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…

There comes a time in your career when you have to stand up for yourself and stop taking on too much.

Throughout your life, your superiors' insistence that you adhere to cumbersome processes and procedures will be a literal thorn in your side, causing you wasted hours and undue stress as you attempt to follow them. But—occasionally, things might just work out in your favor. When they do, it's usually owing to the fact that the superiors, who are insisting that these processes be followed, aren't nearly as good at following them themselves as they would like you to believe. In fact, they may rev…

Insisting on adherence to process when it does nothing but create an inconvenient obstacle is a tactic that the power-hungry love to wield like a fork at Sunday dinner—and I'm not saying they only use it once a week, but rather that they do so with ravenous vigor. It's silly, really, that someone should make such a big deal out of nothing—but trust anyone who is desperate to justify their existence in this world to do so. When this couple moved from their apartment complex, they received a foll…

I guess you could say this guy was locked red-handed!

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…

Karen got exactly what she wanted, just not as quickly as she wanted.

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…

Sometimes the best lessons come from giving someone exactly what they wanted.

Be careful what you wish for, boss!

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.

When teachers attempt to exert control with no real grounds to do so, things get messy, fast. In this case, a physics teacher demanded his students plot the graph for an experiment as they went along, despite not knowing the range of values upfront. OP, who was a part of the class, realized that even though this teacher had no clue what he was doing, he and the rest of the class would have to comply. The experiment in question included demonstrating the young modulus, where you would expect a s…

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…

This seemingly dangerous story has an unexpectedly wholesome ending.

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…