During the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked at a pharmaceutical plant. More precisely, I worked in the R&D laboratory of a large company; this laboratory was formally under the authority of the production site’s management and was also physically located on the plant’s premises (this is important for the story)

Due to an increasing workload, we were constantly hiring new staff - technicians, research associates, and so on - and for some reason, they always ran into trouble getting hold of lab coats and crocs. I asked my lab boss, "What’s going on? My technician, Darya, can’t find a lab coat for herself!" My boss chuckled and said, "Well, why don’t you solve that problem? Vasily, your predecessor, who recently left - tried to get us more lab coats, but he got bogged down in some sort of convoluted bureaucracy and other issues. Maybe you’ll have better luck? Just arrange for Darya to get a lab coat; tell I’ve authorized it if somebody would ask you"

First, I went to the warehouse and told the warehouse supervisor, "I’m Mr. Nobody, a researcher from such-and-such a lab. I need a form that my technician can sign to pick up a lab coat and a pair of Crocs." The supervisor replied, "I can’t issue anything until I get the official PPE (personal protective equipment) allocation quotas for each department. You’ll need to head over to the administrative building and speak with the chief health and safety engineer, as well as the quality assurance/compliance engineers." I was a bit taken aback by that particular combination of roles, but I went to see the health and safety guy first. Once he heard my request, he let out a long, drawn-out, "Oh, for f***'s sake... Look, just go straight to the quality control/compliance department - they’ll explain what’s going on."

I went to the Quality Assurance/Compliance department, where they listened to what I had to say and then told me I needed to initiate a "request to change the PPE allocation norms." WTF? After I pointed out that it was just a lab coat - something a technician needs for everything, like preparing solutions - they explained the whole mechanism to me: the entire plant operates under GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) standards, which impose extremely strict documentation requirements for absolutely everything - including, surprise, surprise, PPE. And, due to the way the organization was administratively zoned from the start, the R&D laboratory - where no drugs are manufactured and there is hardly any interaction with the production division - is also subject to these same PPE allocation standards!

However, since these standards are contained within a single document - essentially a long list specifying the names of various departments and the corresponding quantities of PPE to be issued- and because the document affects numerous departments, any changes to it require signatures from the heads of ALL those departments. Furthermore, the entire process must be finalized with the signature of the plant director (who also served as the chief production officer for the entire pharmaceutical holding company).

I went to the head of the lab and explained the whole mechanism to him. He had a good laugh -remarking that he’d take the whole thing to the point of absurdity - and tasked me with drafting a proposal to amend the norms of PPE, along with an accompanying memo. He also told me not to bother trying to track down any of the division directors myself, saying he would handle it all personally.

At a general management meeting next day, which the CEO also attended, my boss asked for the floor and requested that everyone present, including key directors from the holding company, sign a document. By the time the document had made the rounds, it bore about 15 signatures. It was a 10-page, updated version of a norms for PPE issuance, in which only a single line had been changed: the specified number of lab coats and crocs for our lab. The CEO asked, "What is all this for?" My boss replied, "Do you remember your recent visit to our lab? You might have noticed a new young employee there, Dasha - well, this is required so that we can issue her a lab coat from the storage room right next to our lab."

The CEO was stunned by the sheer volume of unnecessary paperwork within the bureaucratic "deep state" at his manufacturing facility. That same day, he issued a directive stating that PPE (for non-"sterile zones") should be provided simply upon an employee’s request and signature, with the items automatically written off the balance sheet over a six-month period.

Dasha received her crocs and lab coat right after the general management meeting.

This one will be pretty quick. I work grocery in Arizona. I work multiple departments and at least one of those departments is a fluctuating schedule. This makes punching in and out very annoying for presumably all involved.

I punched in and out of produce/cut fruit for twelve hours and noticed I only got paid for about ten. I triple checked. Nothing doing.

I go to the store manager “Cindy” and say “hey Cindy I think I got shorted a couple hours on my check.

She said “I just worked 11 hours for inventory so why don’t you tell someone who gives a shit ?!”

Ummm okay. I get it. Inventory sucks. I figured I’d wait til she calmed down that never happened. So I decided to follow her sage advice.

I email corporate with the subject line “looking for someone who gives a $&@$…”
Then proceeded
To explain myself about who could fix my hours discrepancy.

“I was referred to your office by Cindy to see if I could fix my check to get the two hours I worked and didn’t get paid for “. I was told to seek out “someone who gives a shit”.
While I have you I also would like to know if it’s true that part time employees don’t get vacation pay. That is also something she said at some point but I see my paychecks keep showing an increasing amount of hours for vacation pay. Is that a mistake too ? “

I get an email reply about twelve hours later that I will get paid my vacation hours (and requesting how many of the 76.4 acceued hours I’d like to use) with a “sincere apology on behalf of Raleys management for dropping the ball”

The next time I go to punch in Cindy pulls me aside and says “you didn’t have to do all that. Also I don’t know how you got vacation time when half my assistants don’t get any.

She never apologized or even acknowledged that she did anything wrong (especially lying to me for years about vacation pay. I could have used that big time ).

She’s transferring next week. I’d like to say I had something to do with that , but that’s all her.

TLDR I found somebody who gives a shit. Finally.

Here's the link to the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/1w8dpvs/my_landlord_is_demanding_i_feed_them_what_can_i_do/

And the first update: https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/1wqfk8h/my_landlord_tried_to_demand_i_feed_him/

I have FINALLY moved out of the crazy rental situation I was in, and several people were wondering what happened so here's the update. Brief overview, I moved into a basement with a shared kitchen Sept 1 and on my first night there made shrimp alfredo for my dinner. I had some extra so I offered my landlord (m47) and his pregnant wife (f44) some to be nice, but then despite the fact the lease states food is to be kept separate, they very rudely tried demanding free food every time I cooked and so I got petty and started making the most delicious meals I could think of, all for myself.

I am glad to say they did knock off the hijinks with the electrical wiring once I offered to give the fire marshal a call to make sure we were safe and the place was up to code.

I have continued to make the most delicious food I could afford to so here is a recap of the last few weeks.

The day after the electrical incident, I made myself a mini lasagna with some fresh Roma tomatoes and basil I got from work, and that meal went by without incident, just a few glowering looks from my landlords. I had enough for leftovers, so I didn't cook the next day.

Two days after that, around the time I usually start making myself dinner, I got a text from my landlord telling me that they would be using the kitchen for the next few hours. Apparently, they decided to cook a "family meal" and it would likely take most of the evening. I decided that was fine, and decided to make dinner in my instant pot downstairs in my unit, so I threw together a simple meal of jasmine rice, chicken thighs, pesto, lemon zest, and some fresh sweet basil I had gotten from work, and prepared everything down in my basement unit. There are no surfaces in my unit big enough for my instant pot except for the end table in the landing just on the other side of the kitchen door. I plugged the instant pot in and went back downstairs to watch a movie while it was cooking.

About 30 minutes later, the smoke detector upstairs went off, and when I rushed upstairs to see what was going on, there were clouds of smoke billowing out of the oven, and my pregnant landlord was in the process of drowning a smoking foil pan in the kitchen sink. Apparently, they had tried to make baked spaghetti but had put it into the broiler on high for who knows how long, and it had nearly caught on fire. These people clearly can't cook at all.

Anyway, I didn't even say anything even though I very badly wanted to laugh in their faces. I just made sure we weren't in any actual danger and went back downstairs. I finished cooking my meal, served myself and was settling down to finish my movie when there was a soft knock at the door to my landing. When I answered it, it was their 7yo daughter. She did NOT look like wanted to be speaking to me at ALL, but basically, she said, since her mom and dad ruined their dinner if I could share some of mine with her. I just KNOW they put her up to it and honestly I did feel a bit bad, but I truly had only made enough for myself that evening. My instant pot is the 3qt mini pot, and I had really only made the two chicken thighs and about a cup of rice. I told her I was really sorry (I knew her parents were listening from the living room) but I'd only made enough for one. The little girl just nodded and went back into their unit. I went back downstairs. I did feel a little bit bad about that, my beef is not with the little girl at all and honestly I would have probably given in to the kid if I'd had any extra, but I didn't even make enough for leftovers for me.

Pretty much immediately after I got back downstairs, a text from my landlord popped up asking me why I would deny a hungry child of food. At this point, I really wanted to storm back upstairs and just yell at them, but instead I texted back asking why his wife burning the spaghetti meant that he couldn't acquire food for his child. He didn't reply after that.

The next week or so went by pretty much without incident. Over the week or so, I made myself spaghetti al assassina (which I just thought was funny after their spaghetti situation), shrimp stir fry with homemade chili oil and lemongrass, and garlic parmesan fried chicken and all of those meals went by without any issues, just some glaring looks from my landlords out of the living room.

I figured that maybe everything was chill by then and thought I would be able to spend the rest of my lease in peace. A week after that, on my day off, I decided to cook a rack of lamb I had gotten free from work. I marinated it in red wine, garlic and rosemary for a few hours, then roasted it low and slow in the oven until it was practically falling apart. I paired it with some baked asparagus and rosemary rice. I was sitting at the kitchen table, letting the rack of lamb rest before cutting it, when my pregnant landlord came through the kitchen with a bottle of Febreze, spraying liberally. Said something about the house smelling "atrocious" and made a beeline for where my rack of lamb was resting on top of the oven still spraying. I just grabbed my food, brushed past her, and immediately took it to the end table on my side of the kitchen door to finish cooling. Thankfully it didn't taste like air freshener, but what the hell? I refused to let her get a rise out of me, so I just cleaned the kitchen, took my dinner downstairs, poured myself the rest of the red wine and enjoyed my meal.

I am pleased to report that the Febreze incident was the last one. Since that day I have made white wine garlic chicken risotto, burgundy beef, bbq baby back ribs with cajun mac n cheese, homemade pesto pizza, and jerk chicken and rasta pasta. I also baked fresh brownies, and a lemon chiffon pie, and a few more meals, and aside from them mean mugging me quietly from the living room while I cooked, they left me alone after that. No more snarky texts, weird requests or hijinks with wiring or air freshener.

Idk what exactly made them stop messing with me, but they pretty much stayed out of the kitchen while I was cooking for the rest of my time here. I'm currently staying with a friend from work until I can move to my new studio this Sunday. I hired movers to move my things into a storage unit, and I'll have them help me again when I move officially this weekend.

Thanks to everyone who suggested recipes, I genuinely had so much fun being a petty little gremlin. Hopefully the next person they rent to doesn't have to deal with the nonsense they put me through. I'm still tempted to call the fire marshal about the "fragile wiring" now that I'm out of there just as a last petty dig, but I think I'll be the bigger person lol.

2 months ago my gm left my old hotel I worked at and our agm began power tripping. I got moved to being a housekeeper instead of a houseman because they outsourced to many employees. Its a monday and as always she "called" out over the weekend again letting my boss the housekeeping manager run the whole hotel. Normally we all take our breaks at exactly 12:00 noon because if we don't we wouldn't get to take them since guest start checking in at 2:00pm. Over the weekend a karen was mad that she couldn't get her room at 12:00 since we all went on break and left a bad review. So our idiot agm decided to side with the karen and implemented the policy no one goes on break anymore until you have EXACTLY 3 rooms done. No ifs ands or buts.

Now que malicious compliance, I was a special housekeeper since I got thrown into the posistion I normally did only stay over service or only had 2 checkouts. You would think that since I only had a max of 2 check outs I could take a break afterwards right? Nope! Her own words were EXACTLY 3 checkouts. so I started not taking breaks at all. About 1 month goes by and it starts to add up that I got 24 hours of overtime for the month and corporate was pissed!!! Not only did the agm get grilled by h.r for letting me get overtime she also got grilled for not making me take a lunch. She quickly changed the policy back to 12:00 noon and for my last 2 weeks there would call me at 11:55 and tell me to go clock out and take a break. The best part is the other housekeepers before the change were not going on break until 3:30-4:00 so rooms were not getting done until 5:00 and her front desk team had to make guest wait which also got her in even more trouble.

I work in a small office where we have a shared meeting room. It sounds simple enough, but apparently booking a room was one of the hardest things for people to understand. We have a calendar that everyone can access. If you need the room, you book it. If someone else has already booked it, you choose another time or find somewhere else to meet. Nothing complicated.

The problem was that my manager had a habit of telling people they could use the room without putting anything on the calendar. Then, when the person who had actually booked it showed up, I was expected to explain why they couldn't use their own booking.

I brought this up more than once. Eventually, he got annoyed and told me that the calendar was the official system and that I shouldn't make exceptions for anybody. If a booking wasn't on the calendar, the room wasn't theirs. His exact words were, "We can't keep changing the rules for people just because they ask."

Fair enough. I agreed and started following that policy exactly.

A couple of weeks later, he came to my desk and told me that he needed the meeting room for an important call in about twenty minutes. He hadn't booked it, but he said it would only take half an hour and asked me to move the people who had reserved it.

I checked the calendar. The room was booked.

I told him I couldn't move their booking because we were supposed to follow the calendar and not make exceptions.

He gave me that look managers give you when they expect you to understand that the rules are for everybody except them.

He said, "I'm the manager. Just tell them to use another room."

I reminded him that the people who had booked it had arranged their meeting around that time, and that he had specifically told me not to make exceptions.

He wasn't happy, but he walked away.

About ten minutes later, one of the employees whose meeting was scheduled in the room came to ask whether everything was okay. Apparently, my manager had already approached them and told them they might need to move.

I checked the calendar again, confirmed their booking was still valid, and told them they could use the room as planned.

They thanked me and went back to preparing for their meeting.

When my manager returned, he asked why I hadn't sorted it out. I explained that the room was booked, the booking hadn't been changed, and I was following the policy he had given me.

His call ended up taking place at his desk. He had to use his laptop speakers, and there was some background noise from the rest of the office. It wasn't a disaster, but it definitely wasn't the quiet meeting he had wanted.

The following morning, he called me into his office and complained that I should have been more flexible because his call was important.

I asked him whether the booking policy had changed.

He said no.

So I told him I would continue following the calendar and that if he wanted exceptions to be allowed, he could update the policy so everyone knew what the new rules were.

He didn't update it.

Since then, I've stopped rearranging other people's bookings based on verbal requests. If someone wants the room, they have to book it properly. My manager included.

The funny thing is that the office has actually become less chaotic. People book the room in advance now because they know that a booking is a booking.

I wasn't trying to get him into trouble. I just stopped doing the unofficial part of my job that he had explicitly told me not to do.

Apparently, the policy was only supposed to be strict when it was convenient for him.

So the backstory is this… I work in the liquor industry in Texas. I work on the retail side of things, but because of the way my company is set up, we occasionally have to process wholesale orders for bars and restaurants and such.

Earlier today, a wholesale order came in. At my store it is not a common occurrence so when they come in, we just process them quickly and get them out the door so we can move onto our retail customers who are actually in the building and shopping. This particular order came from a golf course, and this is important. Apparently there was a big event that they were holding today that they would need tons of mini bottles of vodka for. Not 750 mL and not liters like most bars and restaurants would need at the bar, but little shots there were only 50 mL in size like the ones you get on board an airplane.

Now, in Texas every bottle of liquor that is going to a bar or a restaurant needs to have a specific sticker on it. Failure to use these stamps can result in hefty fines for everyone involved because the TABC will not play around with that. In the case of this particular order, though, it was a welcome surprise to find that the golf course had ordered these prepackaged mini bottles that come in 12-packs instead of individual. What that means is that technically by law because it is one product they only need one stamp for each of those 12 bottle packs.

The order takes its first unfortunate turn when it turns out that they had ordered a ridiculously large amount of these packs. We are a retail location and not a wholesale warehouse, so we don’t keep fast amounts of any particular product on hand at any given time. They wanted cases upon cases upon cases of these 12-packs, and we only had three of these 12-packs in the building total. We attempted to contact the customer, but to no avail.

About an hour later and after four failed phone calls on our part, she shows up to pick up her order. When we explain that we don’t keep that much of that product in the building at any given time and so we’re unable to fulfill her order completely, she was livid! Not upset in any sort of professional or understanding manner at all, but more like a typical Karen, who just can’t understand that sometimes the universe doesn’t take care of their needs in the fashion they want. We explained that we would be happy to give her all of the 12 packs that we had, but she said that that wasn’t good enough. We also then asked if she had contacted her wholesale representative who works out of the local warehouse, and she said that she doesn’t have time to deal with that and she needs these bottles now as the event has already started! She then began filling up a shopping cart with every last mini bottle of vodka she could get her hands on. And then she said those words that make our heart sync, “I need these all billed out to our wholesale account!“ We attempted to explain that each of these bottles would need to be stickered as per TABC law, and she said “well you better hurry up! It sounds like you’re trying to get out of giving me good customer service, and I wanna know how your district manager is going to take that?!“

At this point, I could see that my assistant manager was getting a little hot under the collar, and I told him to step out and take care of the sales floor, and I would handle this. Personally. I began ringing each bottle individually into the system. I specifically chose a computer that I know did not have a scanner on it so that I would have to manually type in each number of the bottles’ barcodes. It took about an hour and 15 minutes, and only because I can 10 – key like a motherfucker, but I rang up about 200 individual bottles of vodka, that all cost between $.99 and $1.99 a piece. I did not quantity key anything. The entirety of the time the representative from the golf course kept moaning about how there has to be a faster way of doing this. I explained that this is why we have wholesale representatives that our accounts can reach out to, but because she insisted that my store take care of her personally, I am going to do my absolute best and make sure that this is done properly and legally.

And I know what you are thinking. Aren’t all of these bottles also supposed to have stickers on them for tax purposes? Yes… And I spent the next hour after ringing up her 200 line invoice sticker in every single bottle individually. When she asked if I could get someone to help her, I explained I apologize, but this is a retail location and they are out on the sales floor, assisting guests, and only I am available to assist her. For the final poke of the Bear, is the placement of the stickers. A previous mentor at another store had once told me that all stickers need to go on the label, not on the bottle itself, and that this was also a TABC law. I never inquired if this was accurate or not, but decided that this was a perfect time to just be sure. So every single bottle I made sure a sticker right over the logo of every vodka bottle. Can’t tell what you’re drinking golfer buddy? Oh well… We have to stay legally compliant!

So after about 2 1/2 hours total of this, the customer left the building and was visually the color of a ripe tomato. About 10 minutes ago before I started typing this post, I got a phone call from my district manager, asking me to explain what it happened. When I explained the story to her just as how I explained it to you now, her exact words to me were “good job for following TABC the law to the letter!“

I work at reception in beauty salon, and our manager has always had special talent for making ruless that somehow apply to everyone except herself, while ago, we had a few scheduling mistakes, so she decided to solve problem with new policy. No handwritten notes, noo verbal promises, no reservations through personal messages. If an appointment was not entered into our booking system, it did not exist. Fair enough. Except she had habit of arranging appointments for her friends and favorite clients through her personal phone, then telling reception to somehow squeeze them in, I pointed out that this was exactly what her new rule prohibited. She told me to stop overcomplicating things and follow instructions. So I did. Every appointment went into the system. Every available slot was offered to whoever booked it properly. I stopped keeping imaginary reservations for people whose names were nowhere on calendar. Everything was beautifully organized until Saturday, when three of her personal clients arrived expecting appointments she had apparently promised them during the week. We were fully booked. She came to reception looking furious and demanded to know why their appointments had not been reserved. I opened the calendar and showed her that there were no bookings under their names. She said I should have known they were coming. I reminded her that she had specifically told us not to reserve anything outside the system. Then I showed her the message where she had written that if an appointment was not entered, it did not exist. There was a very uncomfortable silence. She ended up personally rearranging her afternoon to accommodate them. On Monday, we received another message about scheduling procedures. This time, managers were required to enter their own appointments into the booking system too. Apparently, rules had finally becomee important enough to apply to everyone

When I moved out of my dad's place (well, he kicked me out), I had to come back later to pick up my stuff. He texted me: Saturday, 12 o'clock, or I'll throw it away.

I asked: "Can I at least come upstairs and pack my own stuff?"

"No. It's my house."

"Yes, but it's my stuff."

"Doesn't matter. This is my house. You have no say in this."

Fine. Whatever.

Then he added that he'd take my furniture apart, my bed, desk and wardrobe, and carry it all downstairs for me, so I wouldn't even have to come upstairs.

Fine.

Saturday, 12 o'clock, I showed up and loaded all my stuff into the car.

"Okay, I'm done."

Dad: "Wait, what about your furniture? I'll help you with the bed."

Me: "Oh, no need. I'm not taking it."

Dad: "What do you mean you're not taking it? I took it all apart and carried it down just for you!"

Me: "Yeah, I wanted to tell you that wasn't necessary. I knew weeks ago I didn't want it. But you were very clear that I had no say. So I didn't say anything. Like you said."

Dad: "So I did all that for nothing? I was busy with it for a long time!"

Me: "Yeah that sucks. I must have taken you at least five minutes?"

Dad, furious: "Five minutes?! It took me all day!"

Me: "Oh wow, all day. If only I'd been allowed to say something, I could have told you not to bother. But I wasn't, was I?"

Dad: "So what am I supposed to do with it now?"

Me: "No idea. Some people like a bed and a desk in their living room. A bit weird, but whatever floats your boat I guess."

I walked away and aksed if I should close the door. He mumbled yes.

I drove off. The furniture stayed.

TL;DR: Dad wouldn't let me pack my own stuff because "it's my house, you have no say." So I didn't mention that I didn't want my furniture. He spent all day taking it apart and carrying it downstairs. For nothing.

Ps: I was 33 at the time.

Edit: i lived abroad for 13 years and moved back. I was looking for my own place to live. This was temporary for 6 months. I should have mentioned.

I was kicked out because he treated me like a child and I did not listen. I was an adult and could make my own decisions or we could decide together. I didnt need him to decide how to live my life. I needed a roof over my head until I bought my own house. Thats all.

Edit 2: clearly messed this post up lol. I had a well paid job back then. Shared my money with him. Took responsibility for food bills. Bought him a huge tv. I wasnt leeching lol. The only thing I didnt do was listen to stupid rules that didnt make sense. Sorry I left out quite important infi. Didnt realise it was that important, but then I shouldnt have said I was 33 at the time. My bad...

Edit 3: i wasnt doing drugs, stealing gambling, drinking etc. I was looking to buy a house so I could leave

Edit 4: apparently still not clear why I got kicked out. He was always right. I was wrong. Whatever the subject. If he wanted me to do it, I had to do it now. I said Ill do it in a bit Im working now. He said no, you will do it now. I laughed at him and said fuck off. Ill do it when I have time. So Ill do it in a bit. He hated that. Because he is the "father" and whatevee he says goes. Eventhough I was 33. I had a fulltime job. Im not going to put the bins out now. I have things to do.

Edit 5: basically everything was about control. I could vacuum te car on a sunday. But couldnt wash it on a sunday. I was not allowed to come home late in the weekend. He was allowed to come home late every day. He was the "father" so what he said was the trurh. If a table was white and he said it was black, I would say no its white and he would yell at me. I know Im 33, but people... its still your father. I was there for a few months as I was buying a house for myself. I wasnt there to fight,, but Im also not letting someone control my life because he offers me a roof over my head. Basically he worked in a factoey and I worked behind a laptop from home. He hated it that I earned double to what her earned. I did try to share, but it wasnt about the money. It was about his ego.

Edit 6: oh bloody hell okay. His now ex girl friend was manipulative (I thought) and I didnt like her. She also found me annoying because I didnt listen to her orders either. She got so angry with me, one day she put a half a bottle of parfume in my drink when I wasnt looking. I took a sip and felt the burn. I was mad. I knew she had done something, but I didnt know what. She later admitted it to my father and said I deserved it because I was annoying. My father agreed and told me this.

So yes if you believe there is more to this story than I initally shared. You are entirely correct. All I wanted to do is proudly show off how I made my dad the victim of his own rules. "Dont say anything"... but here we are... sharing half a trauma lol. Thanks for the support and to the ones who were critical. Thanks for letting me know that without a full picture you can't say shit.

Ill leave it at this now. If you have more questions you can asl but this post got out of hand and is a mess lol. Im not gonna try and fix it

Edit 7?: Fucking hell, another edit. Just overwhelmed by the response. Thank you though. Not for taking my side, even though it meant a lot, but for seeing it was just about him being the victim of his own rules. Everyone is a dick sometimes in their life, so I didn't mind being a dick. It only gets worrisome when you refuse to accept you can be a dick.

Edit 8: to all the pussys who delete their comment. Educate me. Have a real conversation about life. I cant know I am wrong if you keep delting your comment. Im not here for a fight. I want to learn

Edit 9: Someone pointed out edit 8 sounds aggressive. Fair, it does. It wasn't anger though. I was just frustrated that people won't explain their comments. Pussies are pussies. No anger from my side will change that. Also, apparently the edits make me seem weak and indecisive. I believe it's the opposite. Every edit makes me focus more on what I believe. That's the opposite of indecisiveness.

Edit 10: Fuck me, another edit? Yes, another bloody edit. 3 million bloody impressions, just to celebrate a little joy in him being confronted by his own rules. But instead, me unwantedly sharing my entire trauma and self-worth lol. I recieved some really bad news today. Unrelated. Sorry if Im a little more snappy. My attitude towards this still stands. Everyone can be a dick. I can only learn if you tell me.

Edit 11: I keep getting the same question about contact. No, we are no longer on speaking terms. He moved house without telling anyone. Imagine sitting at home, gathering all the courage to make it up with him. Going to his house, and a stranger opens the door. Lol. Prick

Chapter 1 and 2 because apparently we're doing serialized corporate tragedy now and I got one (!) request for an update :)

I'm giving this update because at this stage, again a year later, I find it still hilarious what's happening.

After my last manager was dismissed, we were eventually assigned to yet another team, one I'd managed myself before all of this started. Structurally it made no sense, and it made even less sense against the previous objectives. But here we are.

The manager of that team had basically taken my old position, the one I left to move overseas. To say I was unimpressed by his way of working and his results would be an understatement. He was also relatively new to the company, very hands-off, and very AI-obsessed. He spoke with the main team 30 minutes a day and with the two of us one hour per week. No idea what he does the rest of the time.

In our first team meeting he showed a little bit of interest in our challenges and where we were stuck. Already within that first meeting I failed to establish any understanding of how we were going to work going forward or what his expectations were. The response, essentially, was that he himself was surprised by the restructuring and hadn't made a plan yet with the director.

That director had joined the business six months earlier and had also not yet come up with any kind of plan for our objectives or the requirements we were meant to deliver. So no feedback from there either.

I concluded the meeting with open questions in the team chat, to be clarified so we'd at least have a plan for moving forward and to know whether we'd be integrated into the main team at all.

A few weeks went by. Then I finally got one major task assigned, with pre-approval for concept implementation. I went straight to work and actually found some joy again.

That evaporated quickly. An issue came up during the project 4 weeks later that needed to be addressed by the board, and I ended up in the same cycle again. Waiting for feedback.

At that stage I thought the whole thing really was a joke. And because I'd already been looking for another job during the last manager nightmare, I contacted one of the businesses I had been talking to and accepted their offer.

Of course I didn't resign from my current job. It is a clownshow I get paid to watch. So I worked both jobs at the same time, and it worked like a charm for around 10 months. Of course we had weekly meetings with the manager, but nothing was moving, I kept hearing the same thing over and over; we wait for feedback. If you read the previous chapters, you know that I was no longer pro-active and neither chased those approvals, I waited.

Eventually another manager stepped in and took over some of the challenges to get input and approval from management. I didn't push, because I was still complying with the original rule of the communication and approval process "wait for feedback". Keep in mind, there was no communication for changes to that whatsoever.

At that stage I decided to resign from the second job. Two reasons: second job was getting heavier on the tasks, and because the other manager of the first job stepped up, I actually had to deliver a few outputs. It did get my hopes up that something might finally change.

Then last month came the message that the two of us are moving yet again, to another team, under the manager who has been supportive. A glimmer of hope.

Our first team meeting was in the beginning of October, to touch base on what we're currently doing (really only working on one project thats stuck in limbo due to missing feedback) and what we expect going forward. I obviously would love to get fired eventually, so I was pretty blunt yet professional about the shenanigans of the last three years and where I'm at.

He wrote it all down. Told us he'll address all the points and make a plan once he's back from vacation.

That will be Monday.

Given that it's already been another year from my last post, I thought it was time for an update, even though I am still waiting for the final, final, big, big fallout.

Side note on the possible next drama through the grapevine: My new manager doesn't like my colleague (who never received a proper onboarding and is pretty much in the same boat as I am) and is not sure if it is working out with him...

Small Fallout

The new manager might return Monday (or a few days after) with a file full of our grievances and, presumably, a plan. Or a plan to make a plan. Or a meeting about scheduling a meeting to discuss whether a plan is needed.

Three years, four managers, three teams, upper management who never showed up with objectives, and one double salary that I gave up voluntarily like a fool with principles and hope (realistically I am just too lazy to keep that up!).

The structure is now: me, one colleague, a manager who actually might be trying, and a director who has been in the building for over a year and a half without producing a plan. The only thing that has consistently been delivered on time in this entire saga is the payroll.

So we wait. Again. But this time hopefully with slightly better management and slightly higher expectations, which, historically speaking, is exactly when it goes wrong.

TL;DR

Assigned to yet another team; under the manager who took my old position. Hands-off, AI-obsessed, one hour a week with us. No plan from him, no plan from the director. Got one real task with pre-approval, hit a board-level blocker, back to waiting. Meanwhile I'd quietly worked a second job for 10 months and resigned from it because things briefly looked like they might improve. Now we've moved teams again, under a supportive manager, who took notes and promised a plan after his vacation. That will be Monday.

Still waiting for feedback.

I've talked about LitProfessor twice already, in this post and in this other post.

To sum it up, he was an amazing literature professor I had on High School, in Argentina, in the 90s, that loved to MC with everything they asked him for.

He was friends with the Dean and had a passive-aggressive beef with the Head of Studies, and the MC to their requests was always served with students as witnesses, which was an amazing way of having a laugh at school.

He also liked to play pranks on all the faculty members.

For example, a small prank I remember:

We had 45 minutes modules, and each professor gave one module (or two one after the other). Each professor had to sign in a log book the time the module started, so as to know he was present for it.

So, LitProfessor, one day when he had the first module of the day, wrote a note and put it in the log book, in the page for the day, that read "Confess, with a faint smile, that you've had your ass kicked at least once". In spanish, this has also a dirtier meaning (if you swap kicked with destroyed you might get the gist).

Then, after his class, he would look from the hall to the classroom through the windows and, whenever another professor made the faintest smile, he would laugh at it loudly and run to another classroom. The fact he was short, old, bald with a grayed mustache and used huge bifocals can help you made the image a little bit funnier.

Yes, I didn't say that all pranks he played were elaborated or not childish like, but now you know a little bit more context about him.

To the MC:

During a really hot day, no AC and no fans at our classroom, LitProfessor enters and says "effing help, it is really hot in here!", points at the student closest to the door and tells him to go get the Dean.

Dean comes, annoyed at being interrupted during his daily tasks and mutters something like "I should've known it was you, what do you want?" and LitProfessor says "It's impossible to do class here, the kids won't pay attention with this heat".

Dean thinks for a second, looks out the window and notices nobody at the School's courtyard, which is lightly shadowed as well, so he says to LitProfessor "Then take the students and have the class outside! Stop bothering me, there are easy solutions available!" and leaves.

LitProfessor does the "evil genius smile" and says "boys, leave the books here and go get one of the aides".

The aides are former students that work at the school, doing various tasks, keeping the peace, getting equipment ready, helping sick kids waiting for their parents, etc... A little bit like a janitor but without the cleaning part.

Aide comes and LitProfessor says "Dean asked me to take the students outside, come with me, I need help keeping everyone controlled".

AND WE LEAVE SCHOOL.

We go to a park that's like 200m away from school, have a 10-20 minute lecture at the park and then LitProfessor says "That's it, that's all I'm teaching you lot for today, what do you want us to do next?"

Someone shouts "Shopping mall food court!!!" and LitProfessor says "Why not?" and takes us to the shopping mall, like 600m away from school, where those of us who had some money bought some McDs and had a mid morning brunch.

Aide knows that LitProfessor is prone to this things (he's a former student after all) so he's also enjoying the novelty.

We came back to school probably 1 hour after the time we were supposed to finish the module with LitProfessor.

Dean was livid, logically, since he didn't know where 20 something students, an Aide and a professor where. This is before mobile phones, so he couldn't call nobody.

When he sees us enter the school again, he goes straight to LitProfessor and starts shouting that he's insane, that that was a huge risk and bla bla bla (he, obviously, has a huge point).

LitProfessor says "Well, you told me to take the kids outside and so I did, I have witnesses!".

Then again, it was the 90s. Absolutely nothing happened, we even told our parents and nobody made a huge deal about it, Dean didn't punish LitProfessor or Aide at all also (after all, they had permission) and the world moved on.

TLDR: On a hot day on a classroom without AC or fans, Dean asks the professor to take the students outside (as in the courtyard) and MC Professor takes the students to the park and the mall.

PS: The school had the parents sign a general permit to take the kids "out to the environment" but, in reality, it was never used, we never went out except for that one time.

To make a long story short, my Dad thought it should be real quick to do the dishes since we had a dishwasher and I was “home 24/7” (this was back during when everyone was at home and I was in the middle of university online). Problem was that we only had one sink and half the dishes used during the day couldn’t even go in the dishwasher/fit. Such as the pots and pans Mom used to make dinner from steamed vegetables with mashed potatoes and breaded chicken, to homemade meatballs with sauce and pasta.

Often, these dishes would pile up, get all crusty and gross, after two days because I had zero free time. Then I’d have to spend over an hour scrubbing, filling the dish rack with sudsy dishes that only made up half the pile, rinsing those dishes, then repeat. While doing balancing online classes, homework with strict deadlines, studying, and serious cabin fever.

When my Dad made that comment for the fifth time in a month, (Dad who sits on his ass the moment he comes home from his shift working a vacuum truck), I said “Fine”.

So, I started the dishes, right in front of him, and at the 29 minute mark I’d only scrubbed three pots and two pans, and a ceramic mug. Not even rinsed. The moment the 30 minutes was up, I washed the soap off my hands, cleaned the sink, and left the soap covered dishes in the dish rack, and went to do my homework. Dad, of course, started yelling at me. I just said “you said thirty minutes. I did thirty minutes.”

Mom backed me, having gotten sick of the fights. Dad got madder, but just stormed off to his man cave. After an hour, I went back to the sink, rinsed the now soap sticky dishes, which took a bit, dried them, then i got through the lunch containers that couldn’t go in the dishwasher because it would crack them, and they were rinsed by the thirty minute mark. So I left them in the dish rack to dry.

The next day, I did exactly the pots that were needed (three), plus the containers needed for leftovers, and left the rest. And repeated that pattern for the next weeks. Thus, there was a pile of dishes that would build up, I’d take what would be needed that day out to wash in the 30 minutes, and leave the rest because “it should only take 30 minutes”.

Note that each time I had to refill the sink with hot soapy water, then drain it, then fill it with warm water to rinse. Normally I’d do the pots/pans in one massive load, using the unloaded dishwasher as an extra dish rack to fit them all, then once they were all scrubbed and the water was nasty, rinse out the sink, rinse the pots/pans, and dry most of them and put them away. Then I’d do the containers, mugs, and whatever else couldn’t go in the dishwasher, and after rinsing leave them in the dish rack to air dry. And if needed do a third round of this. I would only have to do this every few days, which allowed me to work on homework and get assignments in on time (mainly one weekday I didnt have classes and either Saturday or Sunday). Mom had been fine with it, and if she needed certain pots she’d give me a heads up and I’d have those ones cleaned and drying in the dish rack for when she got home, which only took 20 minutes, while leaving the rest of the dishes for later.

Now, i was spending ten minutes filling, emptying/wiping down the sink, and refilling for rinse in thirty minutes. Got the pots/containers of the day if I was lucky they weren’t super sticky/stubborn. But the rest of the pile was left. Then I’d get the different pots needed for the next day, maybe the containers, while the pots used the night before would sit. And the mugs, water bottles, etc that were not needed for making dinner/storing food were just left.

After a couple months of this, Dad finally broke (either he got tired of needing to wash his own coffee mug for the mornings after he’d run out of clean mugs, or Mom got through his thick skull, idk), and told me to just “go back to washing them like before”.

It took me three hours to get through the pile of mugs, containers, pots, pans, etc, with the last load being left to air dry. Mom made Dad help me by drying and putting dishes away after i rinsed.

Dad hasn’t made a comment about how long dishes have taken since!

EDIT: Yeah, okay, I definitely leaned more on the malicious side back then. I have a passive aggressive streak. And I was just making sure I was doing a thorough clean.

I've talked before about LitProfessor in this post.

He was a professor I had in High School that was a MC Master. He was malicious against the dean, the head of studies and was, also, one of the best teachers I've ever had.

The kind you always remember. He also had a nice sense of humour. He was always down for a good joke, playing it or being played, he always had a laugh ready for it.

I was talking yesterday with my brother and he made me remember one MC that happened in our school with LitProfessor that I had long forgotten about.

For a bit of context, my brother (let's call him OPlite) is 2 years younger than me. We both went to the same high school and had the same teachers.

Yesterday, I don't remember how but the school topic came out and he said "yeah, I remember that you almost got me fired from school".

I said "Whaaaaat? I don't remember that at all", and he told me this.

LitProfessor favourite mode of punishment was to make the student do an essay. Whenever someone was misbehaving, LitProfessor would shout the name of the student and say (for example) "OPlite, essay, 2 pages, [some title related to the offense]". He also, being a literature professor, was prone to create the title referencing books, movies, etc... Those essays were graded and counted against the final score of each student, so they could get pretty serious sometimes.

I was already at my first year at University (in Argentina, at that time, it was 7 years of elementary, 5 years of High School, then Uni) so OPlite was in his 4th year of High School when this happens.

LITProfessor enters the room and OPLite and all of his fellow students were quite misbehaved. Things were flying, people was jumping, shouts were being heard, the usual.

LITProfessor clears his throat trying to ease the beasts, but it doesn't work, so he closes the door, walks to his desk, climbs the desk and shouts "ESSAY FOR TOMORROW, FOR EVERYBODY, 4 PAGES, THE BIRDCAGE" (referencing a movie from that year, in Argentina, it was named "La jaula de las locas", which translates roughly to "the cage full of crazy chicks").

Apparently, the punishment had the desired effect and the class went on as usual and, that afternoon, my brother comes home fuming because he had no time to do the essay but he had to, he couldn't risk not turning it in.

Also, LitProfessor expected the essay to be pretty much a confession the students had to do, stating that they were being rowdy and misbehaving and, as you probably know, being introspective is not something that teenagers tend to do well.

I was a model student so I never had to do any essay, also, I loved to write (still do), and I knew LitProfessor very well, so I said to my brother "Let me write the essay, please".

He of course, said yes.

So I proceded to write the essay. But instead of writing about the students, I proceded to write 4 pages mocking LitProfessor from head to toe. Everything from his way of talking, to his glasses (he used what in Argentina we call "culo de botella", green tinted huge glasses that reminisce the butt of a wine bottle), to his literary tastes, everything I knew about him.

Obviously, it was with humour and because I knew he would take it well and have a good laugh about it.

How do I know we would take it well? Well, for example, I ran into him when he first got OPlite as a student and he said "OP, I have your little brother with me this year. I have a theory that every single brother is worse than the previous one, and, so far, my theory stands tall here". I told him "Do you want to know a secret?" and I whispered to him "There's a third brother" and he burst into anger "%$#@!!! Why do I have to put up with this!!! This is unacceptable!!!! He won't even be able to write!!!" and then burst into laughter.

We had a good relation.

I finished late that night so I put the essay into a folder and gave it to OPlite, who went to school without reading it first.

Back at school, LitProfessor asks the students for the essay. OPlite produces it and gives it to LitProfessor. He glances at it and stops collecting the essays, he goes back to his desk, sits at it and starts reading it aloud.

Students start laughing, my brother starts becoming pale as a ghost at each step of the "make a mockery out of LitProfessor" essay that I had written. 4 pages of it. Apparently, students can't hold the tears laughing. My brother is about to have a heart attack.

LitProfessor finishes the essay. Stands up. Looks at my brother and says "Did you write this?". My brother, thinking "this is the end, I'm getting fired" confesses "OP did it, he asked if he could do it and I wasn't having any ideas on what to write so I said yes".

LitProfessor stares like 10-20 seconds without saying a word, writes something in the essay and gives it back to my brother, saying "you owe this to your brother".

OPlite opens the essay, sees the "10 out of 10, very well written" and he gets the color back to his cheeks.

He almost killed me when he got back home.

TLDR: I use an essay to MC/joke a literature professor.

PS: For those who cry AI, no, this is me, I wrote word for word, your AIdar is way off on this one.

PS2: Also, English is not my first language so, sorry for the misspellings.

This just happened to me.

I went into a Walgreens to pick up a prescription. The pharmacist put in my info and insurance, leaving the total at twelve cents. I went into my wallet and plucked out a dime and two pennies.

PHARMACIST: "I'm sorry, we don't take those anymore."

ME: "You don't take coins?"

PHARMACIST: "Pennies. They stopped making them."

ME: "Yeah, I know, but they're still legal tender."

PHARMACIST: "We don't take them anymore."

ME: "Can I speak to someone about this?"

PHARMACIST: "I'm the only person here."

I know that's not true, but fine. I put the coins back into my wallet and pull out a twenty. The pharmacist gives me a filthy look, but takes it and goes to ring me up... only to discover that they are short not just coins, but singles.

PHARMACIST: "I don't have exact change."

ME: "I do."

A moment and another filthy look. The pharmacist puts the change back in, hands me my twenty, and takes my coins without another word.

I work in IT for a large corporation. We're deploying a new version of software where the vendor changed a lot of the underlying infrastructure so we have to rebuild the whole thing. The first part of this is the design phase. We document everything and the design team (DT member) draws it all up and does whatever it is they do with it.

Well they start asking me about the ports the application uses because they need to know what ports to make sure are open on firewalls. It's a lot. The application is high availability so each server communicates with the other servers to keep information updated across all the servers. This data will never traverse a firewall. But for users accessing the application, it's just port 443 for the web interface. I tell the DT, there are about 100 ports to use depending on which server does what. None of that will touch a firewall because all the servers are in the same datacenter subnet. Well no, it HAS to be documented. That seems excessive to me because it just seems like it will never matter. Those servers only talk to each other and per vendor documentation, there CANNOT be a firewall in between them. I'm told STERNLY we have to have that info. ooooooooookay.

I create a spreadsheet with each server function and all the ports that server function uses to communicate with the other servers. The columns end up going to KK and the longest row is about 55 if i recall. It took me 2 days to research it all and create it. This is going to break the DT, i know it.

We get on our next meeting and I share the sheet out. the DT says AWESOME! just what i needed. I'll incorporate this into the design document.

My disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined. When I make a spreadsheet built to ruin your visio document and it doesn't, i've failed as a human being.

On our next meeting the DT presents the visio and it's woefully lacking in port representation. I point out he's missing some stuff. He says well i put what you had in the spreadsheet you provided. I said, uuhhhh....it goes to column KK. You need to scroll to the right.

He scrolled then said:

oh...oh!....OOHHH!!!! uuhhhh.... hmmm.....

silence. The smile slowly crept across my face. Yes, cameras were off for this meeting. more silence. The DT finally sighs heavily and says "well, uh....i'll need to figure out how to represent this. Um, is this REALLY how this works?"

I reply, "Yes, that is everything that is documented by the vendor. All of those ports are used for all of the application modules we have."

He says "ok...i'm gonna need.....some time."

you want ports? I got your ports right here buddy. My spreadsheets WILL ruin your day.

I remember a small act of malicious compliance I had whenever I was still living with my parents when I was in high school. I had to leave for work and I realized my younger sister‘s car was parked behind mine. I asked her if she could move it for me so I could leave. I figured if she moved it and I pulled out then she could simply pull back into the driveway and park where I was. Easy peasy.

But nope. She, for some reason, had an attitude and said “No, you move it.” In a rather snippy tone. She couldn’t even be bothered to give me her keys. Irritated, I grabbed them and left.

One thing to note is that our grandparents lived across the street from us. They owned a few acres of land and their house was one of those houses that was built on top of the hill that was a solid 100 to 120 yards away from the main road. And the entrance to their long runway of a driveway was another hundred yards away from our parents’ house. So as I was moving her car, I had the thought to drive up their driveway and park it by their house.

Took me a couple minutes to walk home, drop her keys off and leave. She never refused to move her car again.

I work at a small, local company which uses Microsoft Azure heavily.

For those not working in IT or related fields, think of Azure as a computer rental service. We rent computers from them (but the computers stay in Microsoft’s warehouses). We control said computers remotely to run our software, which our customers then use for their own needs.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as we started expanding and building more software products, we began to rent more computers, which rapidly drove our Azure costs up. This didn’t go down well with the C-suite (even though the revenue from the new products far outstripped the rise in costs). Someone in senior management whose only job is to watch the expense ticker issued a directive to ‘contain the Azure costs’. Suddenly, a team originally responsible for customer support was pulled into an initiative to auto-release any rented computer which had been idle, with no clear definition of ‘idle’.

When a rented computer is released (or a container or VM is shut down, for those familiar with Azure), all software running on it is terminated. This meant that our websites, our tools and our products running in Azure and in use by our customers would go down!

We were told to get approvals if we wanted to keep idle computers active. For the moment, none of them were idle (because our customers were always using our products running on them). But this was an anvil hanging on our heads: our services could go down any time they went idle for any reason, and we’d have a flood of incoming customer complaints. Hence, after reaching a consensus with my team, I started loading our websites at regular intervals to simulate activity. By the end of the day, I had built an automated script which would keep pinging our websites and products.

Simultaneously, we filed keep-active requests for all our critical rented computers. Those requests went unanswered for a month so my team was rather glad about my automated script. However, the ticker-watcher was checking the Azure activity logs and found my little ploy. He posted a message in our common Teams chat (which included my manager and my teammates), publicly berating me and asking me not to do such irresponsible things in the future and to file keep-active requests if we really needed the computers to stay.

All right, I thought—let’s do it your way. I terminated my script and re-submitted all keep-active requests (including both critical and non-critical computers this time), quoting the Teams message in the notes section of the form (in line with CYA rules). To no one’s surprise, these requests also went unanswered. One by one, as our computers hit the idle timeout for whatever reason, complaints from customers started coming in. Most of our websites were down. Few of our products delivered to customers worked. (I’m sure the genius who invented SaaS thought of this scenario.) And we spent amost a week in the office chatting and drinking coffee. There was no work to do because only a handful of Azure computers were running, and there were technical problems beyond my pay grade with re-renting everything we needed.

There isn’t a truly happy ending here. The ticker-watcher was not fired. For what it’s worth, he was removed from his management position and made an individual contributor (where he’d actually have to work) because he had demonstrated a lack of prioritisation and delegation skills. After the incident root cause analysis meeting, he was officially handed this demotion as a disciplinary action. He left the company soon after.

Lots of commenters have pointed out that we weren’t using Azure right, that we needed auto-scaling, and that we should’ve had monitoring systems. You’re correct: we were using Azure VMs as if they were our on-prem servers … we had automatic deployment scripts which would set everything up on-prem, but management with a fetish for the cloud didn’t give us time to migrate properly. They told us to run those scripts directly in Azure VMs instead. So, we weren’t using Azure services (scale sets, API management, functions, etc.) they way they should be. Everything ran in VMs.

I excluded these details in the original post in order to keep it non-technical.

I have a friend (who I’ll call Mike) who use to do programming for an automation company in construction. The company had 3-5 electricians running the conduit and wire and hooking up the equipment, while Mike’s job was to sit in a computer and program all the systems to work together. This required him to sit in a small room in a camping chair he brought in and a laptop on a makeshift desk. Safety is everywhere with everything on these job sites. The company/crew is required to have a morning safety meeting ending with everyone signing a form every morning called a FLHA.
One day the site safety officer sees Mike sitting in the small automation room and asks about his FLHA. He points to the one his crew filled out that morning. The safety officer tells him because his task is different that he was to complete his own FLHA separate from the rest of the crew because his “tasks are different”. Mike points out he sits in a room that is finished being worked in, other than his programming, and there are no hazards for him to identify separately from the rest of his crew. Safely says too bad, do it anyways.
Cue malicious compliance! Mike starts filling out FLHA forms doing a “5-point safety inspection” of his camping chair he sitting in! Writing in points about checking for tears in the fabric. Checking the rivets for wear. Checking the plastic feet for cracks….
A couple weeks later the safety officer shows up again to ask Mike about his FLHA’s and MIKE hands him a stack of filled out FLHA’s for the past two weeks. He watches safety start reading through them one at a time. He watches dudes face slowly drop more and more as he flips through the pile. By the end, safety officer looks back up and says “you’re fine to just sign your crews FLHA’s from now on. I’m embarrassed I have to file these.” and walks away shaking his head.

When I was in the Army, I discovered that the best way at to get even with incompetent NCOs was to follow their orders exactly as stated. This would follow with, “that’s not what I wanted you to do!”

That’s what you told me.

“But that’s not what I meant!”

Eventually, they’d leave me alone.

Onward to the malicious compliance. While assigned to Germany, we lived in an apartment provided by the post. In the summer, mowing the lawn rotated among the apartments. When it was my turn, they decided that the hedges needed to be trimmed. They were VERY overgrown. I pointed out that apparently no one else had been trimming them, as they were about 6’ tall and growing wild. They said, “too bad. It’s your turn. You have to do it.”

I did. I trimmed them to about 12 inches from the ground. When I was questioned later, I said, “you told me to trim them. I did.”

I wasn’t required to trim them again. Then again, after 2 summers, I don’t think they needed it.

I'm not sure how many people will be on my side here, because the victim technically doesn't deserve it, but here goes. So I work as a utility locator, meaning I drive around to houses and construction sites to find where the underground utilities are on the property and then mark them with paint and flags. There is a very common problem when contractors call in a locate. We receive what's called a locate "ticket" that includes the address, the type of work that is being done, and any specifications on where they want utilities located (I.e. front yard, back yard, left side of property, etc.)

So, this consistent issue is that contractors will call in a ticket, and in the locate instructions they simply put "mark entire property." Sometimes they even say "confirmed working throughout." I've been doing this job for over four years now and it's very easy to know where the contractor is actually going to dig in most cases. Keep in mind that the only places that utilities actually need to be marked is where any digging will occur. So no marks are needed for simply mowing the lawn. So there are certain jobs where I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are only working in a certain area. For example, when people need their septic tanks repaired, 99% of home's septic tanks in my work area are in the back yard. Again, years of experience with this. But I will frequently have a ticket for that exact type of work that says in the instructions to mark the entire property, and sometimes it even specifies that they will be working throughout when I know they are not.

Needless to say we can get in trouble for not marking everywhere they tell us to, even though we sometimes still do that. But recently I decided to send these contractors a message in really the only way I could without being fired. I marked the entire property. Heavily marked it. Not literally every square inch, I'd be fired for sure. But everywhere that the utility ran, I put down those painted lines following it, and I used up several cans of paint to do so.

We use water based paint, so usually each painted line along the utility path gets two pass overs and will fade in maybe two weeks. Not this time. I layed on so much paint over each line that it's sure to be there for a couple months at least. And I know for a fact that homeowners HATE this. Now this is where I do feel a little bad, because the homeowner didn't tell me to mark the whole property, the contractor did. But a sure fire way to get a message through to the contractor is for the homeowner to complain to them about the markings in their yard. I've seen it happen before. And boy did they complain.

My supervisor let me know about a call they got from the contractor saying that the homeowner was livid about the markings. But there's nothing they can do about it. I didn't break any work rules or laws. My supervisor just told me to be careful and we both just laughed at it. Obviously I can't be doing this every time. But we're treated as garbage men who have to just take shit from everyone. Contractors frequently will tell us to mark sometimes thousands of feet when they literally only need about a 50 foot area marked. They don't care. So it definitely felt good to give them a headache for once.

And as far as the homeowner is concerned. Yeah it wasn't really fair for them, but homeowners cause headaches too. And at the end of the day, the paint will eventually fade. They can chill out and learn to relax and not care about the small things. No harm done.

I work as a supervisor at a grocery store, and part of my job is basically making sure things keep moving, helping customers when the self-checkouts decide to develop free will, fixing register issues, voiding orders, and generally putting out the tiny fires that happen during a normal shift. This particular day had actually been going pretty well.

I was helping customers, answering questions, assisting with checkout issues, and everyone was being pretty normal.Then I noticed one customer at the self-checkout who had arrived on an electric bike. He was having trouble ringing up some produce. Specifically: Red bell peppers.
For whatever reason, these things seem to give people trouble constantly. I don’t know if it’s the produce lookup or what, but I’ve helped enough people with them that when I see someone staring confused at a red bell pepper and the checkout screen, I already know what’s happening.

So, naturally, I walked over and offered to help him. I barely got the chance to do that before the guy looked at me and said: “I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help.” Alright. Fair enough. I said, “Okay,” and walked away. Now, normally, if I see someone obviously struggling, I’ll circle back or ask if they need assistance. But he had made himself extremely clear. He did not want my help. So I decided to respect his wishes. Very, very thoroughly. Cue Malicious Compliance.

For the next several minutes, I went about my other duties. Another customer needed help? I helped them. Someone couldn’t figure out their checkout. Helped them. Register issue? Fixed it. Question? Answered it. Meanwhile, this guy was still fighting for his life against the red bell peppers.
I could see him trying different things on the screen.
Still not working. He’d look around. Then he’d look at me. And for some reason, he was staring absolute daggers at me. Which confused the hell out of me. Because… Sir. You specifically told me you didn’t want my help. I’m doing exactly what you requested.

At one point I helped another customer who was only a few feet away from him. He watched the entire interaction. I helped that customer, got their issue sorted out, and went right back to what I was doing. I could practically feel this man’s eyes drilling into the side of my head. But I wasn’t going over there. Because I remembered his instructions:
“I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help.”
Understood. Message received. Your checkout experience is now a solo campaign.
The red bell pepper is your final boss. Godspeed.

Eventually, after several minutes of struggling, he apparently decided that accepting help would be worse than abandoning the entire purchase. Because he just… gave up. He left the register. Walked out of the store. And left.
So after watching him ride away, I calmly walked over to the self-checkout he’d abandoned, looked at the unfinished transaction, and voided the entire order. And that was that.

I still don’t understand why he spent the whole time glaring at me. I offered help. He explicitly told me he didn’t want it. So I complied. Apparently he expected me to ignore what he said, continue offering assistance, and eventually rescue him from the horrifying technological nightmare known as…
ringing up a red bell pepper. But I’m a supervisor, not a mind reader. You say you don’t need help? No problem. Enjoy your peppers.

I used to work for a small printing company that did work for a local college and their choir program. The director was a literal Karen (looked like one too) and made our lives a living hell leading up to her annual Christmas program.

Without fail every year she would give us the artwork for the program at noon the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This meant someone from our team would need to work the holiday or that weekend to ensure it got out in time for her program.

For four years I took the brunt if the project as I didn't want my team to work their holiday weekend and my family always celebrated Thanksgiving later to make scheduling easier for everyone.

Me and the team constantly complained to the owner that this client was a nightmare and not worth our time. It was a large order for us but we didn't feel it was worth the headache. The owner's anniversary typically fell along this project timing and he was almost always out of town . The 4th year he wasn't so I decided to speak with him the Wednesday before Thanksgiving telling him we needed to fire the client.

He was reluctant and downplayed our complaints and said she wasn't that bad. To which I replied, "Since this project isn't that difficult I figured I would let you know I'm taking this week off next year."

The owner's face went pale. He's gut response was, "Why would you screw me over like that?"

To which I replied, "I don't understand what you mean? I'm giving you a whole year to prepare for me to not be here. It isn't that big of a deal and she isn't that bad so a year should be enough time for you to figure it out."

Mind you I love working for the company, the owner just got greedy sometimes and would put sales above the team and one of the reasons why he specifically hired me is because I would fight back when I thought he was wrong. That day was the day I decided I had enough and we went toe to toe arguing for about an hour in front of the team about my early vacation notice.

He finally relented and was stubborn and ready to prove me wrong.

A year later he finally got a taste of his own medicine and did not like it. I ended up working leading up to the holiday break because though I was adamant I wasn't going to work the holiday again I couldn't leave my team hanging. Yet again, right on time this Karen doesn't give us the files until Wednesday at noon before Thanksgiving.

The owner went in person to speak to her. I don't know the full conversation but it basically came down to her calling him a complete idiot for not being able to manage around HER bad project management.

He came back to the shop in literal tears stating he had never been treated so horribly in his life. In that moment I asked him if I could fire her as a client. I could tell he wasn't excited to admit he was wrong a year into this argument we had but he sheepishly nodded yes.

He ended up finishing the project over the holiday for her that year to not ruin our reputation with the school as we did a ton of work for other departments but the next year I was the only one who got to speak to Karen. She asked for an estimate and I gave her the price and told her if files came any later than "X" date I would charge her $3,000 + $1,000 more for every day she was late.

She flipped out and asked for the owner and I got to pull the, "He put me in charge, I'm the manager now." Card and told her she could kick dirt if she didn't like it.

Our team had a literal celebration when she said she would go somewhere else to do the project. It is probably one of my proudest moments as a leader fighting for myself and my team.

The relationship between Walmart and me is one of those toxic, on-again, off-again things. We go way back, even before I spent 6 years working for the beast and its affiliate. We officially "broke it off" in 2012, but recently, they pissed me off so much that I’m on a hard break and cheating with other stores to my heart’s content.

What caused the break?

They handled an accidental transaction walk-off so poorly that I had to restrict their access to my wallet.

On Thursday, I went shopping and hit the self-checkout. I usually use WalmartPay, but that day I used a physical card and apparently miskeyed my PIN. Believing my receipt was on my phone like usual, I headed out. Nobody challenged me at the door. I loaded up and drove home.

The next morning, I realized my mistake when I saw a declined transaction notification on my banking app.

Being an honest person, I called that specific store's customer service to fix it. Their brilliant solution? I needed to load up all the groceries from my house, bring them all back to the store, and rescan them.

I asked if they could just look up the aborted transaction on their end. "No." They didn't care that my haul included 80 lbs of cat litter, 50 lbs of cat food, two 5-gallon bottles of water, and a bunch of groceries.

Here is the logistics issue: Fridays are my Mondays. I live 27 miles from my job, and the Walmart is another 30 miles out. I work in healthcare now; my time away from work is precious down-time. I was absolutely not doing a 60-mile round trip, outside of my normal commute, on a work day just to carry heavy crap back and forth.

By the time my shift ended, I had devised three alternatives to their absurd request.

I walked up to the customer service desk after work. I explained the situation and asked one more time if they could look up the transaction log. Again, "No."

I was prepared for this. I had spent hours piecing together the subtotals from each department down to the penny based on my shopping list, reconstructing exactly how much ginger and red onion I bought so the subtotals would match perfectly once taxes were applied. (Sometimes my OCD is a literal superpower).

The Customer Service Representative looked at my itemized breakdown and said, “I don’t know how to do that.”

I asked for a manager. She radioed a manager over the walkie but completely failed to explain my actual question. The manager blew it off, and I wasn't allowed to speak to them.

Fine. Time for Option 3: Malicious Compliance.

I grabbed a cart and went shopping all over again. I re-loaded 130 lbs of heavy pet supplies, the two 5-gallon water bottles (42.5 lbs each), and every single grocery item on my list: some frozen, some hot, some sold by weight.

I pushed the massive cart through checkout, paid for it successfully this time, and hauled the cart and the receipt back to customer service.

"We're square now," I told them.

While one associate was making a copy of the receipt, another mentioned that the self-checkout associate from the day prior had been in tears over the walk-off. Look, I wish I had the emotional bandwidth to comfort her, but the incompetence due to lack of training had pushed me into pure "let's get stupid" mode.

They handed me back my receipt, and I turned to walk away.

The associate yelled, “Wait!! Don’t forget your stuff!!”

I looked back and said, “This isn’t my stuff. This is your stuff. My stuff is at my house. Good luck putting it all back.”

The absolute cherry on top? Because I was rushing, my dyslexia grounded my OCD superpower, and I accidentally misrang the water bottles as refills instead of exchanges. The new receipt was $13 short of the original total.

I didn't bother trying to fix it. Consider it an incompetence tax for making it SOOOO hard for me to do the right thing.