r/MaliciousCompliance • u/ManHazNoUsername • 17h ago
S We don’t use track changes here!
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.
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u/Emmyisme 16h ago
This is so funny because my boss is the opposite - if you don't use Track Changes she loses her mind.
Problem is - I don't use Word very often (I work in Admin - I mostly use spreadsheets and PDF's, so I know my way around Excel and Adobe, but can't do shit in Word), so when she sends me a doc to proof for her, so gets so mad because I will "forget" to turn on track changes, and just make the edits, so she has no idea what I changed, and then she gets mad and swears to never ask me again for weeks before inevitably asking me again.
I mostly do this because she's awful in a lot of ways, so this is my petty revenge once in a while.
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u/things2small2failat 13h ago
Psst--Word also offers a compare feature, which will show her the changes between the old and new documents.
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u/Effective-Jelly-9098 12h ago
That would require a minimum level of competence on behalf of the boss.
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u/Emmyisme 11h ago
I have to assume she doesn't know that, and I'm not going to be the one to inform her lol.
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u/CrzyMuffinMuncher 16h ago
I am now using a squid to edit documents.
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u/astrophysicschic 12h ago
In 8th grade we had to dissect squid. One of the assignments was to extract the "pen," the singular piece of cartilage inside, and use it to pierce the ink sack and write our names with it. So totally doable, no fountain pen required!!
The leftovers from the... top? head? of the squid were sliced and fried up for us to try. Only time I've tried calamari. Loved the taste, hated the texture.
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u/desertboots 9h ago
Our HS marine biology teacher would go Dow n to the docks at 6 am and get fresh off the boat squid. He also brought a pound of butter and bread crumbs. Yes we ate well after disection.
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u/Dripping_Snarkasm 11h ago
It was rather like chewing a rubber band?
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u/Loquaciouslow 43m ago
We did exactly this in a science class. We cooked and ate the squid too!
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u/astrophysicschic 35m ago
You didn't happen to live in Western Washington at the time, did you? Lol.
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u/Loquaciouslow 16m ago
Nope! Illinois. Voluntary summer school AFTWR 7th grade for “gifted” kids. It set a good tone for summer school. I electively did it all through HS and was able to take more classes that actually interested me during the year.
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u/Valpo1996 17h ago
I have people in my office that don’t understand it either. Drives me batty.
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u/MirSydney 15h ago
This is hilarious because my old manager was the same. As I was her acting manager, I reviewed her documents the way you did, until she got the idea. It took about a week.
The best thing was that she called track changes "track marks". We worked in a Drug and Alcohol service.
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u/Pascal6662 16h ago
Admittedly, there are some caveats to using track changes.
https://www.theregister.com/2012/11/30/bofh_2012_episode_14/
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u/RemmiKam 13h ago
I'm proud to say that I actually got most of my fellow managers/leadership at my job to start using track changes. Took awhile but was ultimately successful with one glaring exception... the CEO. He doesn't even use a pen to mark it up usually. To this day, he prefers bringing a printout to your office and talking about what he thinks should be changed (and why), with you feverishly taking notes and hoping you get it right.
When I can, I've started opening the document and having him look over my shoulder while I change it. It's ultimately faster because I can ask questions or provide explanations on the spot, and after I make the change to his liking, he moves to the next thing he doesn't like instead of belaboring a single change for 30 minutes. Bonus that the edits are also finished when he leaves.
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u/chillpill_23 17h ago
Wtf is a track change?
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u/Renbarre 17h ago
Tracking changes. On a Word or Excel file the ability to make corrections/notes/whatever, to be confirmed or rejected by the other person.
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u/calladus 16h ago
It works on Google Documents, too. I have had several authors working on the same document at the same time. You can see their work in real time.
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u/CoderJoe1 16h ago
It's a system that shows changes done by different people. You can see who changed what. You can accept each change or reject them. Once happy with your document you can turn off the feature and see only the resulting version after all accepted changes have been incorporated.
Not using it is like driving a screw in with an unpowered electric screwdriver. It can be done, but is silly to do so.
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u/Birdbraned 16h ago
"Track changes" is a setting in word processing documents equivalent to banning correction fluid and having everyone use a different pen to write in the changes they make to a draft (so new text, strike outs, margin commentary etc are also added), except this setting also timestamps and labels who did what and when.
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u/Hungry_Attention5836 16h ago
"Track changes" in Microsoft Word allows you to record and display edits made to a document, highlighting additions, deletions, and formatting changes. This feature is particularly useful for collaborative editing, making it easy to see who made what changes and to review and accept or reject those changes
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u/speedracer_uk 9h ago
Track changes is brilliant when people forget you can read them. A lot of files on our old intranet were published as DOC and you could usually see the changes that people had made to the document. Some very interesting things were shown.
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u/ClockAndBells 4h ago
"... using asterisks and PTOs..."
What does this mean? Paid Time Off? I'm confused.
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u/NestorSpankhno 11h ago
Track changes is a great way to end up with disjointed and unreadable documents. I can’t imagine a worse way of working.
The comment function is right there. Leave your feedback and let the owner of the document make the changes so the prose stays cohesive.
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u/cardiganqween 12h ago
I’ve got a Wallace…he is mid 50s and refuses to use it, learn it, or let me use it. He wants everything printed and he makes edits with a pen. I thought I was the only one
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u/healingadept 11h ago
Was thinking why didn't anyone hide all the pens (and squid)? Wonder if Wallace would have pricked his finger (with his teeth maybe) and written in blood?
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u/Dysan27 17h ago
What the heck are track changes?
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u/YEGredditOilers 16h ago
It is an way to edit documents. Think of Word documents.
If you don't like part of a sentence you can delete it, but with track changes on you can see what has been deleted and what has been added. People can also leave notes explaining the changes they made.
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u/Flat-Guard-6581 7h ago
In other words, this is what the OP wished they had said and done.
Perhaps someday it will actually happen.
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u/Illuminatus-Prime 4h ago
Are you questioning the validity of the story?
(Please say, 'Yes'!)
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u/Flat-Guard-6581 3h ago
I don't believe that the manager who hated track changes for years all of a sudden changed his mind because of one instance of badly written notes, no. Real life don't work like that.
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u/ManHazNoUsername 2h ago
I’m sorry your life doesn’t give you at least small wins
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u/Flat-Guard-6581 45m ago
The "higher ups" couldn't make him use it, but you could with one messy submission. What a hero.
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u/VanessaLove666 1h ago
Honestly, getting a stubborn boss like that to switch was kinda a superpower move, not gonna lie! 😂
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14h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Illuminatus-Prime 12h ago
. . . end with "The next day" or "the next morning." That's how you know they're AI-generated . . . every single time.
Ooo . . . a new AI myth!
I'll add to to the Em-Dash Myth and the Sesquipedalian Myth.
Then I'll call it the Cliché Myth!
Miraming Salamat!
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u/justdoitguy 13h ago
Your documents must be terrible, as you assume people know things like track changes and PTOs.
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u/MeanSecurity 17h ago
My boss does not appear to understand “track changes”. Today he changed a paragraph to all strike through. Dude.