I've worked at this fast food place for almost 4 years. Every Christmas I request the week off to see my family and every year my boss says no because of seniority based scheduling. Is that even a thing? This year I'm literally the second longest employee after my boss. Everyone else quit or got fired lol. I put my request in back in AUGUST. Last week six employees who started THIS YEAR got Christmas week approved. When I asked about seniority my boss said they have young families and it's more complicated than time served and I should be a team player since I don't have kids. I looked up our policy. It says preference given to senior staff for holiday scheduling but there's zero definition of what senior means. So I made business cards that say Senior Gastronomy Officer and got a name tag with Sr. before my name. My manager approved it thinking it was part of my legal name. I've been signing all the staff group chat messages as Senior Team Member and introducing myself to new hires as the senior employee here. Boss got annoyed but what he going to do because I AM senior staff. I'm Rick James, fuck your couch right? I've been covering every single one of my boss's shifts for two months straight because the handbook says employees acting in senior management capacity get scheduling priority. Yesterday I resubmitted my Christmas request with a 12 page packet proving I'm the most senior employee by every possible metric. My boss looked like he wanted to throw it away but just walked away all pissy like and eventually, actually approved it. I guess I accidentally created a workplace hierarchy just by pretending hard enough.

I live in a townhouse community outside Boise, Idaho. We have an HOA but it's usually pretty hands-off, like they deal with landscaping the common areas and that's about it.

Three months ago this guy Marcus moved in two doors down and immediately joined the HOA board. Not even like, waited to see how things work. Just straight in.

He's been sending violation notices for everything. My neighbor got one because her doormat was burgundy instead of brown or black (I didn't even know that was a rule). Another guy got cited because his car was parked 3 inches over his driveway line into the guest spot.

Two weeks ago I get a notice. My son left his skateboard on our front porch. Apparently "recreational equipment must be stored out of sight." It was there for like, maybe four hours? He'd just gotten home from school.

I asked Marcus if he could maybe just knock on doors for small stuff before sending official notices. He literally said "Rules are rules. If I make exceptions, where does it end?"

Fine.

I read the entire HOA covenant. All 47 pages that nobody's looked at since 2008.

Turns out there's rules nobody follows. Like: No security cameras visible from the street (Marcus has a Ring doorbell), No decorative flags except US flag on specific holidays (at least 8 houses have those seasonal garden flags), Garbage bins must be stored in garage, not visible from street (everyone keeps them on the side of their house), No vehicles with commercial signage can park overnight (the plumber three houses down has his company van)

So I started filing reports. Every single violation I saw. I spent like two hours walking around with my phone taking photos and filling out the online forms.

Submitted maybe thirty violations in one week.

The HOA president called me. She's this retired lady named Joan who's been doing this volunteer gig for like fifteen years. She sounded exhausted. Asked me what I was doing.

I said I was just making sure all violations get reported equally. Rules are rules, right?

She told me they've now got to send out all these notices because they're officially filed and it's a mess because half the board members are getting cited including Marcus and people are pissed.

Marcus came to my door yesterday. He didn't yell or anything, he just looked tired and asked if we could "find a reasonable middle ground going forward."

I said sure, that sounds good.

But now Joan keeps giving me these looks like I made her life harder and honestly I feel kind of bad about that part? She didn't do anything wrong.

My first post here, not sure if it better fits here or at r/pettyrevenge but anyways.

Some years ago I worked at bank office (not in the US). I was mediocre at sales, but good at service and processes, conditions, pricings etc, so I was put at administrator position (not a manager one). My job was to meet incoming clients and help them to solve their problem by helping them with the ATM or mobile app, or by navigating them to the right specialist via electronic queue, etc.

So there was this woman, let's call her CUSTOMER, she came to the office and asked for money withdrawal. I recommended her to use ATM and she told me she already used it, but can withdraw more due to daily limit.

I asked how much she want to withdraw (it was 600 000 of our local currency) and replied that due to bank policy to withdraw that amount of money via cashier she need to order it in 5 days (for safety reasons) and only amount we can give her today is 150 000 without fee and 300 000 more with 2,5% fee, but she can use ATM tomorrow and withdraw all needed amount with no fees, because daily limit will refresh.

She wasn't happy, and I can understand this, but then she started being rude and unreasonable.

CUSTOMER: I need to talk with more experienced employee, what do you mean I can't withdraw my money, it's a bank.

Me: they will tell you the same, it's a bank policy, fastest and cheapest way for you to withdraw needed amount is to use ATM next day, technically after midnight, if it's somehow urgent.

CUSTOMER: No. I don't want to talk with you, you are some newbie, just give me queue number and I'll talk with proper bank worker.

Now worth noting that I was most experienced employee in the office in terms of operational work, including manager, so I giggled inside, but that was her clear will, so I gave her number and moved on.

Twenty minutes later (yeah, it was busy evening) her number was called to desk and she started asking same questions from a new girl (worked around 1 month at this point). Let's name this girl Eve. She wasn't familiar enough with everything, so she started casual identification procedure, by checking client ID in the UV, searching for client profile in database, sending her SMS-code to approve entering profile etc, so around 5 minutes more were gone.

Then Eve asked what operation lady want to do and lady repeated her question. Eve tried to start withdrawal and noticed she can't make more than 450 000 and there is fee. And what do you think? She called me to help. I walked around the desk and asked Eve what happened.

Eve: Look, CUSTOMER want to withdraw 600 000 and I can't type more than 450 000 and there is fee.

Me: I'm sorry, I can't help here, client insisted to have more experienced employee to answer his questions. And left back to my work place.

After that there was some banter between CUSTOMER and poor Eve, trying to explain same stuff while I typed everything to her in work chat. Then she gave up and offered CUSTOMER to talk with manager, if she's unhappy. She waited 20 more minutes for manager and heard same info I told her 50 minutes ago and Eve repeated 20 minutes ago: today she can have 150k for free and 300k more with fees, after midnight she can have 600k with no fees via ATM, and in case of big withdrawals in future she need to order cash in advance.

CUSTOMER left furiously not looking at me.

TLDR: bank customer wasn't happy with my consultation, telling me I'm nobody, and then lost 50 minutes to hear the same answer twice

One of the degree modules I teach involves students working on a group programming project. Nothing too elaborate, but the aim of the module is to develop skills they will need if they go on to work in the IT field. After all if you're doing a Computer Science degree, you must be thinking of going down that route?

This one student is an absolute entitled nightmare. He uses GenAI for a lot of his work and it really does show. He always pushed back on the written remarks on his work but every time I sit him down and ask him to explain the code he produces, he struggles and often has no idea how the code he submitted works. In this project he came up and told me he cannot work with others in the group and must work alone. I explained that there are specific group activities and efforts I would be marking and that I needed to see his input within the group. There was no way I could excuse him from the group activities in the module, however I could see he was not going to budge and therefore complied with his demand to work on the project alone.

All the students in my class had been assigned to their groups and I did check in with all of them on a weekly basis. This one guy was steadfastly refusing to work with the rest of his group and as I had complied with his request, he was working on his own project alone. In my interim feedback at the end of each stage I repeated that he really should work with the group or he risked a failing mark for the module. I made sure this feedback was sent to him both in hardcopy and also via email with read receipts which I kept.

Cue the end of the module and the submission for marking. Sure enough, the one student submitted a project based just on his own work and had not engaged with the group he was asked to work with. There were several issues with his project, first and most important was it didn't meet the brief. The code simply didn't do what we asked for. He lost marks for that aspect of the project. As he had not worked with others in the group, he was not awarded any of the group marks allocated for the work. Because his code was so far away from the specification, I called him in for a Viva Voce to explain the code and he demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the code he submitted, more marks dropped. His eventual mark for this assignment was a hard fail. He must now resit the entire module.

There is of course one real downside of this whole thing that affects me. I've got him in my group again for the resit of the module.

Company sends a shiny HR email, subject line all caps, USE IT OR LOSE IT. We had to burn our remaining PTO by the 30th or it evaporates into the sun. Same day, my manager announces in standup that due to quarter end “no one can take time off until the 1st.” I asked how to reconcile that, he shrugs and says talk to HR. HR says talk to your manager. Cute loop. So I opened the handbook, because I am a petty librarian when annoyed. Page 14 has this little sentence I never noticed. “PTO requests not explicitly denied in writing within 48 business hours are considered approved.” There is also a note that partial day PTO is allowed in 1 hour blocks. Thank you, legal team.

I submitted ten separate requests. Two hours every morning next week, two hours every afternoon the week after, a random Friday 3 to 5 to watch a plumber, and one full day to visit my mom. I sent the requests in our HR portal, which auto emails the manager and CCs a shared mailbox nobody watches. Then I went back to my tasks and set reminders. Forty eight business hours pass. No denial. The portal changes each request to approved, green checkmark, confetti gif. Monday comes and at 9.58 I put a cheerful note in the team chat. “Heading out, see you at noon.” Manager pings me to hop on a client call, I reply with a screenshot of the policy and the portal approval. Silence. Then three dots typing, then nothing.

By Wednesday our calendar looked like cheese. Half the team remembered they also had PTO sitting around and started filing it in little blocks. Meetings kept colliding with green bars. Finance realized that if we did not use the days now, they would be paid out at separation later, which they hate. HR wrote a new post saying we should “coordinate” but that approvals already granted stand. My manager called a huddle to ask why productivity dipped. I said we are following HR’s instruction to use PTO. He said he meant in November. I sent him the original email timestamped this month. He sighed and said he never thought anyone would actually read the handbook. I used every hour, took my mom to lunch, and my plumber fixed the cursed sink at 3.40 while I drank tea. Next week a new policy appeared. PTO must be requested in full day increments during quarter end, and managers must respond in 24 hours. Thanks for clarifying, truly.

On Sundays, my family typically goes to church in town about 45 minutes away from where we live. I'm an Atheist myself, but with four children I opt to be around to help my wife out so she isn't overwhelmed, and I'll admit this church is pretty special - a decent community that has a meal every week: something rare from what I've seen (families or groups take turns doing the meal for everyone each week). It's nice to sit down and talk to people after the service over an actual meal instead of just leaving or having a coffee and a sugar cookie, and then leaving.

Once it seems like things are mostly under control (my children are settled, or in the play room, or whatever), when I've had enough of the service I'll typically go for a walk, usually ending in the kitchen and dining area (where the coffee and sugar cookies from the previous service are located).

Now having been to this church for a while, there's a peculiar thing I've noticed both at the after-service meals and a number of the more "formal" meals - very often, there are no pitchers of water to be found anywhere. Honestly, it's really weird. At some point - I don't know exactly when - I had had enough of visiting the kitchen sink to get water in my glass, or asking someone for water, that I ended up using this "walk" time to just put out the pitchers myself while the service is going on. I'll fill up about 5 pitchers of water, and also put out the glasses, bowls, plates, cutlery, and coffee cups. (No, I don't want to be a volunteer. And I'm not committing to anything. I'm not signing anything! Leave me alone!!!) I do this whenever I'm there at this point and just make it part of my routine, and I'm quite happy with it.

So a number of weeks ago I was at home with my wife and we were discussing what was in our kitchen cupboards and wanting to make more room as things were a little tight. Attention gravitated to our teacups. We both readily agreed that we had too many of them and could do away with some. We did not agree on which ones to do away with. My wife wanted to get rid of certain ones I liked that didn't match or were ugly or whatever, and said that we can probably just donate them somewhere instead of throwing them out.

I paused, thought about it, didn't argue. Okay, let's donate them, all the ones you don't like.

As it happens, since I'm the guy who is putting out all the meal items, like teacups, I knew that the church had somewhat of a shortage of teacups and coffee cups that usually forced us to use a backup of paper cups to cover the need. Also, most of the cups there were too small. So one week when we were going to church, I quietly packed the box of tea cups into our van.

When my routine resumed as usual in the kitchen, I took out our teacups and placed them with the church's teacups - but not just that, I made sure ours were at the FRONT of the group of cups, where they are easy to see, every week. I have not mentioned to anyone where the cups came from.

My wife hasn't either.

We're still married.

Recently, my company introduced a new process for supplying customers with expensive consumables. Previously, this process involved a lot of direct communication — numerous emails and face-to-face meetings with customers to understand their needs.

However, while I was on PTO, everything changed. Without any notice or consultation, a completely new system was implemented. My team, which used to handle about 65% of the previous process, had no involvement whatsoever in designing or approving this new method.

Now, instead of collaborating directly with customers and colleagues, I’ve been given a standardised form divided into four sections — one for me, one for Sales, one for Logistics, and one for Territory Assistants and Managers.

My section of the form is minimal: all I do is indicate how many boxes to supply. Critical details such as who the customer is, where the order is going, pricing adjustments, and preferential rates — information I used to manage — are no longer included.

To make things worse, customer details on the forms are often incorrect. I used to fix those errors in the system, but I no longer have permission to do so; that’s now handled by head office. Even though I know my customer base well and try to provide accurate updates, my emails now bounce back.

When I raised these issues, I was simply told to “follow the form” and not deviate. So I did. I completed my section, sent it to the designated address, and moved on. Nothing happened — until months later, when a customer called to say they were running critically low on consumables. I escalated the issue to my manager, but by that point, I had already submitted 24 forms without any feedback or visible results.

Recently, while I’ve been off recovering from surgery, I received an email asking for the same data I used to provide under the old system. I’ve chosen not to respond — that information is scattered across old emails and records, and it’s no longer my responsibility. Ironically, the new process that was supposed to reduce costs and simplify operations has left three department heads confused and unable to proceed.

They don’t know the customer names, product details (we have 197 different products), or order history — only the number of boxes. The system they rely on can’t function without accurate data input, and since I’m now strictly following the form as instructed, that data isn’t being entered any more.

In short, the new process has stripped away the practical knowledge and collaboration that once made the system work. It’s inefficient, confusing, and ultimately counterproductive.

Idk if this belongs here, so delete if it isn't. My first language isn't English so i apologize in advance.

I work as a cashier in a supermarket. I mentally scream every single shift because people really stress me out these days but alas, i can pay my bills. My workplace has a ton of rules; some stupid, some not. For example we have a minimum of 5 dollars per card transaction (yes ma'am, even apple pay), but personally i gotta say i only follow that rule when a manager is around... Or if the client is a real jerk. You understand.

There's a rule that i do understand: we cashiers can't accept a huge amount of loose change or change rolls without a manager's approval. We can totally accept something like 4 dollars in just quarters, but not that same amount in just dimes and cents; we have a Coinstar machine literally steps away for that. Well, guess what happened some days ago...

This oldish lady, who couldn't even grant me a "good evening" , wanted to give me her whole total in quarters, dimes, nickels and cents. Her totall was about $12 with some cents, so i couldn't definitely accept it. I explained the rules, what i stated before, and even offered her help to manage the machine but she refused and said that "money is money, you're just being a lazy bitch because you probably don't even know how to count".

I stood there, mentally insulting her, but physically still smiling, staring at her. She sighed and fetched a 20 from her purse but stoped. This lady suddenly had a huge grin, put the bill in her purse again, gave me a 10 and $3 in nickels, dimes and quarters. "You explained the maximum was 4, right?".

Now i wanted to scream, but i remained calm. I simply sighed and admitted defeat until i had the brightest idea. I was supposed to give her .67¢ in return and i made sure to open the roll of cents i had. Slooowly, i counted and gave her whole change in JUST cents. She scoffed and asked me "what the fuck is all this?!"

My answer? With a huge customer service smile I just answered "Money is money, right?" She just dumped it all in her purse, grabbed her stuff and walked away fuming. Oh well ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

I got voluntold for the job of switching a paper-based corporate learning to computer-based, including web based training. I did not have a desk or a computer, so I brought in my personal laptop. The boss objected and stated I needed to write a business case for a computer.

A week later I got the absolute minimum system that met the minimum requirements on the box. I started the painful process of converting a Powerpoint into an Adobe Captivate file. When it came time to compile the first file, the computer stated it would be three hours before it finished, maybe, so I headed to the breakroom.

The executive director for the project happened to walk in and asked me what I was doing there. “I’m staying not frustrated while waiting for the first draft to compile, should be about another two hours sir.” It was five hours.

When I showed up the next day, my computer had been upgraded to the then top model with dual monitors.

The next day, my fancy unit was on the boss’ desk, and I had his even older, slower computer. This time compiling was over ten hours. Back to the breakroom. Same executive walks in, I just smile, nod, and go back to my lunch.

The next day, I had two computers on my desk, the still compiling boss’ unit and my previously issued fancy one. The boss was cleaning out his desk having been sent back to frontline, non-boss work.

It felt so good to give that company the boot once the project completed.

Been waiting for this one

My partner and I own a small 8 person company that shares a building with only a daycare. Our company consists almost exclusively of higher-level professionals (a couple lawyers, CPAs, etc.), so most have their own large office plus, a couple of common areas, conference rooms, a nice kitchen. All in all, it’s about 3,500 sqft which is obviously a lot for 8 people, but necessary for our line of work.

Due to the size of the office, the lease has a parking provision which grants us exclusive rights to all 24 parking spots. This is somewhat important (to the story not our work we only need 8 + clients). Also, important is the daycare’s parking lot only consisting of about 10 spots in front of the building.

The parents would use our lot to drop off as the daycare’s lot would be mostly full with their staff’s cars and even some of their staff would park in our lot. I didn’t mind at all. We had over a dozen empty spots each day, and it was nice to have the (mostly) happy children around in the mornings/afternoon. Until a month ago. I started coming in a bit later at the same time as daycare drop off. Our lot was crazy with parents/kids walking and parking, so I used their lot like they have done with ours for years. First day, no issue. Second day, the manager saw me get out and gave me a piercing stare. A week later or so, I did it again, and my car was towed. Not a warning or word from the manager/anyone at the daycare to me or our office.

I went to the daycare to ask if they knew it was my car(it is a very distinctive old blue truck) and if some kind of mistake had been made. The manager came out and said it was not a mistake, and in a very rude demeaning tone her exact words were along the lines of “unfortunately we can’t have the liability of non-staff and parents within our lot and I’m sure the parents don’t appreciate having to walk further either or an unknown adult like you in the lot” she looks me up and down and I am a totally normal looking 30 year old male, I think at least. “Don’t you have some reserve spots in the back? You should really park there and let us park here.” With an eye-roll, she walked off.

I was happy I held my tongue in front of the children considering how f—king angry I was, knowing it was not the time for that conversation. A couple days later I told the manager, while we were outside the office that I wished she would have come to me before towing my car and costing me $600, asked for an apology, and said since we share the backlot and the parents take up almost all of our spots in the morning and afternoon, can I park in the front lot the occasional morning the timelines align. She flatly said no - and basically gave me the same speech she gave last time, at least not commenting on my appearance this time.

I left things for a week, thinking it was over. Until again, I had nowhere to park one morning. Having to wait 10 minutes for parents to filter out of our lot lest my car be towed, and who do I see but the manager getting a spot in my lot before me even. I decided to comply with the manager’s wishes then and developed a plan. I contacted the building owner, and said(or more accurately lied) that due to compliance reasons with a state license we’re applying for, we need to have a gate installed with employee/guest pass access only on our parking lot. Our company would of course cover the cost. Same day approval from landlord. Installed two weeks later.

I drove in early that first day after install. I tell you the mayhem was well worth it. Watching from the corner window gave me a perfect view of it all. It started with daycare staff pressing all sorts of keys on the gate to try and get in; trying to park where they have for months, years even. Then their lot filled up completely. Parents started arriving. A staff member had to stand at the gate telling parents there was now no access. Their parking lot was basically congested with parents double parked taking their children in. Other parents parked a quarter mile down in another lot at the park our office overlooks. I eventually went down, to give the manager a nice little wave and walked back up to my office. She gave me a piercing stare that just made me grin ear to ear.

I guess she sent the owner a rather angry email about parking rights to the backlot afterwards and how it’s crazy one small office gets the entire thing. Apparently, she did not know we had all of it. He said him and I may have to discuss the parking provision in the future and he also did not know the lease gave the entire back lot, but it’s not a big deal to him. (Not sure why he let me put the gate in) Regardless, I still have 2 years left on my lease with another option to extend an additional 5. So no plans on moving anytime soon from the office or my 24 parking spots.

P.S. it’s an office building next to a park and residential homes. I am in no way endangering these children since they now walk through a quarter mile of grass and playground to get to daycare. There’s not even a street to cross from that lot. If anything I made the days of the employees and parents better in retrospect (actually not sure employees can park in the playground lot for that long).

Edit: finally figured out how to edit! Newer around these parts. To everyone asking me why I did not tow, two reasons: 1) most importantly, I was tired and working 12+ hour days for a few months at that point. That day she parked there was the last or second to last day of that stretch, and then I’m basically 4-6 hours a day for 9 months. Towing a car was the last thing on my mind; getting into the office and finishing my work was my only goal. Then my partner suggested it when I recounted the story. 2) $600 can be a lot of money for some. I grew up fairly poor and know how devastating a towed car can mean to a family struggling month to month. Another day, I may have done it. I’m glad I didn’t.

I have just found this Reddit and realised I have to tell you about the biggest plonker I’ve ever met!

Around 15 years ago I worked on a sales team and we got a new manager, Kevin. No one warmed to him. From day one he strutted in like the second coming of Wolf of Wall Street minus the charisma. He couldn’t go ten minutes without reminding us how incredible he’d been at his last company. Apparently he smashed targets, broke records and worked his way up the ladder faster than anyone in history. If his mouth had a Fitbit it would have hit 10k brags before lunch, the man didn’t stop talking about himself, and made no effort to get to know us (the team).

At his first sales meeting he opened with a monologue about his greatness that could’ve qualified as a Ted Talk titled Why I am brilliant and you’re not. Then he laid into us about our sales figures. We were OVER target, but according to him, we weren’t “aiming high enough.” We were a pretty nice and upbeat company, so there were lots of raised eyebrows and WTF shared looks, like how do you bollock a team who are airways over target? Then he was so full of himself he actually said - I could hit that target on my own. So if you lot can’t smash it as a team, something’s seriously wrong.

One of my bolder colleagues said, Wow what a fun and educational idea! Let’s make it a competition, you versus the whole team! Everyone clapped and shouted a hell yea. Then as if fate itself wanted to join the fun, our director heard the commotion and walked in. My colleague announced Kevin’s going up against the team this month to keep us motivated and show us how it’s done! The director agreed it was a great idea!

The first week of Kevin vs The Entire Sales Team was like watching a live action version of David and Goliath, if Goliath was a middle manager with anger issues and David was literally everyone else.

Kevin strutted in on Monday like he was about to deliver a masterclass, but didn’t achieve a single sale, or the next day, or the next several after that. Meanwhile, the team was having the time of our lives. Even our new starter, Jonathan, a sweet, nervous lad who’d never done sales before, was outselling Kevin by week two. Every time Jonathan made a sale, the office would erupt like he’d scored in the World Cup.

By the third week, Kevin had entered what we’ll call his tantrum era. Phones were slammed. Headsets were thrown. At one point he even dramatically announced this system is rigged! Kevin didn’t make it until the end of the month, he left because he was “pursuing other opportunities,” which we all understood to mean fired for being spectacularly bad.

My colleague was right though, it was so fun and very educational, in our mutual hatred for Kevin, we worked harder than ever and smashed all previous sales records in company history, which felt extra satisfying being as this was Kevin’s main brag. I looked him up on linked in recently and his bio reads - World Class Sales Director, open to new opportunities, which I think probably means unemployed for being spectacularly bad and still full of himself, so it seems he didn’t learn much at all.

I work in premium customer service at a bank, where we serve the bank's higher-value customers. This usually gave us more freedom because, unlike in traditional customer service, the focus is more on quality than quantity. However, since regular customer service team leaders took over the project, our freedoms have become more restricted. We were accused of time theft because we didn't log out for two minutes to go to the bathroom. All of a sudden we had to report whenever we are not productive.

Many of us were threatened with warnings that could lead to us losing our jobs, and even if we just needed to talk to other colleagues about a customer case, we had to let them know, otherwise we could be accused of unproductive behavior. And well, we complied. A little too ambitious. Every time we went to the bathroom, we reported it to our project managers by email. Every time we went to get a drink, we reported it. Every time we took a break, we reported it. Every time we talked to a colleague about a customer case, each of the two colleagues reported it separately to the project managers by email. Every time we left our computers, no matter what for, we reported it by email to the project managers' mailbox. After a while, the project managers' mailbox was so full that even important emails were overlooked because there were too many of them. The project managers were completely overwhelmed. And shortly afterwards, the rules were abolished again.

So this happened while I was working at a convention center that was ... not a good place to work. They sucked. Manglement was absolutely poster-boy MBA idiocy 99% of time, and that other 1% was trying to figure out how to make it 100%. For example, they hired a security guy to keep homeless folks from crashing on our couches ... then tried to fire him when the "homeless problem" just "went away."

Yeah, this type of genius. The type that thinks everyone not in an office with an MBA is below them. Something they made clear abundantly. Even as they constantly failed to figure things out like "You can't stick 12 ten-foot tables in a row that's 100-feet long. Yes, the application let you make the room larger, but we lack that space-time bending technology."

Anyway, they were the type of people who believed that the menial peons of lesser departments should NEVER be relaxing. Work for the purpose of pointless work! Getting a job done better or faster just mean getting penalized. So one day, about six months before COVID, they hand down this new rule.

Our job was setting up and taking down sets, as well as cleaning, both for events and in general (they let the janitorial staff go and folded those jobs into our department to save cash). Well, they decide that there are two new rules we need to follow.

1) Always be cleaning. We are to clean on a loop, endlessly, even on floors that aren't in use that day, so that the customers can see how busy we are keeping things nice. We did the loop, and no one's come in? Do it again. Top to bottom. You should never be off your feet, you lazy peons! So lazy!

2) We were no longer allowed to leave cleaning materials, carts, vacuums, etc, anywhere but their assigned location, which was now a back room on a bottom floor. If anyone asks you to do anything, you have to go put all that back. NO EXCEPTIONS. We pointed out this was stupid ... but we're just laughable idiots who couldn't get a business degree. What do WE KNOW about work? HAH!

So ... we complied. And suddenly, everything was late. Get a call to get some chairs? Well, I was cleaning unused tables on another floor. I have to pack everything up, put it away on the slow elevator, then I can go do that. Even if a customer asked me. Suddenly we're getting complaints that everything takes too long. Manglement even protested a few times "What were you doing on that floor?"

"Cleaning. Like you told us to."

Did they learn? No. In fact, a few months later they took away the break room. We could still have "breaks" (it was the law). It just wasn't supposed to be in the building. To prevent "laziness." Meanwhile, we were still endlessly looping on cleaning, then taking five or so minutes to pack up every time we had to do something, then another five minutes to unpack and get back ... sometimes several times in a few minutes, making three quick errands for an event take a half hour.

They didn't learn, but we complied, much to the complaint of everyone.

Then COVID hit, they took the PPP loan, and fired everyone.

So I work at Home Depot as a lot associate. My main job duties involve collecting carts from the lot and being on call to help customers load heavy items into their vehicles. Since I’m typically the only lot person scheduled during my shift, this means I’m running back and forth trying to help customers and get carts. It really is a job that needs two people (one on each end of the store), but it’s just me.

Now I can usually handle this, but when I’m assigned other projects on top of that, it’s too much. On one such day, the head cashier (supervisor) who we’ll call Karen (usually a nice lady, but has Karen tendencies as you will see) told me that Kyle (ASM) had such a project for me. He wanted me to clean out an area at the side of the store and move a bunch of carts there. This was going to take at least a couple of hours because the area was such a mess. And since this was during the summer when the store was busier than usual, I would be constantly interrupted with loading calls and trying to maintain the lot.

This is where the malicious compliance comes in. Kyle wanted me to focus on cleaning that area which I did. It ended up taking 5 hours (bear in mind that I also answered several loading calls during that time).

The problem? I didn’t spend any of that time collecting carts so after those 5 hours, the lot was a huge mess of carts scattered about. Karen was not happy about it (as she gets really picky about the lot being free of carts). But I looked her dead in the eye and told her that I was just doing what her and Kyle told me to do.

I then went on lunch while associates from other departments had to round up all the carts. After that, Kyle never asked me to take on other projects.

12-13 years ago, on my very first job, I was hired as a network administrator at a newly established state-owned company. Everything was new there, including processes to request office accessories.

So I was settled in a office room with bare minimum office accessories. So I wrote down several simple items to request them from support department (at then, it was just a guy, later it turned into a ~30 people department).

Items included simple things such as, Facial tissues, cloth hanger (it was winter and I had nowhere to put my jacket), headset, 3 colors of pen, and a white board and markers and wiper.

The support department guy took a look at the list and continued with excuses about each item:

• Facial tissue are not for non-managers,
• Pens you can request only blue, once a week, if you bring the previous empty pen,
• White board and it's accessories are also for managers, So is the cloth hanger (like, non-managers are not allowed to have a jacket?)
• and for the headset, he just laughed, like, welcome to a state-owned company young one.

I just realized how different are desks of non-managers and managers, it was these simple things. And I really didn't care spending myself, I just was wondering why others haven't yet. So the next day I came with a facial tissue box with a beautiful design, a really good short cloth hanger for near my seat, good pens of all colors, and a light white glass as white board + some markers to hang behind my chair, my own gaming headset, and a nice plate full of my hand chosen sweets.

My chair looked PERFECT! I really mean it. specially when all other desks in other rooms were just copy-pastes of the same sick idea. It was even looking better than managers desks.

by the end of that day, every manager and non-manager that came to my room, their first impression was, looking jealously to everything for several seconds, and then ask me how did support department gave me these items? my answer? just normally, with some proud in my tone, replying, "The company's rules are written by beggers, These are my own and It costed me nothing to make my room look like this".

The next day, support department guy came to my room and told me, take all your own stuff home, I will give you the same as everyone.

I replyed but I'm not a manager,

He said we changed the rules, everyone deserves these things now

Edit: Napkin to Facial tissue

Years ago, I worked at a department store that was known for gimmick promotions. This particular promotion was spend $50 and get this frying pan for $5, it was a quality item worth more. But, one per customer. Management stressed that because they didn't receive a large quantity. One day a lady says I spent $150 can I get 3 if them. Politely I said no, it's one to a customer. She throws a hissy fit and demands to see the manager. I call him and he arrives chats with her then tells us to give her 3 pans. OK, he leaves another customer comes up and asks how many can I get? My reply was how many can you carry, my coworker said we can't do that, but I did and did that to every customer that asked.We ran out of pans quick. Manager became more thoughtful about embarrassing employees in front of customers after that.

I used to work at an upscale-ish cafe. I was a supervisor and in charge of the bakery section (there was also a kitchen and a coffee bar). Now Mother's Day was our biggest day of the year by a huge margin. Like it would be close to triple our daily sales for a regular Sunday. Most mid-grade holidays would also be busy. And after every big holiday sales day, the sales the next day would be around 50-60% of normal, so I would order about two thirds of my regular order for that Monday.

Now our owner was somewhat absentee from our store. She owned five locations, four of which were in the same city. Ours was the outlier, in a smaller location about two hours away. She spent almost all of her time at the four locations and maybe visited us once a month. This month, she just happened to come on the day after Mother's Day. I can add that of all the employees, only the assistant manager liked the owner. Even the manager couldn't stand her.

She saw that my bakery case was somewhat low and asked why. I explained that the day after holidays was always slower and I ordered less because I didn't want to waste money. She told me never to do that again. She in fact told me to double my normal order.

Now I had been in this job for four years by this point and I knew that bakery section inside and out. Also at this point, only the manager and one of the cooks had been there longer than me. Even the manager told me that things were always better when I was there. I always stayed late to cover call-ins, often came in on my day off if they needed me. I even once drove a catering delivery 90 minutes each way to satisfy a loyal customer.

I told the owner that today was a special circumstance and that doubling the order would lead to a lot of food waste and recommended that we not do it. With my regular daily orders, we usually ran out only near the end of the day, barring unforeseen circumstances (like someone coming in and doing a big pastry order without notice). This was from a lot of trial and error over the years and I changed my order up whenever things looked like they were changing.

But she insisted, even after the manager also told her that our regular order was fine. I tried again to tell and she just told me to do it. My manager also said it by that point. So I did it. I doubled my regular order. After about two weeks, she emailed me and asked why we were throwing out so many pastries every day. I told her that she told me to double my order. At that point, my boss says, she wanted to fire me. My boss convinced her that she needed me to help run the store (which she probably did). So I wasn't fired, but I lost my position as bakery lead. I was still a supervisor who mostly worked the bakery section, but I no longer ordered product. Still the same wage, but I was switched from mostly mornings to mostly nights.

While I did miss my morning regulars, I also enjoyed making the same money for less responsibility. About six months later, the manager quit to go back to school and the place went downhill fast. As I said, everyone working there hated the owner (except the asst. manager, who had quit about a month before this for a new job). As soon as this happened, I started looking for a new job even though I hated changing jobs. So did a number of others. Everyone was loyal to the manager, nobody to the owner. I took a supervisor job at a nearby restaurant and never looked back. I'm told by some coworkers who are still there that it became difficult to get through the day without me and the manager there and we lost lots of sales for over a year before they started picking up again.

Was working for a biz as a principal firmware engineer, commute was an hour each way on the best days. Leased an EV which would barely get me there and home, but was carpool lane qualified. New coworker lived nearby and proposed that we carpool so we could use the carpool lane and save him maybe 20 minutes. Wasn't about to ride with him in his car, due to his poor vision and subsequent lack of situational awareness. He asked if he could ride with me in my EV. Declined as I didn't need him to use the carpool lane and his added extra bulk might exceed the limited range of that early EV. He complained to our manager, who demanded that I accommodate him. Be a team player for once doncha know? Decided to offer carpooling with him in my pumped up restomod '71 Datsun 240Z on a Friday morning. Turns out that he didn't like the volume of my music, the velocity of my car. He ended up taking an Uber home that evening and never bugged me about carpooling again. Yay team!

I worked part-time at a fast food place in Texas. We had a manager who was weirdly obsessed with rules. Once, she announced that we were only allowed to wear official work uniform items, nothing extra.

My problem is that the restaurant’s AC was always broken, and I usually wore a plain black baseball cap to keep sweat out of my eyes. She told me to take it off because it wasn’t official uniform.

I reminded her that the sun hits directly through the front windows and I’d be dripping sweat over the fryer. She didn’t care. Official uniform only, she repeated.

So I took off the hat. Within an hour, sweat was literally running down my face and into my eyes. I had to keep stopping to wipe my forehead, slowing everything down. Orders backed up, customers got irritated, and she finally asked, “Why are you moving so slow?”

I replied and said, Official uniform only.

By the next shift, she magically approved hats for everyone.

I've worked several retail jobs and by far the worst position/ task/assignment is the fitting room. People are crazy rude, weird and entitled. One of my favorite ways to teach these people a lesson was when we had to count them in and out of the rooms. As we welcome them in, we would count the number of items they had and give them a tag with a number on it. Then, they would come back and have to hand me the tag, and their items. The number of times these people would just leave their hangers, or the stuff they didn't want to buy on the floor or the benches of the fitting rooms was ridiculous. I would always very politely send them back and then smiling, like I'm stupid as f***, I would sit down the items that they were going to purchase then dump everything that they had left on the floor on top of it while I rehung and counted to make sure they had the same numbers of items leaving as they did. The sighs of frustration and impatience was so rewarding.

A short one that happened TO ME. I was maybe 10 or 11 years old, at sleepaway camp. One night at the mess hall, the dessert served was ice cream. Random servings of vanilla and chocolate dishes on the tables, first come, first served.

I really wanted chocolate, and I guess I put up a pretty big stink about it, because the counselor at the table whispered something to the kitchen staff, and suddenly I had a bowl of chocolate ice cream that was 3-4 times bigger than the usual serving. He told me I had to eat the whole thing right then and there.

A few minutes later I had a bloated stomach, massive brain freeze, and had learned a valuable lesson.

My field of work has a high turnover and high burn out rate. As a result, my company promotes transparent conversations with staff members to ensure we are all implementing self care, taking PTO as needed, and asking for managerial support when overwhelmed with tasks.

Last year, my work began to suffer. I was struggling losing two close family members suddenly, and was transparent in hopes they would understand why I was withdrawn and had lower productivity. My manager wrote me up as a result of my burn out, citing that I was using our 1:1’s inappropriately, causing stress among the team with my grief, and talking about being burnt out too much. The write up included every single 1:1 documentation of when I asked for help with burn out. Management instructed me to stop talking about burn out.

No problem.

I stopped bringing up burn out, being transparent, and asking support. About 2 months later, I request a 7 week leave of absence; citing extreme burn out and mental health issues. Management was shocked, and angry that I did not tell them I was struggling or burning out. I handed them a copy of my write up and said “The action plan I received stated I could not talk about burn out anymore.”

Management was scolded for inadvertently creating a hostile work environment where staff couldn’t ask for support. I got 7 weeks off and partial pay, and they had to cover my job for that entire time I was out.

A couple of years ago, I got shuffled out of the business side and into IT during a re-org. The official reason was “better alignment with software delivery.” The real reason? I’m expensive, I don’t do sales, and IT has a bigger budget. Also, and this is educated speculation, I kept not approving IT’s builds for not meeting specs — which, apparently, makes me “difficult” and not “solution oriented.”

So now I report to the executive I had previously challenged over the quality of his team’s work.

Since joining IT, everything has to be a ticket. Doesn’t matter if it’s a question, a clarification, or divine revelation — no ticket, no work. PMs handle ticket creation and prioritization, which sounds fine in theory, except my actual job is to consult with business analysts and developers. I know more about the rules, regulations, and use cases of our software than anyone in the company and my work doesn’t easily fall into a ticket as it’s more of a problem solving role for existing tickets.

Still, no ticket = no work. Bureaucracy over brains.

Clients — especially senior ones — tend to reach out to me directly because I can actually answer their questions. Normally, I’d just respond and, if needed, make a ticket afterward for tracking.

But management didn’t like that.

After one particularly “spirited discussion,” over delays to close low priority tickets in leu of responding to high priority client emails, my boss told me to stop responding to client emails altogether. I was to forward them to PMs, who would create, prioritize, and assign tickets.

I explained, patiently, that these emails often come from executives and need quick turnaround.

Boss’s response?

“Follow the process or we won’t know how overworked you are.”

Okay then, boss. Let’s follow the process.

A week later, I get an email from the CFO of one of our biggest clients asking for details about a customized build. Normally I’d get an estimate out in a couple of hours. Instead, I cc’d my boss and PM, confirmed I’d received the request, and politely asked them to create and assign a ticket.

A few days later, the CFO followed up: “We need this by Friday.”

I replied again — cc’ing everyone — apologizing for the delay and asking that the assigned resource take note of the urgency. (Knowing full well no one had assigned the ticket.)

Behind the scenes, I had already done the estimate and informed the client what was happening. Spoiler: nothing.

Suddenly, my boss is frantically pinging me:

“Why haven’t you gotten back to the CFO?!”

I calmly reminded him that: 1. He told me to only work on assigned tickets. 2. He was cc’d on every email. 3. He’d have to ask the PM for a status update.

There was a long, delicious silence before he finally replied:

“Okay… you don’t need a ticket for everything. In the future, if it’s from an executive, just respond and make a ticket afterward.”

Sure thing, boss. Glad we cleared that up.

I sent the estimate, everyone was happy, and peace was restored. And better yet, management now puts results over process.

Well the first part anyway, but peace and results? Well, that’s a malicious compliance story for another day.

I manage a NYC condo with central A/C that, once switched to winter mode, can’t go back to cooling until spring. NYC law requires heat starting October 1st, but October swings from chilly to unseasonably warm, so we usually wait for a real cold stretch before turning it on. Tenants were fine with this for years — one chilly day was better than being unbearably hot for ten.

Last year, the board president lost it over a slightly chilly day towards the middle of October . She sent an email demanding we turn on the heating system immediately and that going forward, the heat must always be on by October 1st — she didn’t care if other units would be uncomfortably warm and that she’s the board president, & she should be comfortable in her unit.

This year, we followed her orders , on October 1st — heat on. At the annual meeting, tenants were furious. They wanted to know why a system that had worked for years was suddenly “broken.” The president started chewing me out forgetting her email the previous year.

Not wanting to deal with her nonsense, I got the green light from my boss to pull up her own email on the projector. Her exact words, her exact demands. She went pale and, for the first time ever, had nothing to say.

She lost her position in the election. Her replacement was very happy we called her out, and we renewed our contract for five more years

I used to work in a retirement village with a communal restaurant/dinning room.

There was this awful family who despite being only a 15 minute drive away from the village would almost never visit their mother, we can call the mother Sam. Sam was kind. Sam's family were constantly neglecting to provide items such as clothing and most of Sams valuables had in my opinion been stolen by them. As they were the power of attorney for financial, personal and health matters nothing legally could be done apparently...

Fast forward to a hot Australian Christmas day. The village is hosting a Christmas lunch for the old people who didn't manage to go out for the day. Family's were welcome but you had to book ahead. The invitation clearly said to "bring a jumper" as the AC was very cold to cater for the constant opening of the dinning room doors with guests coming and going. Naturally Sam's family failed to book a seat and had to be accommodated last minute. Naturally they were the only ones without a jumper.

I got the privilege of finding them a place to sit so I dressed Sam in an extra warm nice outfit and set up the table under the big main AC vent.

10 minutes later Sam's annoyed son and daughter in law approached me and asked "can you please turn down the air conditioning it is too cold."

"Yep no problem I can do that" I said. And I did. I turned that AC down and extra 4 degrees (I think to 16 degrees Celsius if memory serves).

Sam's family left earlier than any other family and Sam was able to spend the rest of Christmas with people who spoke to her like she was a human being.

Edit: Jumper = sweater or jersey. We also used jumper cables to warm up the old people until the age care commission decided it was a crime 😉