Bosses who insist on arbitrary dress codes are so annoying. Sometimes, dress codes are really important: for example, if you work in a hard hat area and need proper protective gear, or if you work in fast food and need nonslip shoes for those greasy floors. Those make sense. But this person's bosses seem to just like messing with their employees' wardrobes for no reason other than to have a power trip. U/Devils_av0cad0 wrote to r/Maliciouscompliance with an awesome tale of workplace compliance.…

We all love a good loophole. Social media is full of people telling their favorite loopholes to get cash after a cancelled flight, return kids' clothing years after you bought it, or ‘hack’ a stores' return policy to your benefit. As a customer, finding a loophole can be great, but when too many people start to abuse the system, it results in a crackdown to stop customers from getting free stuff. Next up, this employee refused to do something his boss kept insisting on — but it was actually rea…

Oh to be a fly on the wall when this IT director had to face her bosses… This excellent story of malicious compliance was shared by u/Barcs2k12. They write that when they were working in the IT department of a state agency, they encountered a Karen boss who was so sure she was smarter than the IT team . So much smarter that she planned and coordinated a catastrophe on her own team! The best bosses are the kind who can see your talents and encourage you as you grow. They can become your mentor i…

Some of us undoubtedly have terrible handwriting, but do any of us have handwriting so terrible that it can fool a leading forensic expert? It's important to remember that while being an expert on something means that you have a wealth of experience in the subject and have seen many things, it doesn't mean that you have seen every thing. Thinking otherwise is bound to land you in some embarrassing situations that call your experience into question. On top of this, in general, it's important to…

A $25 per month bill inspired this woman to get creative with her parking spot. It's great to have an apartment building where you can park your car in a garage or a parking lot. It saves you the hassle of having to fight for a spot, and if you can park indoors, you'll never have to wipe snow and ice off your vehicle again. And don't even get me started about having to move your car when the street cleaner comes around, which some cities make you do monthly. Yes, there's a lot of be gained from…

This boss is going to be a hero to their employees. This fearless manager stood up to an unfair rule in the best possible way — through malicious compliance , and following all the rules. Work-life balance is one of those things that people always talk about trying to achieve, but in reality, it's hard to find balance. Everyone wants to succeed in the workplace, but some bosses insist that you work long hours or holidays in order to accomplish all your tasks. It seems like this company's CEO ha…

Companies love to introduce small fees as a means of saving a few dollars or adding an extra stream of revenue. Hey—if you're a bank or network provider with 70 million customers, charging each of them a $0.10 fee every month is going to shore up a clean $84 million in revenue a year, and that's not going to look bad for some senior manager's bonus figure. These tactics can be employed against your employees, too. Nitpicking small costs and introducing small penalties can cause broad-sweeping c…

Some companies' policies don't allow overtime, as paying minimum wage employees a slightly more humane salary is just not in their budget. Despite this, managers can overrule this when holidays arrive and they are in dire need of help. In this case, OP was working at a retail store; unsurprisingly, this was the type of company that paid its employees little but expected a lot. The holidays were fast approaching, and management knew that they were way behind, thus they would need many hands on d…

CEO's and upper management types are the kind of people that have the fewest tricks but the loudest bark. As the big dog at the dog park, they notoriously rampage around the others, nipping the heels of every loyal employee, defiling the sanctity of the workplace with their talk of ‘disruption’, and forcing their handlers to pick up every doo-doo in their wake.

Being rude to people in customer service is only going to make your life more difficult, and it's really not a good idea to tempt someone who has the federal-granted authority to give everything you own—including your own person—a very thorough search. Further, if you're being overly aggressive and disruptive, you may be detained or banned from flying ever again altogether—which would be mightily more inconvenient than waiting for a disgruntled agent to rifle through your bag. But—hey—flying ca…

Companies need to be careful with who they pick when searching for a job candidate to work in a managerial role, as often their choice can make or break a team. In this case, OP was an IT manager for a company that was searching for a successor to run the store in the owner's place. Soon enough, they found a 'worthy candidate', but the candidate in question turned out to be not only terrible at running the show but was also rude and entitled overall as a person. This resulted in 15 employees qu…

It's often said that you should never break two rules at the same time, lest you run the risk of being caught for the more serious rule after calling attention to yourself through the less serious. You can probably find that phrased uttered in a similar fashion throughout the ages of this site. When we mention this, we're usually talking about driving with a broken headlight on your way to rob a casino with your ten closest friends. You could be pulled over on the way and have the entire heist…

Taunting a chef to make your food as hot as humanly possible is always going to end the same way… and at the end of the day, you literally asked for it. Sure, you might have underestimated just how spicy it could be, but the limits of your imagination are not the chef's responsibility. But that's part of the draw for people who desire diabolically hot dishes. Mopping your brow constantly with a napkin while trying to smother the flames bursting from inside your mouth is some people's idea of a…

What managers fail to realize time and time again is that they are creating a bitter environment for employees when they decide to micromanage them, leading to a drop in production, and an overall yucky atmosphere. OP was working in a sanitization department for a hospital, working on the upkeep of cleanliness of the general areas of the hospital. Unfortunately, OP had a coworker, Steve, who wasn't even a manager, yet micromanaged the rest of the staff as if he were one. There is nothing worse…

Traveling to customer sites to analyze defective products means traversing under a corporate travel policy. In this case, OP was given a certain allowance according to his company's corporate travel policy, which he followed vigorously. OP actually skimped out on expenses as much as possible to make sure he wasn't costing the company too much money, so he didn't even max out his allowance. That is until his boss called him into his office for a proper scolding after he had allegedly ‘overtipped…

There's a reason why you're forced to show your work in math class. It's important that you can prove how you reached a conclusion to show that you comprehend the reasoning and aren't just blindly following the rule. Unfortunately, the same requirement is not translated well—or consistently—from the classroom to the workplace, with too many managers blindly following rules that they don't understand to the point of sociopathic cruelty. This issue also isn't helped by the fact that there are a l…