident that wasn't her fault. But destroyed our car. The car was a complete write off. It was about 2 weeks before our scheduled summer holidays and mom just wanted the replacement value of the car she had another car all picked out. She just needed her check from our provincial insurance to pay for it.

The difference of what they were fighting about was about $400 back in 1994. And my mom was bound and determined she was getting the full replacement value. She just wanted to get a new car so she could take us camping for our holidays.

The insurance adjuster declined mom 3 times. And she was just getting more and more pissed off. She had every single piece of documentation for the value of her car and the replacement costs and that was all she wanted.

As a last ditch effort she even tried reasoning with the adjuster that she had 3 small girls and she just wanted this sorted so she could take her girls on holiday. His exact words were you can have your holiday in the office here for all I care, it's not my problem this is our final offer.

Well my mom took that as a dare. Bright and early Monday morning mom showed up at the insurance adjusters office with a picnic lunch and three girls with toys in hand to have her holiday right there in the office. They're a crown corporations (province owned) and their office and lobby spaces were classed as a public area back then. So they couldn't make her leave.

So a 9, 7 and 5 year old are playing quite happily and rambunctiously since we'd been told we were on holiday and didn't need to use our going out manners. Which I'm sure you can imagine isn't quiet at all.

The insurance adjuster called the police to have us removed and show up only to greet my mom by name, since she cut their hair and explain to them that it's a public service office and they can't force us to leave unless we enter an employee only area or stay outside of business hours. One of the officers even sat down with us and was having a cup of pretend tea at our tea party.

My mom proceeded to tell every customer who asked for the whole morning that she just wanted replacement value for her car. She was just a poor single mom with three kids and they'd made it so we couldn't go camping on holiday but the adjuster had kindly offered to let us have our holiday in their office. With a big shit eating grin every single time.

About 1:30pm it's time for nap time for my youngest sister. But of course it's too loud, too bright and she's ridiculously over stimulated and also tired and needs that nap. So like most overstimulated and tired children she kicks off in a huge sobbing tired tantrum. Full volume sobbing about how she wants to sleep and go camping. She easily went full volume for at least 30 minutes. My mom didn't bother to quiet her just soothed her back.

At that point the division manager came out and asked to speak to my mom. So I got told to stay put and mind my sisters for a minute. My mom came out 5 minutes later full value check in hand a big smile on her face, thanked the manager. Packed us up, picked up my sobbing baby sister.

Took us home called the sitter to come over and came back 2 hours later with our new to us car with a brand new hitch to tow our hard top tent trailer, packed and ready to go and we set off to go camping.

--u/Danigirl_03

From u/Malikissa, MaliciousCompliance

I was talking to a friend of mine and was reminded of this situation. I used to work for a big box electronics retailer in the warehouse. My general manager pretty much hated me and the feeling was mutual. For several weeks she kept insisting that my truck crew was slacking and going too slow when we unloaded trucks.

What she didn't realize was that I had friends at the corporate office, so I emailed one of them and asked if they had a breakdown of timings. Fortunately he did, and sent me an excel sheet that covered literally every contingency, and allowed me to predict exactly how long it should take us to unload a truck.

As I suspected, not only were my guys not slacking, they were actually finishing the truck around 30 minutes faster that corporate had allotted.

So I emailed her to ask her about clarification regarding our truck timing and mentioned that they needed to hydrate due to the temperatures outside and the work they were doing.

She replied to my email, telling me that she didn't care about hydration, but that my crew absolutely had to have the truck finished in the time allotted by corporate.

So, the following truck we unloaded everything into the warehouse, then took a 30 minute smoke break and drank water before going back in to finish up. My crew knew I was feuding with the GM, so they were well behaved, but amused.

She hauled me back into the warehouse and started yelling at me, and I pulled up the excel sheet, along with the email she sent me. I showed her that we were 30 minutes faster than corporate thought we would be able to handle it at this point, and that since she didn't care about hydration, I made the decision to allow my crew to drink water as necessary, provided they were within corporate guidelines.

She turned red, glared at me, and stormed off.

We continued unloading the truck for the rest of the time I worked there exactly the same way, as long as we were faster than the spreadsheet, my guys took a smoke/water break for as long as standards said they were still faster than they should be.

--u/Malikissa

From u/hammsbeer4life, MaliciousCompliance

A few years back i was working in a food manufacturing facility. I was a newer hire and basically what you'd call a grunt. I was only there because they hadn't figured out how to automate my job yet.

This particular company was a great place to work and our sanitation programs and general cleanliness were world class. In addition to doing our normal daily equipment cleanings, we would be doing scheduled heat treatments a few times per year on every piece of equipment. The thought was that some pathogens could start to become chemical resistant, so every so often we would cook the shit out of the equipment in an oven. Nothing would survive, it would be like starting over. Not a bad idea. Many companies do this, particularly meat packaging plants.

My foreman was a bitter woman. She was the worst ball buster there was. She would throw you under the bus and berate you every chance she got. Unless that is, you were one of her friends. They got a free pass.

She was tasked with helping spearhead this heat treatment project. We had a temporary enclosure made out of very heavy mil plastic sheeting and a steam wand teed off the plant's steam boiler piping. We tossed a couple temperature probes in the enclosure. This whole thing was a proof of concept before the owner dropped a fortune on a gigantic oven big enough to fit a few medium sized cars in, for heat treating equipment.

So my foreman delegated the task of trialing the heat treatment process even though it was her project. She wasn't very bright, so she made me do it because I was the new guy. We had an entire production line shut down for a week. I had to move every single piece of equipment across the building and steam cook them one at a time. Some of these machines weighed as much as two tons. I was lucky to get a couple pieces of equipment done per day.

I told my foreman that the heat was too much for the food grade grease in the bearings, the hydraulic systems, and the moisture from the steam would destroy electrical components.

She didn't care. Very rudely she told me not to ask any questions and just do what I was told.

Being a foreman in an industrial environment, I could not believe how mechanically inept she was. This was not the first time she had directed us to make bad decisions with expensive equipment.

"OK," I said.

I spent the next 4 days getting paid over $20 an hour to destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. All the bearing shields blew out, all of the seals on the hydraulic motors failed, and I destroyed the contents of a few electrical panels along the way. The problem was that the temperature probes were placed on stainless steel pieces of equipment. If the surface of that equipment was 175*F, the air inside the enclosure was well over 250*F near the top of the enclosure. Heat rises bro!

The maintenance department was absolutely livid. A dozen pieces of equipment needed total overhauls. Sensors were damaged, electrical contacts were corroded. Everything was covered in hydraulic oil from the fluid expanding and rupturing the housing and disconnect seals. It was a nightmare.

Our plant manager was understandably upset and wondered why my foreman didn't call him after I ruined the first piece of equipment so we could stop and reevaluate the process.

I didn't catch any heat for it. ....And my foreman later on was let go for personal misconduct. (A bunch of us were questioned by upper management about some other incidents, namely having a relationship with a subordinate.) I'm sure destroying a bunch of equipment and incurring a week or so of lost production time didn't look good on her resume either.

For those of you asking, I did my due diligence and I felt guilty about what I did, but I wasn't risking being fired for insubordination. I talked to a foreman on another shift and our maintenance supervisor but my orders remained the same. I was a new employee and I had no idea how to get in touch with the owner or other people in higher management. It was a huge company that employed thousands.

I don't know the exact way it panned out they obviously don't tell us why our boss is gone. I am sure this incident didn't do her any favours. 

--u/hammsbeer4life

From u/Zeebird95, MaliciousCompliance

Backstory:

I work at the orange fabric hardware store, located mainly on N/A continent. I was putting myself through college on the over night team. Working 9pm - 4/5 am and then having class at 7 am and labs until 5 pm most evenings meant my allowance for BS was low ( I’m a science degree. I always had labs ). I was supposed to clock off at 1 each night since I was only part-time.

(I was only taking 15 credits. So sometimes there would be an hour or two between classes, or a class would get cancelled. So I’d nap in my 2001 Ford Expedition from my last class and lab if I didn’t have any work to do. And weekends are great for catching up on sleep.)

At the orange fabric store they consider it a working warehouse so they have all the powered lift equipment and I was pretty good at it, so good that after 4 years there I was the only person trained on one of the machines for my singular team stocking freight. The OP ( think a cherry picker with a 4 foot metal platform attached for the uninformed).

The Problem:

Because I was in school I refused to work late evenings before tests and I would sometimes call out entirely for big exams. It was the primary use for my sick/ vacation time. My supervisor and the operations manager above me loved me so it was no problem. Until cool bosses left. Enter Dick manager and ditsy supervisor.

Dick manager wanted to clean house of anyone who could think for themselves. Meaning someone like me. Ditsy supervisor wanted to be promoted quickly so she did whatever DM wanted.

The prelude and the act :

DM and DS were being ridiculous one night and I had an exam the next morning. So I started getting things ready for me to do OP work. I planned on leaving at one, I talked with DS about it two weeks prior and had gotten it in writing from the store manager. DM and DS stop me asking what I was doing, no one was leaving until everyone was done. ( we had 5 people, and got form 3 to 4 trucks a week. To say we were behind was an understatement. ).

Me : I have an exam in the morning, I’m the only one who can do these tasks. I’m getting them done before I have to leave ( it’s around 11:00)

DM : looks at me, says “Okay go about your business “.

I should have seen the stupidity coming. The next day I come in and get called into the office. Dm and DS are there.

DM : Last night we noticed that you were doing tasks that weren’t functioning with the group, and while we didn’t explicitly say not to do them, you were asked to work freight not the OP work.

Me : “isn’t the OP just another part of the freight? And I had an exam” looks at DS. “ you were aware, it’s on the note here and in the system “.

DS : “While that’s true, since you’re a veteran member of the team we need you to be more proactive and showing the new guys what to do/ whose in charge. “

DM: “So from now on, every task must be given to you explicitly by DS. If you’re seen doing something that isn’t from her direct orders than you’re not to do it, when you finish your tasks you’re to go to her and get your next one “

Me; stares. (my father was in the military, and my grandfather was a DI. I’m told I’m quite stoneface).

DM: “we need you to sign this stating that you understand. “

It was one of the sheets they use when doing non- firable punishments. Basically “you’ve been told you’re screwing up. If you keep it up we’ll use this against you later if we decide we want to be rid of you."  And they stay in the computer system for 6 months. So for example you can only be late 4 times in a 6 month period. So say you’re late three times in January if you’re late before a certain date in June they’ll put you on a final warning.

Enter the malicious compliance:

It didn’t matter what I did, I was under DS’s heels waiting for my next task the moment I was done. If she was in a meeting with another associate I waited outside the door. If she was on lunch I waited for her to decide to take notice of me. If she was in the bathroom, guess who was right outside the door.

To top it off I made some charts and spreadsheets of my grades from when I had the good bosses and then the new situation. After reviewing them with my store manager I convinced her that under no exception am I to be kept late. So for the next 5 months I left exactly at 1:01. If they tried to keep me later the manager called DS and DM in for a tongue lashing.

Edit : I was super tired when I posted this. Decided I should add more context.

Last October I switched from this job to the loading one. Much better job with only 1/4 the stress. Load carts and load peoples purchases. I’m in process to enlist. After a bit we collected enough evidence on DM that when we sent the pictures and such to corporate, they moved him to a lower performing store.

--u/Zeebird95

From u/talesfromdathrowaway, MaliciousCompliance

More than a decade ago I was an at large Quality Inspector for a large industrial manufacturer. I say at large because a majority of my work was on the plant floor, with my office only being used for paperwork and the occasional precision inspection. In the approximately 2 and a half years that I worked there, I had seven different people as my boss. Nine if you count the two guys that were in charge of my work twice.

Zapa (I’m not sure if that’s a real name, but it definitely wasn’t this guy’s real name) was an engineer from overseas, and his culture tends to produce arrogance in people that gain positions of authority. I don’t have a problem with people from that country, but both Zapa and his boss are some of the most arrogant men I have ever met (topping that list is a professor from the same country).

All of the supervisors and quality staff are required to have a radio. Our radios had several channels, and the QA team had their own. This would seem to make any conversation private, but the line inspectors all wore radios so a lot of the plant could hear them.

This particular bit of MC starts with a biological break. I am almost finished doing my business when I get called over the radio.

Zapa: “tales, this is Zapa.”

Tales: “Go for tales.”

Zapa:“Where are you right now?”

Not wanting to give the whole plant a mental picture they can’t unsee, I reply with, “Indisposed. I can meet in 5 minutes, just tell me where.”

Zapa:“But where are you right now?”

Tales: “Not currently available.”

Zapa: “tales, tell me where you are, RIGHT NOW.”

Sounds like he wants to chew my ass. Little did he know… Okay boss, you asked for it.

Tales: “I am currently in the 4th stall from the door in the East bathroom, sitting down and feeling much better.”

There is a pause on the other end of the line. I’m pretty sure that he was with someone else at the time, but I’ll never know. “When you are finished,” he said quietly, “please see me in my office.”

“Of course. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

I don't remember what was so important, but it wasn't anything that couldn't have waited five minutes. But he never pressed me over the radio again.

--u/talesfromdathrowaway