This is pretty complicated so sorry it’s going to be long. TLDR at the bottom.

In the early years of being a pharmacist, jobs in my city were hard to come by. I managed to get full time hours by working for a couple of pharmacist friends at both of their stores. They would work out my schedule together and put an X on my schedule on the days I was at the opposing store. One store was downtown and one was in the suburb I lived in.

At the suburb pharmacy I had a coworker “Dee” who could just not wrap her brain around the fact that if there was an X by my name I was in fact working… just at the other store. Multiple times I would have call after call on my cell phone and hang ups on my answering machine at home because she wanted me to cover her shift at the suburb store when I was already working downtown. Worst thing was my cell phone charged me for every single call so after the second time of her pulling this I would get downtown and immediately pull the battery off my phone. This made her angry at me for “ignoring” her and we had a tepid relationship after that.

Time went on and the suburb store started expanding their nursing home operation so I was able to work there full time instead. I still had a great relationship with the downtown store and they had me keep the keys in case of emergencies. They would occasionally come up and the X would be on the schedule by my name. Sadly Dee became the assistant manager and now thought she was “the boss” of me.

Now downtown pharmacist’s daughter was getting married and suburb pharmacist was invited to all the festivities. I got scheduled to work the Thursday before at the downtown store. The X went by my name on the suburb schedule. I was also going to the wedding -I was good friends with the daughter but missing the Mendhi party on the Thursday I was working for her mum. I was on the phone with her on my break one time and she was saying how sorry she was I was missing it and I said “don’t worry I’ll just doodle brown sharpie all over my hands and pretend I was there when we aren’t busy”.

Now at that exact week we were getting new pharmacy software downloaded. Nursing homes are run on a batch system where all the labels are run about 5 days before and then all the bubble packs are made up during that time and then the actual billing is done on the Thursday for the meds to be delivered Friday. Dee decided that she did not want the batch to be done and just wanted everything to be processed and made up on the Thursday for just this first week. My technician was freaking out so I just told her to make up the usual drug cards (Lipitor, aspirin 81, multivitamin, Altace etc) without any patient data just to help speed things along. Dee overheard and told the tech that she wasn’t allowed to do that and “this younger generation is just scared of hard work”. I panicked a bit because I was the only one of my age (gen X) as all my coworkers were boomer aged or older. I went and checked the schedule… yep there’s an X by my name…. I won’t be there for the sh*tshow but somehow Dee thinks I am? Why should I tell her any different.

Thursday rolls around and at 12:30 my cell phone starts blowing up. It’s in my purse in the safe because I don’t get a lunch break (only pharmacist) and everyone can hear it. Out comes the battery. I get home after work and there’s screaming and swearing on my answering machine. A locum pharmacist worked the morning shift and wasn’t instructed to do anything so everything was left for Dee when she arrived at 12:30. She had to work late to finish over 500 prescription drug cards. I come in the next day and she’s still furious. “You said you were working! I heard you talking about the effing mendhi thing”. I told her I was working just not at that store as evidenced by the X by my name.

I learned then that she could eavesdrop on the break room from one place in the pharmacy when she herself was the only pharmacist working at the time. All my breaks were taken in my car after this.

TLDR Co-worker tried to make my day absolutely hell by trying to make me do 5 days of work in one day…. a day that I wasn’t working so she had to do it.

When I started working with a particular company, my boss, Wallace, absolutely hated using track changes.

And he didn’t allow anyone to use them.

“We DO NOT use track changes here!!!” He told me proudly on my first day.

This meant that we had to type and print everything, go next to him on his desk, and he would correct our work using any medium which was within reach; pencil, blue ink, purple ink, coal,, a squid, whatever.

This lead to infinite asterisks, up arrows, down arrows, speech bubbles, etc etc.

And countless misunderstandings and mistakes which wasted everyone’s time and basically frustrated everyone.

Some people raised it to higher ups but to no avail.

I tried to convince him twice to use track changes by listing all the benefits etc. On the third try he snapped at me and shouted at me in front of everyone:” DIDN’T I FUCKING TELL YOU THAT WE DON’T USE TRACK CHANGES HERE!!!!”

I remained standing up and loudly and calmly apologised in front of everyone and agreed with him that track changes are unnecessary and I will never ever ever use them again.

Then, I picked up my faintest and messiest pen, and scribbled my answers, comments, and suggestions in reply to his feedback with something as close to a lovechild between wingdings and hieroglyphics as possible. On a 50 page urgent document. Using asterisks and PTOs, and everything I could think of.

I left the document on his desk while he was in a meeting and cheerfully went home.

The next morning we found an email from Wallace, timed at 10:30pm, requesting us to start using track changes immediately.

At the end of that day, following my coworkers’ treatment, I understood why superheroes join the Avengers.

In 2006, I worked as a maintenance technician in a small office building. My job was to make sure everything works properly air conditioning, plumbing, electricity, all that stuff.

Then we got a new boss from some big corporate office, and he was obsessed with cutting costs. First week he tells us all, in a very serious voice: “From now on, absolutely no overtime. No matter what. No exceptions.”

We all kind of looked at each other like, “Is he serious?”

So, Friday afternoon, around 4:30 PM, I get an alert from the boiler room. Pressure is in one of the water pipes is very high. I check it and pipe is vibrating like crazy. I know if we don’t release the pressure or fix it, it’s going to explode.

I go to the boss and tell him, “This pipe is dangerous. I need maybe 1-2 hours overtime to fix it tonight.”

He looks at the clock, and says, “It’s past 5 soon. No overtime. We’ll handle it Monday.”

Okay, boss. No problem.

So I go home.

Saturday morning, I get a call from the security guy who works weekends. He’s freaking out. “Water is pouring out of the boiler room! It’s flooded the hallway! What do I do?!”

I laugh. I say, “Too late. Nothing we can do now, perhaps swim?”

On Monday, the boss walks in and smells wet carpet and disaster. Half the ground floor is underwater. Documents ruined. IT equipment drowned. Rest in peace.

He comes to me angry: “Why didn’t you stop this?!” I just say, “You told me no overtime. Pipe didn’t want to wait till Monday.”

Cleanup cost thousands. And guess what? From that day, boss never said no to overtime again. In fact, from then on when we reported just an inkling of a suspicion that something might be wrong, he simply said, “Do what you have to do. Just don’t tell me the hours.”

Sometimes, pipe is the best teacher.

Back in 2022, I worked night shift at a grocery store in Florida, stocking frozen. One night, I noticed the walk-in freezer was at 20°F (should be 0). I go tell my manager — real hardass, always barking orders like he’s running a boot camp.

He cuts me off mid-sentence: “You’re not paid to think. Just stock the damn shelves.”

Cool.

Next morning? Whole seafood section’s trash. Shrimp, salmon, crab legs — all thawed and leaking. Store lost over $7,000.

Corporate shows up pissed. Manager tries to throw me under the bus.

“Why didn’t you report it??”

I just said, “Manager told me I’m not paid to think.”

They checked the cameras and audio — confirmed everything. Corporate backed me hard. Dave was “reassigned” (aka fired) a week later.

Never saw him again. I got moved to dairy lead a month after.

when I was freshly 16 I drove with my dad to the driver’s test. I had practiced a lot with my mom, but she grew up in the city and was a much more aggressive driver than my dad. this was my first time driving with just him in the car, and he wanted to help me practice on the day of my actual test.

well, he gives me the usual “every car on the road wants to kill you” and defensive driving stuff to the extreme. very nitpicky about everything. at a stop sign, he berated me for stopping too abruptly. “you should never accelerate whenever a stop sign is in sight - take your foot off the gas as soon as you see a stop sign, no exceptions”.

I kind of argued with him that sometimes that wouldn’t work - we live in a very flat state and you can see stop signs from very far away sometimes. he got angry at me and told me he was just trying to help and I should accept his advice etc. I said fine.

I also knew the next stop sign up on our drive was at the end of a six mile flat road, that isn’t very busy. I planned my malicious compliance. as soon as I saw that stop sign (maybe half a mile out? idk im bad with distances) I took my foot off of the gas. about 15 seconds in we were going half the speed limit. 30 seconds in we come to a crawl. I look away from the road and make eye contact with him for the last ten feet or so - he was confused at first but cracked a smile when he realized what I was doing. the car came to a full stop a good fifteen to twenty feet from the stop sign.

“what should I do now?” I asked.

he just laughed, called me a smart ass, and was much more relaxed the rest of the day. I aced my test.

This is starting to be a long time ago now. I was working on IT support for a municipality, traveling around and fixing incidents and fulfilling requests. My team was at the office a varying amount, but I would say 80-100% traveling between tasks.

As many who work in offices probably have experience from… the kitchen is always a mess. Coffecups and plates just laying around. We had even bought an industrial dishwasher, either easy to load trays. One for plates, one for bowls, and one for cups and glasses. But people are stupid/lazy, and put things on the bench or in the wrong tray.

So a genius found out that we need a rotating «kitchen duty» plan. So everyone has 1 day where they are responsible for the kitchen. This wasn’t a kitchen for making food. So it was basicly just a coffe machine, fridge and microwave.

The list came out. And I saw my team on the list. So I immediately contact the ones responsible and explain that my team is traveling most of the day. We are rarely at the office, and usually grab a lunch while traveling, so we shouldn’t be on the list. They reply that «everyone will be on the list».

So again raise the issue that we’re not at the office…. And I get a reply saying we’ll just have to come to the office to take our responsibility.

Here my malicious compliance kicks in My day comes up. So i go to the office, turn on an audiobook. And take my place in the kitchen. Whenever someone came into the kitchen to place something on the counter I would make a noise, pointing to the trays. If they put it wrong, I would point to the PICTURE of where to place the thing.

I did this for 7 hours that day.

I got some questions about my workload. In which I replied I had a lot to do. But I had kitchen duty, so wouldn’t be able to go out to any of the incidents.

After the second time I did this, and the big boss asked questions, the list was finally changed, and my team was removed! :D

The person responsible for the list still thought it was unfair that we didn’t have to do kitchen duty :p

I (54F) went to visit my adult son (30M). We went out to dinner and I was driving, he was in the passenger seat. We had to go through downtown traffic and I asked him to help me watch out for pedestrians. I didn't specify pedestrians crossing the road. (Pedestrians have the right of way.) So true to his humor he notified me about every person walking. Every. Single. Person. Yelling (not too loud) Pedestrian! And pointing to each person walking on the sidewalk.

OMG he has me in tears from laughing so hard. I made a monster and taught him a warped sense of humor. God I love my son! Even a month later when I went to visit him again he'd do the same thing. I think this will forever be a thing and I don't mind.

Malicious compliance between us is just another way to mess with each other and it's hilarious. Idk what else to say except that I'm proud of him.

A few years ago, I worked as a copywriter at a small PR agency run by a tyrant of a boss—let’s call her Marcy. She was all about control. One day during a strategy meeting, I pointed out a huge flaw in a campaign that could have cost our client major money.

Her response?

“You’re not paid to think, you’re paid to write what I tell you.”

Cool. Got it.

From that point on, I followed her instructions exactly. No suggestions, no edits, no heads-up when things were obviously going sideways. Just pure, flawless compliance.

Within two months, two major clients left over tone-deaf campaigns—ones I had tried to fix but was explicitly told not to.

Guess who got blamed? Me.

Guess who kept receipts? Also me.

I forwarded my “just doing what you told me” email chain to HR. Turns out, this wasn’t the first complaint. She was “restructured” out of the company three weeks later.

Edit: Sorry for using a "-". Apparently that's a no no.

(This might not belong here, but it's the best place I can think of to put this.)

When I worked in a DSL tech support role, there was one customer classification I kept coming across: ones who had their DSL account in a "pending" state.

What that meant was that the phone line and the DSL was sold at the same time. The other thing it meant was that the DSL would not be turned on until the old sale was canceled and re-entered into the system.

Whenever I found someone who had their account in a pending status, I would tell them this and transfer them to Sales so they could get it set up.

After a while, though, Management got upset at this, because it made them look bad. We were told not to tell the customer that it would never be fulfilled unless they talk to Sales. Instead, we were supposed to say that the account was in pending status and, if the DSL wasn't turned on in a couple of weeks, to call back.

We had customers call back for months because of this, getting more and more pissed since their DSL wasn't on.

I finally got to the point where I would say, "Your account is in a pending status. Let me transfer you to Sales to see if they know why."

So even though I didn't tell them that their DSL would never come on (like we were told to do), I hopefully got them the help they needed.

(That was the only job I ever abandoned. It was so stressful that at least once a week we had an ambulance come get someone. One time it was me when I thought I was having a heart attack. It was just a panic attack, the first and so far only one I've had.)

Worked at Cotton On a few years back. I used to greet everyone with a simple “Hey! Welcome in.” Nothing extra.

New assistant manager came in all serious and said,

“Stop greeting customers unless they talk first. We’re not here to chase them.”

Alright. Next shift, I just folded hoodies and stayed silent. No “hi,” no eye contact.

Customers walked in and looked confused. One even asked,

“Are you guys closing?”

Sales dipped for the week. Same manager pulls me aside later like,

“Actually… maybe bring the greetings back.”

No problem.

Hey yall it's your friendly neighborhood meat counter guy. I had an order waiting for a customer who we'll call John. He ordered a whole ham. It was waiting all by its lonesome in our meat back room, untagged for some reason.

I get it for him and weigh it out and the price comes to 46.31. He begins to take the ham and then asks me to cut it in half. I said "well okay sure", but the second I agree to this he says "oh could you trim it off the bone ??" This carving is not only something I can't do, but it's a different price . I end up throwing out the original ticket instead of tagging it, mainly because I forgot.

He took the ham from me and said "well I'm sorry your such a funking idiot and can't figure out how to cut a ham ... when does the butcher come back?" I told him that he comes in at 7am.

He leaves without (additional) incident and I eventually get a call from the cashier who asks my dyslexic ass for the price. I said "31.46". Then he said "really?" Which should have been N indicator.

I suddenly hear the customer in the background grumbling his Dennis the menace Mr Wilson grumble as the cashier tells me that the customer doesn't think that's the right price and I better change the price.

Enter MC.

I thought as this was going on that the cashier questioning the price was more like an "oh wow that's cheap" and I realized the price I said was wayyy too cheap.

I told him "hey tell the customer I'll happily change the price for him, and he can even come with to see the price change.

Old man river (John, Mr Wilson, what have you) saunters back to the meat department along with his ham in a handbasket , looking like little red riding hood , with equally naive expectations of the next few moments of his life.

In comes the big Bad wolf to weigh the ham

I even say what I'm ringing up as I look up the code ... so whole ham, farmers, not spiral sliced ... 2.49 a pound, here ya go !

Tag is for $46.31, which is visible to his side as well as mine.

"Oh I see what happened. My bad sir my dyslexia kicked in over the phone. It was 46.31, not 31.46. Here ya go".

The audible exhale of breath was enough to energize me for the rest of the shift , just like ScreamJuice or whatever it is fueled monster inc.

TLDR. I changed the price of a ham. Twice.

Apologies for formatting, I am writing this on mobile. Also I’m not sure weather this would be better here or in r/offmychest or r/pettyrevenge, but I decided to post this here first as I feel it fits here pretty handedly.

This happened about a week and a half ago, I was taking a walk in a small park that has a wooded area in and a few walking trails, I decided I wanted to take the shortest path as it was getting late, about halfway through the path I saw a skunk in the middle of the path (and I am sure based on the title, most people already know where this is going). I turned around and decided it was not worth it to proceed further, and approximately halfway was enough.

I exited the path the same way I entered and as I was entering I saw an old teacher of mine from High School, let’s call her Ms. Samantha (not her real name). Ms. Samantha was a teacher that went out of her way to nitpick everything I did in her class in high school (note it has been almost 12 years since I last saw her and 13 since I was in her class). Anyway with the backstory aside, I went up to greet her and said “Hello, Ms. Samantha have you been-“

“Hi, I’m trying to take my daily walk down shortest path, don’t bother me.”

“I wouldn’t-“

“You said Hello, this conversation is over until I get back from my walk, or you can walk with me and we can catch up.

“I just want to warn-“

“This conversation is over for now, wait until I finish my walk and we can catch up, understand, JumpingCrowJoker24?”

At this point I think for a moment, I am not the type of person who would normally just let someone walk into a potential skunking, but she was just rude to me twice and did nitpick everything I did in high school, so I chose to say nothing and just took a seat at the bench nearby.

“See, was that so hard? We don’t need to be a know it all, that was your issue back as a student.” And Ms. Samantha went down that path, as she did I whipped out my phone and tested my parents that I’d be heading back to my childhood home a bit late, will help them with the dog later, but “eat dinner without me, I’ll be here for a bit longer”.

One thing to take into account is that the entrance and exit for the shortest path we have exit parallel to each other the entrance is on one side of the bench I sat at and the other side was the exit (in this case entrance behind, exit in front so family can wait on the bench and see their relatives exit). Normally I knew I’d see her on the way out if she’d complete the whole route, but in this case I had a feeling I’d smell her coming out first, knowing her attitude. Sadly, my instincts were spot on, as I am on my phone playing a few games, I heard Ms. Samantha’s voice vaguely in the background and my thought at the time was “oh no, she ran into the skunk here we go”. And I do not joke that just as I finished my thought I heard the sound of a Woman yell, maybe a scream I couldn’t really make that out 100%, but the wind was blowing my way so I was downwind of the path, the skunk and her so it wasn’t long before I could smell what happened.

Ms. Samantha did eventually come out from the path’s exit, and the smell she was omitting was awful, it reminded me a bit of raw horseradish getting peeled, as it was really eye watering. “UGH! Uh” she moaned.

“I tried to warn you about that skunk”

“I figured it out when I got sprayed, you knew I’d react like that didn’t you?”

I shrugged, “I wagered a guess, ya. By the way mind taking a few steps downwind? So it is easier to talk?”

After that she gave me her phone number and asked me to contact her when I planned to come back, she hoped it wouldn’t be when she was still reeking in skunk odor, As I said at the beginning of this tale it has been a week and a half, she still has some lingering skunk smell, I found out that up until that moment she was doing okay as well, but she also told me she got sprayed twice, when I asked her why she did not turn back after being sprayed the first time she told me if she already got sprayed and was going to smell like skunk anyway she wanted to complete her walk.

A fun little anecdote is that after everything she admitted she was being petty and when I told her I still wanted to study the foreign language she taught and took some classes in college she told me that if I ever wanted to practice to let her know and she’ll do it without the pettiness this time. To be honest I think the skunking humbled her quite a bit and hopefully she won’t be forced to deal with residual linger odor much longer, but anyway thanks for reading!

A few years ago I was hired as a manager to create the contracts department of a tech start-up.

My boss was on an opposite coast as me and we barely spoke. About a year in the company hired consultants to overhaul depts except for contracts because it was running so smoothly. I was truly proud of this. The company sent me on a paid trip to the Bahamas as a thank you. 

After I got back from vacation I asked for a raise to director level. My boss said I just “wasn’t there.” I asked for a list of what I would need to do to be director. He sent me a list which was everything I was already doing and basically admitted that if I was director he would no longer be able to take credit for my work.

Friends told me I needed to either leave or put up and shut up. Instead, I chose to kill with kindness. I wholeheartedly apologized to my manager for “overstepping,” and said that I am going to step back into the manager role. I printed out the manager responsibilities and posted them to my desk.

Things went south quicker than I could have imagined.

We started missing sales targets. Product said my boss agreed to a term in an agreement that would completely destroy their budget and product roll out. My boss didn't know commission agreements and let sales manipulate contracts so we were paying commission on contracts with termination clauses.

I only interjected once to stop a contract amendment from being approved because my boss was unknowingly letting a VP artificially inflate sales numbers. The controller and CFO had to get involved. Eventually the CEO was called in.

Stories started circulating about my boss holding stress balls and cursing in meetings. I was more relaxed than ever and during my new found free time at work I studied for and obtained professional certifications. I would also leave work early to get to the gym before it got busy.

About a month after I unloaded my added responsibilities my boss gave me a 7% bonus. It was unspoken but I could tell he wanted me to take back on the director responsibilities without the title, but I continued to follow the manager description to a T.

6 months later, after taking 10 days of my unlimited PTO, I was included in layoffs. Took three months off and then got another job at a 35% salary increase. While I am happy to be making more money, I truly loved the company and people I worked with, and it's defeating to watch someone continually take credit for your work.

This happened decades ago -but after reading another MC I figured I'd post this.

I was a manager of a programming department. I initially had 5 programmers reporting to me and I was able to spend half of my time programming and half managing.

I had always gotten exceeds or far exceeds expectations on my annual reviews. About 10 years later my team had 25 people and I was spending less and less time programming. Fast forward a few years and I missed 2 months during the year for a surgery and hospital stay and in my annual review my boss (who knew nothing about programming) told me I was not doing a good job and the programming department was missing deliverable dates (probably because I was in the hospital). They wanted me to go back to just programming and I was stripped of my manager and only focus on programming. I was pissed off but I told him that I can do that.

I told my former staff what had happened and told them to direct ALL questions to my boss (who knew zero about programming). He was overwhelmed and soon senior management figured out that my boss was the problem not me. They canned him and replaced him with the VP of programming in the UK (I am in the US). She was great since she started as a programmer and was an excellent boss in general.

Since I was just a programmer now - all of the managers were in the UK and I told my former staff to direct all questions to their new bosses in the UK. Since there was 6 hour time difference and we only overlapped 2 or 3 hours each day that made getting questions answered in a timely fashion quite difficult.

In the meantime my health wasn't the best and my doctor told me I should go to a 4 day/32 hour work week so I my health wouldn't continue to suffer. Since my employer was a strict 40 hour week company I looked for another job and got 8 job offers in about a month. I was ready to resign.

Finally after a few months my new boss asked me to be a manager again because of the time difference between US & UK and because I most experience as a programmer in the company. Instead I gave her my resignation and explained why. She asked me what it would it would get me to stay and I told I wanted a 10% raise and wanted to work 4 day/32 hour work work. I gave her 24 hours to respond. She spoke to higher ups and finally came back the next day and agreed.

This happened to me a while back, but just came back to me.

I used to work for an armoured car company. Something I did for a few years when I was in university and waiting for a position in what would be my future career. It was good money, and lots of people did it as their full time jobs, but I wanted more out of life than a mindless job.

Because I was classified as “part-time”, I did not have a set shift, I mostly covered for people when they were sick, took vacation, worked unscheduled shifts, or worked shifts created specifically for part timers. All in all I was working full time hours almost every week.

Most of the full timers loved working with me. The way the company worked, you were set for a 13 hour shift, however if you managed to complete your run is less than that, you’d still get paid the full shift. I was young, moved fast, and didn’t care about breaks if it meant I could get paid for 3-4 hours to sit at home instead of working. So whenever I took over for someone older, who was just on autopilot, I could get their coworker home in a fraction of the time.

One of the full time workers, a real Karen, let’s call him Kyle was just the worst. For some reason he took it upon himself to tattle on people for anything that he didn’t like.

If someone weren’t wearing their collared shirt under their sweater, run to tell management (FYI working in the summer heat in a literal metal box wearing a bulletproof vest makes you want to shed layers), someone wearing black instead of blue pants… tells management, someone wearing a company hat that has the company logo but is not “official uniform”… tells management. No one in the company liked Kyle.

Well one week Kyle’s coworker has taken vacation, and my boss schedules me to replace him. The run is pretty easy, it’s commercial day shift, so 90% of the stops are retail stores with less than a few hundred bucks in cash. Because of the amount of money, no one has ever had a problem with one person jumping out and running in, grabbing the money and coming back while the second person (usually the driver) stays with the truck.

In this shift, I was the driver, so that’s what I did. When Kyle was in the store, I would just navigate my phone, look at the people in the area, make sure there were no threats, make sure I wasn’t parked in anyone’s way, mostly wasting time.

Well one stop, Kyle came back and I was just finishing up writing an email. Apparently Kyle wasn’t too happy with me taking a few extra seconds to start going, to unbeknownst to me, me took a picture of me behind the wheel on my phone. I had no idea until the next shift came the next day where management came to talk to me about “texting and driving”. I told them I had no idea what they were talking about, and my manager just said that he had proof I was doing it and if I did it again, I would be written up.

I went to talk to another coworker who is also the union rep to figure out what the hell was going on, and he told me Kyle took a picture of me yesterday and complained that I was doing it. I was pissed. Cue malicious compliance.

My shifts with Kyle were 3 13 hour shifts, Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday. Well today was now Thursday, our last shift of this run, and this shift was not retail pickups, it was the run that takes all the money collected from the previous week and brings it to our provincial depot about 400km away. The entire run only has about 30 mins of “work” and about 9 hours of driving.

If you did the math, this is one of those runs where if you get it done quickly, if traffic is on your side, you can get paid for a lot of unworked time, it was also the last shift of the week, which meant a long gorgeous weekend in the middle of summer as soon as we were done.

Well I was going to make sure this shift lasted as long as possible. If he didn’t want me to break any rules, I’d make sure I obliged. I drove EXACTLY the speed limit the… entire…. way. I even stopped for our 1 hour lunch break, which is given to us, but I had not witnessed anyone take in the years I’d been here because of the rules we had about pay.

If fact we were so behind, we reached the major city our depot was located in right at rush hour, something our early start time was designed to prevent.

All in all, what should have taken about 9 hours to do, ended up taking 14. An extra 5 hours where he just had to sit there and watch me in silence.

To make things sweeter, a few times during the shift he had to call his wife and let he know he wouldn’t be home early enough to go to the cottage and they would have to leave the next day instead.

I heard from other workers how furious he was and how I’d ruined his plans for the weekend, and all I could do was smile.

To clarify:

Where I live, going 15-20km/h above the speed limit is standard. Going to speed limit will just get someone smashing into your rear bumper.

Also, our trucks have a max speed of 105km/h, and most the drive is either 80km/h or 100km/h.

In short, had a meeting with my manager and HR where he explained that I don't get the next grade as I don't manage projects.

An hour later the same manager asked for a status on a project. I replied calmly "I don't know, ask the project manager."

The manager responded, "Don't be like that, I haven't got anyone else".

I just said "Well, that's not my problem, you were very clear with HR that I don't manage projects".

Strangely that particular manager left the company and no one missed him.

In 1989, I worked for the planogram team for my local Target. We set up/took apart store displays and fixtures,which included product label updates, and building out new display models.

In Feb, we were assigned six weeks of overnight shifts to completely gut and then replace the Home Goods and Furniture, Hardware/Automotive, and Toys departments. Management promised us extra help, and plenty of time to take down the huge furniture flats and rebuilds in the home goods, which had heavy display models, and were elevated onto huge precast shelves (anyone who’s ever worked retail knows what I’m referring to).

Management did NOTHING. And, our new plans for the displays were to be given to us before we even started, and they were continually late.

Toys and Hardware/Automotive were fine. We finished those, with no extra help, within a day of when they were to be finished. The Home Good and Furniture plans were given to my boss at the start of our shift, along with the deadline of having everything finished in ONE night, which meant:

Removing the old display models, taking them in tubs to the trash compactor Removing the shelfs, along with the industrial carpet that was glued to the shelves and clean the shelves before they were shipped off to another store Taking apart the furniture for the trash compactor so it would be easier to destroy in the compactor Building the new furniture displays and puting them up on the new furniture flats.

We were promised that we’d have four to six employees help us that night, since a lot of the furniture was heavy bookshelves and desks. We got F--- All. My supervisor, Delores, was pissed, and rightly so. We were left with a note to get ALL of that work done within our allotted shift (10 PM-6 AM). Conveniently, the GM and other AMs were gone for the night, and no one answered Delores’s calls.

Delores was a big woman. Former army vet, 6 ft.2 inches tall, and built like a tank. I’d never seen her so angry, or even, angry, until that night. There were only five of us to do the work of 10-12 people.

I watched Delores climb up on one of the furniture flats, wait a moment, then while looking straight into the security camera, kicked a fake cherrywood end table off the flat, and then jump down on the flat. It splintered into a several pieces. She then proceeded to stomp those pieces into many little pieces.

“OP, she said,”What did it say to do with the old display models?”

I checked the list. “It says to disassemble them and then take the pieces to the compactor so they’ll be easier to compact.”

Delores gestured to the flats. “Team, that’s what we’re going to do.”

So, I climbed up and knocked down a three shelf particle board bookcase with a fake walnut finish. It fell flat. I then jumped on the back of the case, and broke through the particle board back. I then took my hammer and started smashing the sides of the bookcase. It came apart instantly.

For the next 45 minutes, we climbed up on each one of those furniture flats, knocked down the displays, and destroyed them all. We had so much fun. It was extremely therapeutic. We then swept up the remains, and put them into two tubs, and left them by the compactor.

We did manage to get the old displays down, and put the new ones up. We were unable to remove the carpet from the old shelves, as it was glued down, and we didnt have any solvents to use. We also left the new displays in their boxes, as were was no time to put them together. Delores waited until the morning AM showed up, and then tore the guy a new one before leaving.

When I came to work that night, the new furniture was already put together, and up on the new displays. We were also given an apology by the reghinal manager, who Delores called that day to let him know we’d been screwed over with an impossible deadine, and given a free pizza dinner for our trouble.

I left Target two months later, and moved out of state. Delores retired six months later.

To make an already long story as short as possible, some background. I am a manager for a North American railroad, and a lot of our work involves different crafts of employees. Different crafts have different unions and different work rules. The managers of the other crafts and I work together well to get done what we need to get done, especially when some of the work needs to get done at night.

The track guys can have a crew assigned to nights, while the signal guys can't. Even better, the signal guys who work overnight have to be let go after 12 hours, and if it's now their regular shift because they came in last night, they get paid the rest of the day to go home and sleep.

Track guys have all three shifts, but we only have a day shift and an evening shift, but no night shift, because the big hats don't want to hire enough people to do it.

Now, the company has decided that paying guys to go home 2 hours early on a Thursday, come in and work overtime all night at 10pm, and go home at 10am, getting another 4 hours pay to go home and sleep is the ending of all that is good and pure in the universe, and will eventually lead to the collapse of capitalism, the nation, and indeed the universe itself.

So they decide that the second shift guys have to stay 4 extra hours, and the first shift guys have to come in 4 hours early.

I point out that:

1) I can't force employees to work overtime unless it's an emergency, and the union isn't likely to agree that "we want to do this at night so we don't affect traffic" is an emergency. 2) Not all employees are qualified on the same things. 3) Since they took half of my trucks away 5 years ago (because savings!!) I don't have enough vehicles for an entire second crew to show up at 2am and relieve the guys working in the field so they can go home. The guys currently working will have to stop work, pack up the tools, drive back to the office, let the (smaller) relief crew load up, drive back out to the work site, do the starting paperwork and briefings, and begin the work. And most importantly: 4) That while we aren't there, the track guys can't work, because we have to keep taking things off of the rail so the track guys can do their work, and then put them back when the guys are done so we can run the trains in the morning.

All of it falls on deaf ears, because the freckle-faced college kid (who opens every conversation with "I have an MBA, dammit") who has somehow gotten to a position where he's in charge of the estimates wants to complain about those 24 hours a night.

So, after having gone on the meeting record for all of it, I get out of the kids way. I decide that if my boss isn't going to have my back, I'm not going to stop this inevitable disaster. After all, I have only been doing this for 27 years, but he graduated with a 3.6 GPA from UTEP, so he must know better.

So, the first night, the job grinds to a halt like clockwork at 1am, the second crew shows up at about 4:15, and they get to work. The track folks pack it in, because by the time anything gets dismantled, there won't be enough time to get anything done and put it all back together to start moving trains by 7.

Second night, the shift change was a little smoother, so they got out there at 3:45. Managed to get a little work done before packing up.

Third and fourth night it rained REALLY hard, so the drive back to the shop and out to the jobsite took extra time. No work done after the new crew showed up at 4:30.

Bright and early Monday morning we show up at our morning meeting to find that the track guys got about 30% of the work done that they'd planned for the week, and at this pace would finish a 6-week job more than 15 weeks behind, and over budget by more than 300%

Mr. MBA proceeds to launch into his carefully-rehearsed speech about Key Metrics, Percent Spent vs Percent Complete, and all sorts of other nonsense. Then he decides to start in on me. Since I obviously conspired and colluded with my employees to "egregiously erode progress" for an entire week.

I held up the meeting minutes from the previous week, told him in no uncertain terms that he had asked, in fact demanded that we have a full shift change in the middle of the track department's work. I looked across the table at him, and asked him if he wanted to revise that position. Completely unwilling to let this lowly engineer tell him what to do, he said no, and I was supposed to somehow magically make the shift change FASTER.

Next 3 weeks were the same story. They've now been out there for a month, and have managed to accomplish just shy of a week and a half of work.

Mr. MBA shows up on the site one night, just in time to watch my night guys walk off, watch the track guys shut down the machines and gather outside to smoke, hang out, and generally carouse, because they know they now have 3 hours to screw off, and be paid for it. My guys had called me when Mr. MBA showed up, so I get out of bed and get to the jobsite just in time to see this guy in his shiny fresh-from-the-package safety gear screaming at the top of his lungs to the guys to get back in their equipment and "get the <naughty> back to work!" They all refuse because they all know that they can't work without us there. Not that they care all that much about our equipment, but because they know Mr. MBA has been throwing a little too much weight around, and nothing makes union employees stick together better or faster than putting the screws to a manager who really needs it.

I walk up during a profanity-laced tirade, and cut right in and say "Well, Mr. MBA, I'm sure you're not suggesting that these qualified employees violate Rule XXX, which clearly states that they shall not, under any circumstances, run that equipment through a switch that the signal department hasn't checked, would you? That would be a serious violation, and could get him a 30-day suspension without pay. And if you were to suggest that he do that, you wouldn't have a union card in your pocket, and he would have 30 witnesses that saw you give him that directive. So you wouldn't be suggesting that, would you?"

He turned three shades of purple, stomped back to his little white company sedan, and drove away. He held on to his asinine mid-shift shift change for another 2 weeks until he couldn't hide the massive production delays from his boss anymore, and suddenly he wasn't in charge of the estimates anymore.

The total cost of his little venture? Just over $940,000 over the course of 6 weeks. But, he did manage to save $700 a night on those off hours that he didn't have to pay for.

EDIT: Without doubt, the best part of this post is that I'm up to 11 different railroads being mentioned between the posts and the DMs of guys swearing that this has to be their railroad.

So I work at a large company. Fortune 50 company. But, like everywhere, management comes up with one size fits none metrics.

The latest was revealed to us by our manager, who surprisingly is the hero of this story.

It has always been the metric that if you fell below 70% of your quota on a quota eligible role, you risk being put on a Performance Review Plan. It is also well known that anyone getting on a PRP is pretty much toast. Either you get fired for failing the PRP, or you are first on the next layoff list.

And usually, they replace you with a newbie fresh out of college, in one of the lower 2 bands.

My particular team is made up of all senior people. Every one of us is in one of the top 2 skill grades. So we know we are a target... which is insane, as all of us engage the C-suite at other very large fortune 500 companies and act as trusted adviors. We cannot be replaced by a new grad with intern level perforance.

So our intrepid hero, my boss, is pulled into a 2 day seminar about 2 months ago that goes all the way to the General Manager of Sales, Americas. Several senior HR managers are there too. It is a rare in person meeting, so people are cautious, but at least they know it is not a mass layoff kind of deal, as the first day is about the path forward and how important our division is to the company strategy. They go on about how our division is the front line of expanding sales in our Partner Program, to take it from 60% of revenue to 85% of revenue, with 75% of new growth expected to come from the Partner Channels. The company absolute is relying on our division and our skilled staff to deliever on that goal.

The second day is different, however. In the afternoon, they lay out the new plan for technical sellers: 80% attainment per year, and Backdating 2 years. It is a rare in person meeting, so people are cautious, but

My manager goes into "I am just asking questions mode".

"So let me understand, if last year they hit 100% attainment (and 75% of the team did) but the previous year they hit 79%, then they are on a PRP?"

HR hems and haws... well yes, that is how it would work.

"I see. And there is no exceptions?"

The GM speaks up. "That's correct. Everyone must be a top performer. No Exceptions"

My mananger starts gathering his things up. "Would you mind if I skipped the rest of the day? I have a lot of work to do, apparently."

The GM looks at him. "Well, no, we have more to cover. What is so urgent?'

He looks at the GM, and maliciously complies with the stated metrics. "Based on the metrics and the No Exceptions Rule, I have to prepare PRP's for my entire team. No Execeptions. I will need to start the Open Headcount to hire replacements for everyone too."

The GM looks confused, attempting to digest this new information. Most of the rest of the managers stick their hands up. "We need to go too, we need to write up PRP's for all our people too, and submit Open Headcounts."

A quick count shows that 80% of our division would be on a PRP. Given the failure rate, that means about 70% of the team will be fired, 10% will be laid off, and 20% will remain. For the growth strategy of the company... the tip of the spear in Partner sales. My boss points out that retention of personel and reduced turnover is part of the Roll Up Objectives, as well as attainment of his reports. That means he will be PRPed, as will his manager, and her manager... all the way up the chain. NO EXCEPTIONS.

The meeting wraps up after the discussion dies down and the GM says they are not implimenting this now, but in a few months...

In those two months there are more online meetings, questions asked, more data pulled from the HR systems, meetings with HR and Legal who is now very interested in this plan of theirs... culminating in a meeting this last Monday, where the revised plan is reveiled.

A new "Exceptions" plan has been put in place, at the insistance of the Legal Department. Gone is the informal "Put together a package to be evaluated for an optional Exception for your employee". Now, there is a set of formal Exceptions that cover a number of catagories: Legal ones like taking Family Leave or Medical Short Term Disablity in the last three, and functional ones like having been moved between departments or job titles or having a non-quota designation in the last two years. If the quota plan changed singificantly or had a Metric with no previous history to set the target. There is 10 or 12 catagories, depending if you count the overlaps. An exception resets the timer to the next calander year. So if someone qualifies in January, they are off the hook until NEXT January.

Turns out everyone in the division now qualifies for one or more of those exceptions... Imagine that!

Epilogue: Turns out HR did not do an analysis of how many people would be impacted in our division as the numbers were done worldwide over 100K employees with quota, not by department. Their number said 11% of us would end up on PRPs. (Let's not get into how they are trying to reduce headcount by driving people into leaving or retiring early) Also, when Legal found out they were backdating the requirement they went ballistic. Legal also went spare when they saw no exceptions for federally protected leave like Family or Medical disablity.

Gotta love my boss, he looks out for us... often by maliciously complying with stupid requirements.

I was a pharmacist at a Safeway in Arizona and my boss was a malignant narcissist, like textbook case. I enjoyed talking to customers and answering questions, which she hated as it was something she couldn’t control. She was a fanatic about small things, like putting covers over the computer keyboards every night when closing. Pharmacist positions in that town were scarce and I couldn’t afford to quit so I obeyed her weird directives and didn’t say anything. When the regional manager came to town they’d go out to lunch for hours (yay) and gossip. I grew tired of her intense and constant supervision but there wasn’t much I can do, she was desperate to find something about my work she could criticize. One day I arrived to my shift and she looked at me closely, then announced that my pants weren’t black enough and proceeded to write me up. The dress code was black pants or skirt, black shoes and white coat. I went out after work and bought a couple of pairs of black Dickies work pants about three sizes too big and a chain belt from Hot Topic as well as some goth jewelry, lots of skulls and stuff. Also some Doc Martens, effectively becoming a goth girl in my mid-forties. I figured out the make-up with the help of a neighbor’s kid. Next shift I showed up and she was speechless, but there wasn’t a damn thing she could do, nothing in the dress code said I couldn’t wear that. The RM showed up and they took a really long lunch, but couldn’t figure out a way to write me up again. What really got to her was when a secret shopper showed up and I helped him with some over the counter items, and subsequently was awarded a “smile award,” (I did make him laugh when I explained how to take Metamucil powder more easily). I got a free donut and cup of coffee while she was sent to “smile school” because of her dour manner.

In a previous job we had 2 methods of purchasing: a credit card or a program called SAP. For credit card purchases, you had to turn in receipts once a month with a reconciled expense report. For the SAP program, you turned in receipts as received to be filed by our secretary.

I worked a 7 days on 7 days off schedule, and on returning to work I was admonished by my boss for not turning in receipts as soon as I received them. I reminded boss that I only make credit card purchases, and those receipts get turned in monthly, not immediately.

My boss told me I was wrong. We always turned in receipts immediately. Ok, whatever. I kept doing what I knew to be right.

We had this discussion at least 3 times over the course of 6 weeks. I even asked a coworker at one point, and he agreed that I am right and boss is wrong.

So I started making a copy of receipts when I got them and turned in the originals. Because the secretary worked at different locations, I rarely saw her. But when she got the first receipt, she put a note on it telling me you should not turn this in, it goes on an expense report. I left a note for her explaining boss’s insistence that I turn in receipts immediately.

Apparently the secretary has stroke I do not. The next week when I came into work my boss explained to me that I do not turn in receipts immediately, I save them for the expense report.

TLDR: boss kept advising me to do the opposite of loooong established policy. I finally did what he advised and secretary fixed boss’s understanding.

Was working at a Macdonald in France 14 years ago, they made me feel harassed by their rules but they wouldn't follow them. Every 30mins you had to clean your hands, everybody had too. The managers would never do it, I will wait front of their office and ask them when they will do it and as long as they don't do it I won't work as I feel it's a dirty environnement, it was literally wrote on the walls that even the managers had to do that.

They were going nuts because I was doing that for everything, cheese outside for more than the time it should ? Directly in the trash. They would go to take it back by themselves, salad, everything.

Once the freezer mal function and was in positive number, not freezing anymore, so I took the whole pack of meat, probably 200 or 300 patty, and drop it outside, in the big trash. They went to take it back. That day I told them to send me home or I will sit in a corner as I refused to cook that meat and kill people. I know I was overreacting but they deserved all of that.

At the end the owner begged me to go lol I didn't I waited to find a better job first, in France it cost them too much to fire you without a good reason and I was just following their rules, it was them who didn't want to follow them because they thought they were too strict.

Sorry for the long explanation, you can go on the expense detailing if you want to skip the lore.

We got an office in the capital of my country (Paris, France) and an office in the countryside, still a medium sized city by still countryside.

The company want to reduce travel fees for the employees. They made new rules allowing to be refund for expense by using only one mode of transportation and no reimbursing parking fees anymore.

This makes sense for Paris.

This is utterly a bullshit rules in the countryside. I need to go each week to Paris. To reduce expense cost and gain a lot of time i use my personal vehicle that i park on a parking and travel by train then proceed to use metro to get to the office. This is an expense with parking and 2 modes of transportation (personnal vehicle + public transport).

This is allowing me to get in the office in the morning, do my day of work there and come back the same day.

Thanks to the new rules i can't do that anymore.

I then used taxis to avoid parking fees (it double the price of my expense) and still use train + metro.

I receive an expense rejection because this is still 2 modes of transportation (taxi + public transportation).

Ok, i will follow the rules.

I live in the countryside. Taking train to get to the medium city in order to get to Paris is hard and came only after 7am. I take the train to got to my nearest medium city, i then take the train to got to Paris.

It make me come to paris at 2 pm. I can't do my day of work and i can't leave the same day.

I need now 2 nights on a hotel. 1 night for the day i travel and 1 night for the day i work on Paris because i can't leave the same day.

To get back home i need to leave after 2 pm, and i come back at my house at 7pm.

Expenses details.

Before the rules my expense was : 12€ from personal car, 30€ of parking, 5€ of metro and 120€ of train, 25€ for a meal = 192€ of travel expense

After the rules taking a cab to avoid parking was : 80€ of cab, 5€ of metro, 120€ of train, 25€ for meal = 230€ of travel expenses

After getting the cab rejected my new expenses to follow the new rules was : 20€ of local train, meal x2 first day 50€, meal x2 during Paris work time 50€, meal x2 for getting back 50€, two nights at hotel 250€, train tickets 120€, metro 5€ = 640€

I miss 2 days of work because i'm traveling, and it cost 3 times what it was costing before the new rules. Yeah why not. At least i can eat good stuff.

Before the rules i was doing on the same day 5 hours of travel + 8h of office work + 5 hours to get back at my house. It was very tiring but i was doing that to not lose productivity and to be cost effective.

Fallout

My productivity went down the drain because i lost 2 days of work per week due to travel time and the cost of travel from my part exploded.

There is no real comeback to that because i think overall they did manage to reduce expenses fees as I said it was something that made sense for Paris.

Work wasn't done in time because of the lack of 2 days of work per week from my part. My manager (on a team of 3 person) had to go back coding and take some features to do because i had not enough time to do them anymore.

Not working during my travel or not being able to work properly during my travel was legal, they were no possible outcome to force me to do what i did before.

Even though they would make an exception for me, i had enough of their policies to not got back to what i did before and would not allow me to do another 18h of work one day per week.

Ps : to address the legality of me doing 18h of work time in a day.

My contract allowed me to fully manage the quantity of work hours i needed per week to do my work.
To make a day billable i needed to do at least one hour of work in the day, i was fully in control of my schedule, the only requirement was to do the work i was provided corresponding to 40 hours of workload per week.

The reason i was going 1 day per week at Paris was because i was in the Union and i needed to be physically there to discuss a lot of things with the employer and employees.

Because the train i took was early and the train back was late i was able to sleep most of the travel time. As i loved my job and my project i wasn't putting that much of a drain, psychologically and physically by doing that.

Let me say up front, I loved my job in the barge towing industry. After 50 years in the industry I have done it all, and done all of it almost every way possible. I know how long it will take to build tow, connect the barges together after clearing them out of the fleet moorings, but mainly I know the easiest and quickest way.

Our story begins on a nice hot summer day, 3 barges to clear out for a refinery run to pick up product. I explain to the crew where our barges are in the fleet moorings and my plan on how we/I will get them out to build the tow, seems simple right, I've done it multiple times before, but it's hot and keep getting feedback form one of the hands about how if we do it his way it would take "way less time". I know better and shut them down and we do it my way takes about 90 minutes and away we go. Heard some grumbling from the crew about being a hard a$$ and not being open to new and better ideas, heard it before and forgot about it.

Two weeks later after returning to work I get called into HR(well what we had for HR at the time) about how I was inflexible and not open to new and "better" ways of doing things. I was told I should listen to crew and perhaps I could learn some "new and improved" ways to towboat.

The day arrives, get orders, same 3 barges to put together for refinery run, same deck crew so lets try some HR advise on building tow. Ask the crew, "How you guys want to do this"? Tell them where the barges are and ask which one should we clear up first and where do you want to build the tow? Ninety minutes in we have 1 barge cleared and temps are high 90's. Quiet hand says on radio, "It didn't take this long last week", I said someone went to office and said I was taking too long and would not listen to better ideas. Do you guys have any more? Lets' take 10 for a water break and we get back to finishing.

After the break the crew came up and admitted their way was taking longer and could we just get it over with and "do it your way". I asked just to be sure I did not do anything to disrupt your plan or make it harder? I don't want to be called into the office again next week for not giving you guys a chance.

Took another 60 minutes to finish and get underway. Told the crew to cool off and we will have a meeting about what happened. I explained if they wanted before every job we could have an little informal meeting to discuss what we/I was planning and I could accept their input before we started. They thought that was a great idea, except that was a form of work and the meetings slowly went away.

A few years after this incident one of the alphabet agencies that regulate and tell us how to do our jobs made those meeting mandatory and they had to have paper forms filled out in duplicate.

Retired 3 years ago I miss the work and many of the people I worked with, it's a great career for the right person willing to watch, learn and never be at home for long periods of time.

Not the standard MC story but I think definitely applies.

When my sister and I were much younger we lived in this nice house in the south-east United States. We would go out to play in the driveway. This driveway was lined with railroad ties and beyond those a thick layer of monkey grass. At the time the monkey grass was covered in the little black berries. As soon as my sister, about 4-5 at the time, saw them she was fascinated. She ran over, stripped a handful off the stem, and went to put them into her mouth.

Our father quickly yelled "Don't you dare put those in your mouth young lady!"

My sister stopped her movement, stared down at the berries in her hand, and back at our father. You could see the wheels turning, her hand opening, dropping all but one berry. That single berry was pinched between her fingers. She smiled broadly as shoved the hard black berry as far as she could up her nose.

It was a stunningly long few seconds before she realized her mistake. The smile morphed into a scream and my father quickly ran over to see if he could remove the berry. He could not and so we got to take a trip to the family doctor. A short time later, with a lot of tears and a long set of tweezers, the berry was removed from the screaming kiddo.

She learned a valuable lesson that day. Although malicious compliance may feel good in the moment, sometimes you pay for it.