This manager may have been irritated, but the rest of us can applaud this customer's success at bending the rules for his own gain. Sure, finding loopholes and using them to one's advantage can sometimes lead to unruly behavior, but this time, the customer achieved something most shoppers can only dream of: a loophole within a store's strict return policy. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by u/dubilendar , who shared that he had just bought a series of items fr…

This is what happens when teachers are not paid fairly. It's no secret that your average teacher is forced to take on a number of tasks and responsibilities that go well beyond their job description and salary. The reality of the matter is that without their extra free labor, students and teachers alike will not have the proper materials for class to run smoothly. Naturally, this lack of fairness can lead to a whole lot of resentment from teachers who are taking way too much time out of their a…

Management doesn't have any idea what you do; let's just get that out of the way.

There's a pretty simple rule of management that leaders should follow: Don't mess with something that's working. Whether that's a single high-performing worker, an efficient team, or just a general flow of business, messing with something for the sake of it is always going to end poorly. It's a similar premise to “let sleeping dogs lie” but in this case, it's more of "leave

Landlords are just about one of the only things that could make us root for lawyers. The lesser of two evils really comes into play when those two parties are in the same room together. The powerful preying on the weak is one of the oldest tropes in storytelling. What's not to love about a story like this? A wily lawyer who wants to do the right thing—but still doesn't work for free—coming to the aid of a desperate owner of a local restaurant (that happens to be the lawyer's favorite.) The cart…

Not honoring an employee's schedule when they have been following all the rules and going through the proper channels is about as disrespectful as it gets. When a manager rejects your request to not work a certain shift, the message is clear: your life and commitments do not matter. What matters is this silly arbitrary work schedule that is 100% malleable but apparently, that would require too much critical thinking on the manager's part. This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance…

Customer service work can be difficult at times. The old adage ‘the customer is always right’ can reach unprecedented heights, depending on the circumstances and parties involved. The story that follows is an account of a customer service representative. The Original Poster (OP) was involved in asset finance, namely with regard to land and cars. But in an effort to find a solution, he chose to bring up the issue with his management after encountering an angry client who refused to abide by the…

In writing, both for entertainment and for technical purposes, it's important that your reader be able to comprehend the meaning of your words. For example, if you happen to be writing a snazzy and engaging introduction to a discussion about a story that someone shared online, it would be foolish to begin using words that your reader is likely not to understand. In fact, it would be perspicacious for the author to eschew using a myriad of archaic verbiage that obfuscates the meaning of what the…

It is crucial that you communicate your expectations to everyone around you. Having said that, as someone who always says what they mean and means what they say, in the event that you were given an order by superiors, would you simply follow it without question or would you make an effort to comprehend the reasoning behind it to prevent future annoyances? The story below tells the tale of a clever transport officer who, although fully aware that he is setting himself up for failure, opts to fol…

Each and every action has consequences. Because of this, you should think twice before intentionally betraying someone else because you never know when or how it can come back to haunt you. The story that follows is the account of a petty client. The story is relayed by the Original Poster (OP), who provides readers with a detailed explanation of his motivations for starting the years-long payback plan. To put things in perspective, OP hired a contractor a few years ago in order to finish some…

Picture this: your manager is incompetent, you do most of their work for the better part of the year, and then, she tries to fire you! That's right. You would think the final part of that journey would be a well-deserved raise or promotional opportunity. Perhaps some acknowledgment of all this hard work and going above and beyond would have been nice. Instead of gratitude, all this manager felt at the end of the day was threatened. This Redditor shared how she managed to come out of this toxic…

There are some things in life that just make sense… and not messing with the spicy death wires when you don't know what you're doing with them is one of them. It makes perfectly logical sense that, rather than playing “Operation” where instead of a startling buzzer sound and a light-up nose the penalty for failure is your own untimely fiery demise, you should just let the guys who know what they're doing do it. Sure, electricians get flack for being grosly overpaid for what they're actually doi…

Employers should learn to be careful what they wish for more than anyone else. This old adage is something we tend to teach our kids in preschool. We've heard it over and over again on television, in nursery rhymes, and in countless mediocre school productions of Into the Woods . Yet still, it seems that our managers and bosses have forgotten what things might look like if their wishes come true and the ridiculous demands they put upon their employees are met. This thread was posted to Reddit's…

Always be careful how you treat your employees because if you treat them poorly, karma certainly will rear its head. If the number of satisfying quitting stories we have told right here at FAIL Blog serves as any indication, it's that people with bad bosses are not going to leave their jobs quietly. In many cases, it is up to them to stick it to their bosses while they have the chance. Here, we have an employee who, among other responsibilities, was tasked with receiving dozens of sales calls a…

There's this thing that happens in some organizations where upper management knowingly sets policies that they know infringe (or come close to infringing) on their legal minimum obligations to their workforce. Then they act all surprised when said minimum obligation isn't being upheld because it's simply not possible to do under the constraints they've created. A perfect example of this is employee breaks, of which there are usually laws where you're working around when, how long, and how often…

Being particular about something is all well and good… to a point. You can want something done a certain way with good reason, but overly inflicting your pedantic ways on other people isn't going to make you any friends, and when you're managing a team, it certainly isn't going to win anyone over or inspire loyalty. No, it's always better to have a little flexibility and give your team members agency over their respective roles; letting people do things they're responsible for in their own way…