malicious compliance

Employee told he is going to lose all of his leave by the end of the year, takes it all at once, leaving projects struggling to be completed: 'Use all your PTO before December 31 or lose it? Alright, don't mind if I do, even if the project burns...'

Brad Dickson

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45-minutes before closing, VP demands employees cannot clock out until ALL emails are answered, employee maliciously complies: ‘I had 46 unread emails… Only 2 were actual client questions.’

Elna McHilderson

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Boss reprimands employee for showing too much personality in emails, employee complies and gets accused of sounding too cold: 'I thought you didn't want personal touches'

Ben Weiss

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18-year-old café employee told by her new shift lead to stop talking, stops talking entirely, forcing the lead to backtrack: 'You’re not paid to talk, you’re paid to work'

Brad Dickson

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'I just stood there': Manager demands employees stick only to assigned tasks, employee complies by refusing to help customers outside of their department

Bar Mor Hazut

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Boss questions employee's work ethic when they work from home for one day despite working their previously agreed upon WFH days from the office: 'You want me to honor my in-office-days? Okay, but you'll be forced to honor my WFH-days'

Brad Dickson

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Boss bans phones in the workplace, employee complies until boss needs to reach her urgently: 'I wasn’t about to get written [up] for breaking a policy she just finished enforcing'

Ben Weiss

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Boss pressures employee to postpone PTO due to upcoming project deadline, employee refuses, citing HR policy: 'Managers are responsible for planning around employee availability'

Ben Weiss

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Neighbor complains resident is taking over their yard, leading resident to resurvey the properties, discovers entitled neighbor built their house too close to the property line: ‘Their whole house might be torn down’

Bar Mor Hazut

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Overworked employee working 75 hours a week gets criticized for not being efficient enough, leading employee to cut their work time in half: ‘This was my wake-up call’

Bar Mor Hazut

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18-year-old worker told not to come in at all if she's late for work, turns around and goes home: 'Instead of rushing in, I turned around and went home'

Brad Dickson

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Graphic designer told to stop "pestering" client, designer complies, client's project goes up in flames: 'As per your request, I did not follow up'

Ben Weiss

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'I stopped correcting Stacey's work': Employee told by HR to stop fixing boss's mistakes without approval, boss loses clients over too many errors

Ben Weiss

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‘"You need to be more energetic on calls"’: Boss reprimands insurance employee for being too neutral-sounding over the phone, so the employee leans into their ‘radio host voice’ from a former role 20 years prior

Lana DeGaetano

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Boss takes 15 minutes off construction worker's pay when he was 1 minute late, his refusal to work sparks chain reaction with other staff: 'I'm not getting paid until 6:15 so I'm not doing any work until 6:15. I enjoy what I do but I don't do it for free'

Brad Dickson

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Marketing demands review of all technical documents, programmer creates a fake protocol to mess with them: '[It was] called the "TP Protocol." [I]t could be implemented as a 2 or 3-layer network, each layer called a "ply"'

Brad Dickson

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