People Talk About The Most Obedient Way They Got Revenge
19. Threaten To Get Rid Of Me For Being Sick? I'll Get Rid Of Myself For You
“Many years ago, I worked at a gas station on a college campus, mainly the evening shift Thursday through Sunday nights.
The manager, I’ll call her Wanda, was a total jerk. She was constantly failing at her responsibilities, and then blaming the employees when the owner would mention something.
I had been working there for about 4 years when one morning I wasn’t feeling well. I called around to see if anyone could come in for my shift (4-12), but no one was available. I called Wanda to let her know I was sick and unable to come in since part of her job was to cover shifts when others could not.
She told me to be at work and on time, or else I would be fired.
So I took my sick butt up to work and within an hour I was throwing up.
I even threw up behind the counter when I couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time.
I called Wanda and told her I had to leave, as I was throwing up constantly. She had an attitude but said she would come in anyway.
An hour later, she showed up, complaining that I ruined her day because she and her partner were planning to leave to go on vacation that evening.
I started to gather my things and she asked me what I was doing.
I said, ‘I’m sick and throwing up. I’m going home.’ She replied, ‘I’m just here to watch the store while you get yourself together. If you leave, don’t bother coming back.’
So I left.
Around 8:00 Wanda called to ask me where I was. I told her I was at home, in bed, still throwing up. She told me I needed to come back to work so she could leave for her vacation. I reminded her of what she said before she left and said I was more than happy to comply.
I hung up the phone and unplugged it (this was when landlines were still popular).
I plugged the phone back in at 11:45 and called the store. Wanda answered after a minute of ringing, so the store had to be busy (usually there’s a ton of college kids wanting to get booze before the midnight cutoff).
I said something like, ‘Wanda, it’s Christine. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be coming by Monday to get my last check also, I agreed to work doubles tomorrow and Sunday so Employee X could go home for the weekend.
Goodnight,’ and unplugged the phone again after hanging up.
I had a cell phone at this point, but Wanda didn’t have the number, so I didn’t plug my phone back in until Monday.
I went up to the office around 3 to get my last check and Wanda was furious.
She had worked an entire extra week’s worth of hours in one weekend and she was salaried, so no extra pay.
She also got in a lot of trouble when the owner found out what she did and I was rehired immediately. She was fired within a year of that incident.”
18. Refuse To Listen To Someone Who Makes Less Than You? You Won't Be Getting A Raise After All
“This took place about 30 years ago.
I started with my company over 30 years ago. My original position was as a draftsman. I hand-drew maps, diagrams, and engineering documents that were turned into blueprints for production. The general consensus was that draftsmen like me were lower than dirt.
Most of us had vocational training but no college degrees.
Our usual work process was that a customer came to a designer and asked for something to be built. The designer consulted with an engineer then sketched out the design and sent it to a draftsman to have a set of construction blueprints produced. The completed prints were then mailed off to the head office in a different city for review and approval. Any design that failed the approval process got mailed back to the designer for rework, and the process started all over again.
Over the first few years on the job, I continued my education. I took courses specific to our industry and took in-house classes to better master our company construction standards. I steadily gained the trust and respect of the engineers and designers that I worked with.
That is until the company hired a “Big Time Designer.”
Mr. Big Time Designer was young, well educated, and well connected to upper management. The first time one of his jobs hit my desk, I stopped and stared. There was a glaring flaw that violated industry and company standards.
Rather than spend time drawing up prints that would be automatically rejected, I took the job package back to him and pointed out what would need to be fixed for approval. He angrily agreed and took back the job to fix the errors. I thought everything was great.
Until I got the next job from Big Time. This job was also going to fail the approval process immediately, so I headed back to his end of the building for a chat.
This time the Big Time Designer was not having it. “HH, you are a lowly draftsman.
I am a designer. I don’t have to take instruction from you,” he shouted. “I want you to draw up exactly what I design and submit it that way. If I’m going to be corrected, it will be by someone above my paygrade and not below.”
Good Guy Boss (department head) heard the commotion from his office and came over to see what the yelling was about. The Big Time Designer explained that I was trying to correct his work and not just draw up his jobs as designed. At this point, I started to try to defend myself and explain that I was trying to save the work and time that a rejected design would cause, but the boss cut me off.
With an evil twinkle in his eye, Good Guy Boss said, “HH, you just do exactly as this designer requests. If he wants the head office to correct his work, then that is just fine.”
Cue the malicious compliance. From that point on, I did exactly as directed. I sent off flawed designs for approval. The process for each rejection took about a 1-week round-trip.
Big Time Designer’s jobs began to fall farther and farther behind. Some of the jobs were rejected 3 or 4 times. I started getting calls from the head office. “Hey, HH, why are you sending us junk?” they asked. I explained the situation and the head office called Mr. Good Guy Boss.
He confirmed that BTD was running his own show and only wanted feedback from people up the food chain and was rejecting input from lowly draftsmen regardless of their experience.
The cycle continued for about 3 months. Right up until time for annual performance reviews.
Mr. Big Time was denied for promotion to senior designer.
Over the last quarter of the year, his jobs had failed to meet customer and company deadlines. His file contained complaints from the head office for repeatedly submitting projects that did not only fail our own corporate standards but didn’t meet industry standards either.
A few weeks after review time, the department head (Good Guy Boss) paid a visit to my cubicle.
He plopped an envelope on my drafting table with a thank you letter that was copied to my employee file. There was also a small bonus. He had been looking for a way to nail Mr. Big Time and take him down a peg. The Big Time Designer had powerful friends, and our Good Guy Boss was reluctant to try too hard to put him in his place.
By obeying BTD’s wishes I had given the boss ammo needed to give him a legit bad review.”
17. Make Me Rush My Work? Don't Worry, I'll Be Ahead Of Schedule Next Time
“I used to work for a holiday company a few years ago. It was an alright company, but the management team I was working for left something to be desired. I worked in entertainment but in a technical role. Essentially, I was in charge of lighting and sound for a midsize (up to 2,000 people) venue.
Most of the year, it was a 1-person job, with a few bits of help from the other entertainment staff, but there was one point in the year that was really challenging.
The company I worked with produced 3 “finale” event weekends where competitions were run over the course of the year.
Multiple sites would have their grand finals, a big celebration, etc. and were generally a great excuse for us to have a few drinks after a lot of chaos. The usual routine was that a few staff from other sites would come to us, help with the prep, and run the weekend with us.
I would normally get a couple of people to help me set up the tech that was coming in as the budgets were huge and the demands were ridiculous.
This particular year my manager took a leave of absence, and I was left with the assistant manager (AM).
He was, for lack of a better phrase, lacking in the management department and was desperately trying to prove himself to be either the boss or manly. Personally, I think that it was because his job was singing and dancing, he took every chance he could to show he was a man (most dancers I know don’t do this, but he was a special case).
Now my job was the closest thing to manly in the department (think rigging, lifting things, technically heavy, etc.), so I was a target of his quite a few times.
Anyway, just before this all kicks off, he tells me that he’s not giving me anyone to help me this year set up.
Not much I can do about this, so I realize I’ve basically got the work of 3 people to do within a week, with no room for error. So I spend about 20 minutes in our shared office working out a schedule for myself so that I had enough time to do everything.
It meant that was working stupid hours, but it left me with time for food breaks, etc., and I was young, so I thought, who cares!
Now If you’ve ever done any kind of theatre or events work, you’ll know that one of the toughest things to do is find time to work on stage while people want to rehearse.
I’d even factored this in, but this meant that I was taking breaks while the casts were rehearsing. I’d worked out my schedule with the choreographers in mind so that every day bar one, I would take my breaks differently than the dancers, so I could work on stage when they weren’t there.
That one day I was taking my break at the same time was Wednesday.
So Wednesday comes, and I’m well ahead of schedule. My AM walks up to me and lets me know that he thinks I’m behind. I explain that I’m not, in fact, I’m far ahead, and things were going well.
He “disagrees” and tells me that he needs me to work through my dinner break on stage and that I would get some time later when he and the dancers were rehearsing. He wanted me to do something about lighting I think, but with the majority of the equipment I had hired not coming until the next day, it was pointless.
I tried to explain that I had plans, etc. for my break, but it didn’t matter. He put his foot down and was adamant I worked as long as I could.
When I brought up the whole “not having a break in 6 hours” thing, he claimed that he would give me a break when the dancers returned in an hour or so, but until they started rehearsing, I was to continue working.
I was young and slightly intimidated, so I felt I didn’t have a choice, so reluctantly I agreed.
I was mad as heck, tired, and hungry and had been working my butt off to get this event ready on my own. I set myself up doing pyro instead as it was a job I was going to do Friday as the last job, and it wasn’t what he asked me to do, so it was a little passive-aggressive victory for me.
I watched the clock as his and the dancer’s 1-hour break turned into a 2 and 1/2 hour break… I’d done my work (it’s amazing how motivated you can be when you’re angry) and was waiting for them to arrive.
I was about to head out for food myself when he saunters in and asks where I’m going.
When I tell him that I’m done with the jobs I can do on stage, and I’m getting food, he stopped me and demanded that I stay for his rehearsal to operate the music for him. I was furious, tired, annoyed. And frankly lost for words.
I walked out got some food, took 20 minutes for myself, and came back to being chewed out by him. Words cannot describe how useless this guy was.
Anyway, flash forward to Friday and my act of malicious compliance. I completed my work early on Thursday and so was ready to go.
I was already ahead and my extra time on Wednesdays really helped. He had insisted that I was there at 9 AM that day ready to go, and I was. So I sat in the office for a while, grabbed a snack or two, and waited for someone else to come in.
No one else did for another hour… He’d given the rest of the department an extra lie in but never told me. Fine. Not an issue. He eventually wanders in, asks what I’m up to, and I give him a vague answer.
And here is where the malicious compliance comes in.
He insisted that I stay around all day to get ready for the opening evening. I wasn’t allowed to leave the site, and he expected me to be either working on the events or in the office. When I asked about when I can have lunch (so I can plan my time), he told me he would tell me when and if all the work was done.
The head of entertainment and the head of the business were coming around that afternoon, so he wanted to make a good impression. I didn’t comment but made a plan.
After doing my general safety checks and after making sure everything was working as it should be (a grand total of 30 minutes work), I sat in my office chair, grabbed his newspaper, and read it.
Over and over. I purposely sat in my chair doing sod all. He didn’t specify what I was meant to be doing in the office, so I took it as a time to relax and watch a bit of Sky TV. He doesn’t notice me for about 3 hours as he’s running around trying to do his job and the bits he forgot — that was until he heard the management team were on their way.
He comes over asking what I’m up to. I tell him that I’m doing as he asked me to stay in the office. He told me to get the venue ready or be in the office, so that’s what I’m doing. Starting to panic, he told me to go and do something for the events (to essentially look busy).
It went something like this:
“Have you done the lights?”
“Yep.”
“What about…”
“I’ve got nothing to do. Really, nothing… I’ve been ahead of schedule all week.”
“But how?”
“Remember that evening you told me to work when I didn’t need to? Well, the work I was going to do now, I did then… so I have nothing to do now.”
“Bob (head of entertainment – not real name) is on their way down now, so you need to make sure you’re doing something.”
“OK, will do.”
I put his paper down and started neatening my desk and filling out my timesheet. You know that kind of “busy work” where you look like you’re doing something, but moments later, I was back watching TV.
If he wants me to be in the office doing something, I will do… He didn’t specify what.
A few minutes later, the head of entertainment walks through the door. Seeing me watching TV, he asks me what I’m doing. I fill him in on the situation with me being ahead of schedule earlier in the week, being ordered by AM to work extra time on Wednesdays, and working nearly 10 hours straight by order of the AM without an authorized break.
I fill him in the AM’s antics overall, and I tell him that this put me well ahead of schedule and that today the AM called me in earlier than everyone else and told me to be out there getting things ready or to be in the office.
I wasn’t allowed to leave the office and had nothing left to do, so I was waiting for instruction, essentially being on call for the AM if he found me any extra work to do.
I pointed out at that point that the hours that I’d worked that week and that as I was effectively on call for the AM, I was recording each and every one of the hours I was sitting in the office that morning as work (pushing at least 80 predicted hours for that week and rising if he kept me there till the end of that day without a break).
As one of the slightly better-paid members of staff there, it was costing the company a fair bit just to have me sit there and watch TV.
Bob was annoyed. Really annoyed. Annoyed that the AM had broken various employment laws, forced me to work extra time, and had me effectively now being paid to sit in the office and do nothing because the AM couldn’t manage his team right.
He smiled at me and thanked me for my hard work and told me to grab a long lunch while he chatted with the AM. The AM huffed and puffed and was clearly in a foul mood but ignored me for the rest of the weekend (thank God!).
Turns out, he basically had his butt handed to him about the legality of what he had done, how I could theoretically have grounds to sue the company, and how he needed to treat his staff better without costing the company a fortune in hours.
I must have done something right as a few months later, the AM tried to threaten to leave the company if I wasn’t transferred to another site… He was told to quit. Meanwhile, I got a few cushy jobs and a nice manager afterward.”
16. You Want A Starfish? I'll Give You A Starfish
You should probably conduct a decent amount of research before buying an exotic pet.
“I was in the backroom cleaning out the cricket bins when one of the newer employees came up to me looking frustrated. After talking about it, I learned there was a woman on the floor who wanted to purchase our chocolate chip starfish but apparently knew nothing of saltwater tanks was being unreasonable and had gone through 2 other associates already.
I hated doing crickets, so I gladly traded handling the Karen over that and made my way to the floor.
Karen: Finally someone else who might HELP me. I want this one here.
(I looked in her cart and noticed a small box of aquarium salt and a 5-gallon tank.)
Me: Sorry you were having trouble, ma’am. Since I’m just walking into the situation, though, we have a few questions we like to ask people before selling them live animals, so I’ll just run through those with you quickly, so we can get you on your way!
Karen: -exaggerated sigh- Fine, whatever. Hurry up
Me: Perfect! What size is the saltwater aquarium set up at home, and what fish do you currently have in it?
Karen: LIKE I WAS TELLING THE OTHER KIDS, I DON’T HAVE ONE ALREADY. CAN’T YOU PEOPLE LISTEN?
I have this one in my cart, and the salt RIGHT HERE. I’ll set it up when I get home. I WANT THIS STARFISH FOR MY KIDS.
(That was all she had in her cart, ignoring the fact that she was trying to cram the ocean into 5 gallons, she had no filters, heaters, substrate, hides, NOTHING.)
Me: Got it. So, ma’am, the issue is that you need to have your aquarium set up before you purchase fish, which takes time. Also, a tank that size is not acceptable for any type of saltwater setup, so if you just follow me, I can show you what sizes you’ll need
(She follows me to the tanks. and I point out a 55-gallon tank.)
Karen: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? DID YOU SEE THE SIZE OF THE STARFISH??? No. I want this 5-gallon.
Me: Well, unfortunately, that is not an option. You’ll also need more than just a tank and some salt.
Karen: FINE. WHAT DO I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE?
Here’s where the malicious compliance kicks in. I grabbed another cart and started grabbing all the basics you need to start a saltwater tank, which for those of you who don’t know, is everything BUT cheap.
She was following me around and kept trying to yell at me, but anytime she would say something, I’d interject with a, “OH, this tubing is on sale! Good for you!” Or “OH, your children will love this substrate’s colour!” and she would just get redder and redder in the face.
About halfway through me getting the things she needed (totalling so far $500), she yelled at me for being incompetent and “abusing animals by not selling them to loving homes” and stormed off. I put everything back with a huge grin on my face and called our sister locations to warn them about a potential Karen heading their way.”
15. You Want A Cake That's Exactly One Pound? Here Ya Go!
You get what you ask for.
“I’m a part-time home baker. I took it up while I was studying from home during the 20189 ‘world pause,’ and it’s a fundraiser for my charity since I can’t do my monthly fundraiser bake sales on campus anymore.
I’m also the only person selling baked goods in my entire area, so my items are very popular. Specifically this one particular type of cake I make that people love.
The other day, a lady called me and wanted to place an order for one pound of this particular cake.
She said she had tried it at a friend’s house and loved it and wanted it for her niece’s birthday. I told her that I used metric measurements, so my cakes are 500 grams or 1 kilogram (1 pound = 454 grams). She said she wanted a one-pound cake. I dropped it because it was more or less the same thing.
Important for later: when I had made the cake for her friend, I had run out of my one-pound cake bases, so I used a two-pound cake base. In my opinion, this made the cake look smaller, but someone else might think that the cake was bigger.
(To clear up some confusion – the cake base is the cardboard on top of which you put the cake. I use two sizes: a 9″ diameter base for my small cakes (500 grams) and a 12″ diameter base for the big cakes (1 kilogram). When the lady’s friend ordered, I had run out of the smaller base, so I used the 12″ base for the 500-gram cake.)
After I took the order and quoted the price to her, she started giving me more instructions – the birthday girl is 16, so decorate it according to a 16-year-old girl (I know, super vague), add XYZ stuff to it, write 4 different things on the cake.
I explained to her that all this was not included in the base price, and the kind of toppings she wanted would make it a lot heavier and pricier. She said, make it a one-pound cake for the one-pound cake price.
Okay. I get the hint.
You want a one-pound cake with those specific customizations. So I made it just that – removed some of the ganache, and made thinner layers, so I could incorporate her additions and still keep it at exactly 454 grams, no more, no less.
The lady came to pick it up, and she went ballistic because I was trying to rob her in the name of charity, and the cake I made was in no way one pound because her friend’s cake was ‘bigger.’ I tried explaining to her why her friend’s cake might have looked bigger and that this cake was exactly 1 pound as she wanted. She refused to listen and was starting to create a huge scene, saying she wanted a refund.
So I brought my weighing scale out and weighed the cake out in front of her. 454 grams exactly. The lady saw and went, “Aha! I was right. You are trying to screw with me. It’s 50 grams less.”
I said, no; it’s exactly one pound like you wanted. I opened up Google Converter and showed her that one pound is, in fact, 454 grams, not 500.
I opened WhatsApp and showed her the message where I told her I make 500 grams of standard cakes and she said she didn’t care and that she wanted one pound.
She was a bit gobsmacked and said I should have had some professional courtesy and made it 500 grams, and I am trying to screw with her.
I had it with her. I told her, “Ma’am, you wanted exactly one pound of cake. You said it to me 4 times. So you can take this exactly one-pound cake, or you can take your refund and leave. I can find other people who would want to buy a one-pound cake.”
She took her one-pound cake and left, saying she would never buy anything from me again and make sure to let others know too.
Later, her niece followed my page on Instagram and dropped me a message apologizing for her aunt, saying it was the best cake she had ever had, and she would surely tell everyone about my bakery.”
14. Won't Close Your Shop Due To A Serious Health Hazard? Not My Problem
“So, this is a story I tell people when they tell me their horror stories in working in fast food.
So, while I was at university, I had a side job managing a team at a very popular sandwich branch. Myself, Joe, and Johnny would work the night shifts (8 pm till 4 am), and I would work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night as this shop was opposite from the only night club in town.
Very upper-class city during the day but a VERY trashy nightlife.
It would get so busy after 2 am with intoxicated people that queues would be out the door, and we would have to put away tables and chairs to block the toilets as people would either throw them at us/each other or dash off to the toilets for a quicky with a stranger.
This, however, happened at around 9 pm. Nice and quiet time, nothing interesting usually happens during this time, and the owner of the restaurant would call in every half hour to see how the shop is doing because he’s worried about losing funds by requiring three whole employees to prepare for the night rush.
A group of around 15 girls run in, look underage, all inebriated. Like, REALLY nine sheets to the wind.
Cool, serve them, get rid of them.
Happens occasionally, but we still got some time before the mass comes.
One of the “larger” girls collapses against the wall on the floor.
Looks passed out. Her friends don’t take any notice, but we are all first aid trained, I get Joe to go check on her – she waves him off, shouts at him, fine – back to work.
10 minutes later. The smell. Oh lord, the smell. The store is actually pretty busy, but after realizing what had happened, we had to stop serving and kick everybody out of the store because of the health hazard I was about to witness.
We kick out her friends, and she’s still asleep. John and I lift the woman to a safe location while Joe calls an ambulance in case there is anything wrong.
The smell gets worse as we lift her. I felt sick. I turned to look back, and I saw the largest, wettest, pile of feces I had ever seen in the shape of her behind.
Be mindful that this girl looks like she’s 15.
None of us wanted to go anywhere near it. But a joint effort between the three of us had it cleaned up within minutes. I wasn’t going to risk ANYTHING, so I left the ventilators on full blast and prepared to lock up for the rest of the night.
Incoming phone call – It basically went down as, “How’s the store?” “We had an incident, so we had to close,” “What? Under no circumstance are you ever to close early!” “Yes… but,” “No buts! Open back up immediately, or I’ll fire all three of you.”
We throw away anything perishable that wasn’t covered.
We didn’t have a lot out but still, not risking anything else that could lose me my oh so precious part-time job. We then proceed to take a 30-minute break to let the store ventilate and allow the smell to leave (like it would..).
A huge group of lads comes to the store while we’re outside and starts a fight with Joe because we were closed. I tell the lad what happened and why we were closed, but he was having none of it. He said he knew the owner and was a “law student” and would have me sued for false closure.
(Enlighten me. I can’t get sued for something like this, can I?)
He calls the owner, and surely enough, I immediately get a call back.
“Open the store now, or I’ll fire you on the spot.” I tell him to wait up a couple of seconds while I deal with a customer.
I tell Joe to start recording the call.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch what you previously said, could you repeat?”
“Open the store, or you’re fired!”
I repeat our previous conversation explaining why I had closed the store and that it was a critical food hazard until it was cleaned properly.
(Most heavy-duty cleaning materials that could have appropriately cleaned up the mess were locked away by the owner until morning because we “wouldn’t have time.”)
“I don’t think you understood what I said. Open. The. Store.”
Alright. Will do, Boss.
So, I continue to open the store, customers start flooding in.
I get all fresh ingredients out to start rushing through the humongous line we were amassing. A lot of customers are turning their noses once they walk in, but like I said, trashy – these people are hungry! They line up anyway.
Some customers are throwing up from the smell.
It really was that bad. They asked me what was up, and I told them that if I were to close, I’d lose my job.
Then the police show up and close up shop for us. Thank God. I was waiting for something like this to happen.
We didn’t even have to clean up; we just got told to go home, and they would sort it with the owner tomorrow because the city had a reputation to uphold.
I ended up getting fired because I closed the store.
But instead of just getting fired, I ended up taking it to court for unfair dismissal and got a month’s payout, and the owner had an emergency health inspection the MORNING AFTER.
The guy lost his branch.
He works as a security guard at a grocery store now working for the security guard he previously hired to “look after us” after 1 am. I’m pretty sure he ended up losing his house and car too. Forget that guy.”
13. Prematurely Turn Down A Big Sales Deal? Fine, I'll Take Your Word For It
“I work in a highly competitive B2B sales role with a consulting firm.
The services and products I’m responsible for are complex with many layers of detail that can make it challenging to navigate through each deal. We are highly regulated and have some legal compliance requirements on what source of funding a client is permitted to use towards certain services being purchased. In short, there are things our clients need that have to be paid for on a fee basis instead of commission offsets.
I’m a 15 year veteran of this industry; I know the rules well and have never violated our legal compliance regulations. My team knows this, and in fact, none of my deals last year were commission-based by design.
I’m the kind of person who believes in doing good work, contributing effectively, and being a constructive team member.
It’s not in my nature to ride the wave and just collect a paycheck. Last year (only my 2nd year on this team), I ended up more than doubling my sales goal for my region and actually hit the overall national goal for the team.
My counterparts had a rough year and so I was proud to have contributed so that we as a team made our numbers. Unfortunately, when it came down to it, even though leadership said they value my efforts and appreciate my results, I got paid LESS than I did the year prior when I just barely hit my goal. Long story short, when I questioned my bonus/incentive pay being short, I was told, “That’s just the way it is.” In doing some research and pulling records, I found that my deals over the last 2.5 years of being on this team are the most profitable and have some of the highest client satisfaction ratings this team has ever had.
I’m proud of that, but I don’t flaunt it to the team or to leadership. I like for my work to speak for itself rather than me parading it around.
Our team is small with only 8 of us, yet we have 2 national leaders assigned to us, one of which is painful to work with at best. Larry was given this position by his best friend who sits at a higher level in the company, and unfortunately, Larry isn’t very capable of being a good leader.
He is quick to spout off, is rude to the team, tightly wound, and all around just not a pleasant person. Being in a sales role, it’s my job to close deals and drive revenue. Larry doesn’t seem to understand that and at times has said things to me like, “You just want to do this for the sale, don’t you?” and when I say yes because that’s my job, he says, “Well, I’m looking for every possible reason to tell you no.” This isn’t the best way to deal with sales execs and motivate new production.
Just the opposite. Instead of helping think through possibilities and creative solutions, Larry likes to shut things down and puff his chest to prove he knows best. And it’s not that I am afraid of being told no. It’s the way he does it before even taking a moment to understand the scenario before interrupting and spouting off.
It is a fight with Larry every single time, and it’s exhausting. On top of that, he is always asking me to do more and take on more tasks/responsibilities because the others on this team are either already overwhelmed or aren’t capable. I feel like Larry tries to exploit my work ethic and results.
It’s deflating to be treated like this, and combined with the terrible way pay has been managed, I’m at the point where I’m done being an over-achiever. By the end of Q1 this year, I was already hitting 40% of our overall revenue goal and over 70% of my personal goal. I’ve decided to go on cruise control for the remainder of the year.
After all, “That’s just the way it is.” There is a lot more that has built me up to this point, but it would take a novel to spell it all out. It’s been a rough couple of years working with Larry, and I’m over it.
Enter the malicious compliance story…
I’ve been working a deal for about a year now, and the client has some complex requirements we are trying to solve. I have a solution, but it’s just slightly outside of the revenue parameters that I’m authorized to approve on my own.
We have a standing weekly meeting with Larry and the others where we talk about strategy and any deal where we need special approval. Prior to the meeting, I put together a very thorough financial analysis, everything Larry would need to evaluate the request and make an informed decision.
It’s a 6 figure annual deal on a multi-year year contract that will generate some nice revenue for our team. My ask is for a one-time concession of less than $3k outside my permission limits and is the difference between closing the deal or losing it to the competition.
The math is simple, and it’s in the best interests of my company and for my team for us to win this one. Effectively it’s $1k per year for us to gain $120k per year (rather, $119k after the concession). Should be an easy decision.
So comes the day of the weekly meeting with Larry and the team. When it’s my turn, I start outlining my deal and setting the financial foundation for my request and all of the services included (this is important per the legal compliance rules noted above).
Before I can even finish, Larry decides to spout off, interrupt me mid-sentence, and just says, “No, you can’t do that!” with a tone that echoed throughout the rest of the team. I let things go silent for a few seconds. At this point, I’m so done with Larry’s garbage that I just said, “Ok.
That’s all I have for today.” and then I hand the meeting over to the next presenter, Paul.
Larry chimes back in: “You can’t use commissions to cover that expense. That’s against compliance rules.”
Me: “I know. If you would have let me finish, you would understand this is not a commission deal. I have structured this on a fee basis specifically to avoid that.
No worries though. I understand and I’ll tell the client they will have to find the extra $3k because we aren’t willing to work with them.”
L: [some rambling onto a sidetrack about compliance that isn’t relevant to my request and the financial decision]
M: “Thanks for sharing that.
My point isn’t to question compliance. I’m well aware and uphold those requirements on all of my deals. This is in compliance. My ask is for a $3k concession to close this deal. That’s the long and short of it and is what I’m asking you to either approve or deny.
I’ve discussed with the client all of the other considerations from a legal perspective and they understand. This is about beating out a competing offer. Nothing more.”
L: “Well, you have to decide if you want to write the business bad enough or not.”
At this point, I have no motivation to sell this deal, and since Larry said it’s my decision, I say…
M: “Ok, I’ve pretty well decided it’s not worth it, so I’ll let them know we couldn’t get it approved. I wouldn’t want to cut our profits on the deal. I’m already a year into this negotiation, so I’m going to let it ride out.”
L: (silence)
M: “Ok, Paul, over to you now. Thanks, Larry.”
The meeting continues, and when we wrap up, I hear from Larry again.
L: Hey, where is the financial analysis on [Client]? I want to look it over and see what margin we will make.
M: It’s in the [folder] where we always save them, and it’s filed according to procedure as always. No need for any further analysis though; I’ve already told [Client] and waiting to hear their response. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks.
L: Wow, I just pulled up the files.
These numbers look great. Plenty of margin in the deal. How’d you get to those figures?
M: That’s what I was hoping to explain earlier. I’m sure you saw my deals from last year too, and I’m just doing the same thing again this year.
All good. I’m on to the next one now. Have a good afternoon.
L: Ok. Let me know if I can help.
Admittedly, this last interaction with Larry, I was feeling salty. I’m over his behavior, and quite frankly, I don’t care if I sell another deal this year or not.
It has been proven that I am not going to get rewarded for going above and beyond, so why put in any more effort than I have to? At my current pace, I’ll manage to hit goal for the year without having to work too hard at it.
Meanwhile, the rest of the team is struggling, and for the most part, aren’t tracking to hit the goal. I’m not going to be the pack-mule this year. Someone else can carry that torch. My time is better spent shopping my resume out to see what else is out there.”
12. Make A Business Move That I Don't Recommend? Do It Anyway, If You Insist
But if that’s how you want it…
“A few years ago at my previous job, I was a senior technician at a Managed Service Provider of IT Services. We were a small company and were often “Yes Men” to just about anybody who would pay us in exchange for their requests. The owner of our company would not push back against those that made crazy demands, overly cheap, or even overly disrespectful clients.
This led to us often times doing tasks out of our normal scope, at cost, and a lot of times being cussed for no good reason. Our primary services included onsite service and support and cloud hosting of in-house and 3rd party solutions. One of which was Microsoft 365 (Microsoft 345?) which obviously is very commonly used for email services.
We would keep living knowledge base pages on each company, their services, environment info, and even policies of which different companies may demand, like, “Only follow through with support requests from office managers,” or “If admin access is needed for this particular cluster of servers, contact Jim.”
One of our clients was a dental company that was of decent size. They had about 10 locations, and we were growing. Customers loved them and we often took pleasure going on site as it was heaven dealing with such polite people in contrast to what we had to deal with most of the time otherwise.
They would even demand us have some lunch if we happened to be onsite during their Friday luncheon. It was great. They used 365 services and only used E3 licensing for their users which was total overkill – $20 per user per month when most employees barely even checked email, let alone made an Excel doc.
They wouldn’t take our recommendation to go use the Essentials at $5 per user instead unless it was an office manager or HQ worker. Also, they had a decently high turnover rate as it was a college-type town, and a lot of students would work there in one of the various positions to make decent pay and good experience while attending school.
They would come and go.
The IT Director (literally only a title anyone can wear nowadays… He was pretty bad at his job) of this company called us one day CUSSING because there were a bunch of mailboxes that were not licensed. We tried to explain that these were mailboxes that we converted to shared of employees that had left. Doing so allows us to remove the license of the mailbox while keeping all of the mail intact and very easily accessible if we needed to delegate access to someone who needs to review.
You basically get to archive the mailbox FOR FREE.
He barely let us even speak and the tech who actually took the call was flustered, so I took it over completely. Using my best well-seasoned customer service charm I tried to explain to him the same, yet to no avail.
They had 180ish unused mailboxes that he wanted us to convert to a userbox and add one of those premium “I’m drinking Stella in a fancy glass” licenses at $20 a pop per month. He resorted to personally insulting me telling me I’m a tech who got promoted too fast and I should try a 4 year school next time and demanded it be done right away with no specifics on how it be done.
“Bless your heart, man. Ok, we’ll do it.”
Luckily we record the calls. Also, I’ll make note this company has a policy that we are not allowed to use PowerShell, which for those that don’t know is a terminal that allows us to perform an action by command line.
We can write scripts for special tasks or even do things in bulk, saving lots of time. I knew this very well, and I begged them repeatedly to let us use PowerShell in the past to no avail.
So we ordered pizza in the office and got to work.
Converted every last mailbox to normal and licensed it… We even converted a spider into a god as he struck fear in us with his hairy legs and many eyes. We weren’t worthy. After we finished we even had a contest to see who could frisbee Office 2003 discs the furthest since we had a binder full of them as well as few other goofy games for about a half-hour before we dipped out.
It was a fun late night at work in the end.
A month or so rolls by and our accountant had sent out all of the invoices to our customers on that fine second Monday of the month. Our Dental Commander called us at 12:03 pm, 3 minutes after he would have gotten his, and he had blown a head gasket.
He finally saw the bill for the additional 180 E3 licenses… Plus taxes and fees. He was threatening to sue if me and my two coworkers if our owner didn’t fix it. One thing about our pushover owner is that he didn’t take kindly to someone insulting his workers directly as he took it personally since he interviewed everyone himself.
He listened to the call recording after we begged him to do so.
He did not like what he heard from IT Commando. He didn’t give in, and he even added a little razzle-dazzle that we had never seen before. He even noted that because it was a written policy that we can’t use PowerShell; we should have billed the request as a project since they demanded it be done in such a short time and was not a normal support request. In order for us to remove the licenses, they would also have to have this done at the same project rate, and they would have to pay for the bill as well as the two projects now or we wouldn’t touch it… PERIOD.
Our project rate was $125 an hour for junior techs and $175 for senior techs. It was going to be about 2 hours per head ALL at the senior rate for each leg of the ordeal so about 12 hours all in all as there were 3 of us.
Computer Commander didn’t know that the owner of his company and ours we moderately close friends for nearly two decades, would occasionally play golf together and whatever company owners do when not at the office.
The dental company owner and I.T. JOE came to our office immediately. Before allowing the discussion to proceed far past hello our company owner played both calls on full blast over one of those Logitech 2.1 systems. It was loud.
Dental Company owner was absolutely shocked at what was heard as this guy was always looked at in high standards.
Hacker God was pale white as he sat there and did not move a muscle. He immediately told the IT Boy to call an uber back to the HQ and to standby in the conference room; he wouldn’t be driving back with him. He apologized profusely to us techs, nearly in tears it seemed. He wrote a check for one of the projects and the bill, and we agreed to undo the work for free as he was a really good client of ours and was always nice.
He gave us each $100 visa gift cards the next week and bought us lunch in our own office a few times ALL out of his own pocket. Hacker Dude was fired as soon as the owner of the company got back to the office, and he entrusted us to make love to his IT systems while he found his replacement who was ultimately better in every way.
They took every recommendation of ours including reducing the license types for the majority of their workers while confused as to why this was ever a debated topic. That is the one company I truly miss at my last job… A good client.”
11. Can't Extend The Deadline? Nobody Said He Couldn't Change The Original Deadline
“A few years ago, I was in the process of getting my Master’s degree.
Our group for that particular degree was fairly small. There were a dozen of us when we started, and a few dropped out along the way, so the lectures and seminars were tiny and we all got to know each other well. It wasn’t uncommon for classes to continue for several hours over beers down the pub.
All in all, a pretty great way to learn.
The leader of the program, who also taught one of the units, was awesome. Very anti-establishment punk who just wanted to get on with teaching his subject his way. The higher-ups were in the process of trying to change how everything worked, basically making it much tougher on the students and a lot more bureaucratic.
One thing they changed was how extensions were determined for assignments. The way it used to work was you’d have a deadline, but if you needed an extension, the lecturer for that unit could grant one at their discretion. The new process meant that if you needed an extension you’d have to apply to the extensions board, and you wouldn’t know if you’d had it approved or not until well past the deadline.
You basically had to gamble. If you applied for the extension and handed in your project past the deadline, and your extension wasn’t granted at all or wasn’t granted for enough time, you’d get a failing mark for being late.
It was super stressful, especially for those of us with ongoing reasons for needing them (e.g. me with my health issues).
This angered the program leader a lot. As far as he was concerned, it’s his course, he knows us all well enough to smell bullcrap excuses, his say should be good enough to grant an extension. He carried on handing them out anyway while they were in the process of changing the system, getting into a lot of trouble in the process, but once it was fully changed over, his power to grant them was gone.
There was only one major assignment left at this point – the thesis.
Most of our class ended up needing extensions for it due to sick children, bereavement, illnesses, other life stuff that meant you couldn’t spend 50-60 hours every week on it to meet the deadline.
We were all preparing to take the gamble, collect as much evidence as possible, and submit all the ridiculous paperwork with the hope that our entire degree wouldn’t be taken away from us thanks to a board of pencil pushers who didn’t even know us.
A couple of days before the deadline, the course leader gets in touch to gleefully inform us that the morons in charge took away his extension powers, but not his powers to change the actual deadline dates.
He figured the best thing to do was to move the deadline six months into the future, giving us all more than enough time to not only finish our work but keep improving on it, as an extra special ‘eff you’ to the people stressing out his students and messing with his course.
We all graduated, and they couldn’t do much about it because he was working perfectly within the rules.”
10. Interrupt My Lunch? I'll Start It Over Again
“Reading another post about Wally World and lunches reminded me of a story during my time working there many moons ago. I will also add that I worked there well over 10 years ago, so some things may have changed since then.
So not too long after I started, and at least a couple of years before this story took place, I was called into a meeting with the store manager to discuss a situation with another co-worker.
When they came to get me, I was on lunch, and so after the meeting was over, they informed me that I could restart my lunch because I was entitled to a full uninterrupted hour lunch. Since they interrupted my lunch, I got to start again and they would adjust my time for me.
I kept this information in the back of my head for future reference, which worked out well.
Fast forward a bit, and I’m working in the connection center, which is the department with the prepaid and contract cell phones. In our store, we were built into the electronics dept, along with the photo center.
At the time, we and the photo center were considered a special department, we were a different division from the main store, had separate payroll, managers, etc. So technically we were supposed to help cover each other’s area and couldn’t be pulled to another department or make another department help us.
In practice, though, electronics would usually help our customers if we weren’t there, and we would help them on things we were able to. The exception was contract cell phones. We were the only people able to do a contract; we had to run credit checks, etc., everything that was done through an actual cell phone store.
For some reason I no longer remember, I was alone my whole shift this day. We normally had one-person 9-6, one 12-9, but the morning person either called off or left early and so I was on my own. Around 330 or so, about a half-hour before my lunch should be, I had a couple of guys come by wanting to see about getting a contract cell phone.
I was finishing up another sale, so I told them if they wanted to look around, I’d be done in probably 15 minutes. They left, I finished with my customer, and I didn’t see them again. I did wait around for them a bit, then had some other customers, etc., so I didn’t leave on lunch until after 5.
About 5:30, I’m close to getting locked out and so I go to take lunch. The person working electronics is one of the few who doesn’t really like our department and refuses to help our customers, so I told him I was going to lunch and just send any of our customers to photo for help if they needed anything.
About 30 minutes into my lunch, I hear an announcement across the intercom for customers needing help in the connection center. I am in the break room, so I call up to electronics, remind them I’m on lunch, and tell them to send the customer to photo or tell them I’ll be back in 30 minutes.
Turns out, someone just had a question about a prepaid phone card. About 10 minutes go by, and I’m being paged again. This time, I ignore it because they know I’m on lunch. A few minutes later, they page again. At this point, I’ve got maybe 15 minutes left on lunch.
One of the store managers comes in right after the second page. Asks me why they are paging my department, and I’m not answering.
Now we got one unpaid hour lunch, and 2 paid 15-minute breaks. Since we are still on the clock during our breaks, we can be interrupted, and they aren’t guaranteed. If it’s busy, we sometimes won’t get our second one.
I guess because it’s after 6, he assumes I’m on my last break and not lunch and just being lazy and not wanting to go help. Because we were a specialty division and couldn’t be pulled to the registers or other departments (there were a couple of other departments that were like this, such as jewelry; this has all since changed), there were a couple of managers who seemed to have beef with our departments and seemed to think us lazy or entitled because we refused to be pulled.
So I start telling him that I’m the only one there, and I have 15. Before I can finish my sentence he interrupts and tells me that I can take my 15 later, I need to go help the customer. I try again to explain I have 15 minutes left on lunch, I’m off the clock, and I’ll be up there to help them afterward, but he isn’t listening, interrupts me again, and says, “You can come restart your break after you help them, but I need you to go help them now.
”
A light bulb goes off in my head, and I ask, “You want me to go help the customer now, and then restart my time?” I do make sure not to say break or lunch, just time. So he rolls his eyes says basically that he doesn’t care and that I can restart it; just go help the customer!
So I say okay, gather my stuff, put it in my locker, and clock in. At this point, they have paged me again, and I have maybe 10 minutes left on my lunch.
I go up to the department, and lo and behold, it’s my customer from 3:30 who has finally come back.
He wants a phone. So I ask for his id, tell him I’ll have to run a credit check, see if he needs to pay a deposit, etc., and asks if he knows what phone, plan, etc. he’s interested in. Well, as soon as I tell him we will run his credit, and he may have to pay something, he’s not interested. He says his credit is crap, he tried getting a phone through the Sprint store, and they wanted a bunch of funds, but he thought since it’s Wally World, that I don’t know, we didn’t check credit, and we would just hand him a phone?
So it takes maybe all of 5 minutes with him, and I go ahead and help another customer with a prepaid phone, then turn to electronics and tell them okay, I have to go restart my lunch; I’ll be back in an hour. When I say his jaw dropped, he immediately starts asking what I’m talking about; I already had lunch, yadda yadda.
So I explain that no, I didn’t finish because management sent me to help the customer he kept paging me about even though he knew I was at lunch, so now I needed to go retake my lunch. I go sit back in the break room, and at this point, it’s probably 6:45.
I always read and had a book with me, so I was happy to sit and read for another hour.
About 30 minutes go by, and the manager from earlier comes by, I think they are clicking back in from lunch, and makes a comment about, “Oh, are you just now getting your break?” So I say no; I am retaking my lunch break, and I have another half hour to go.
He stops, and you can see the wheels slowly start to turn as he asks what do I mean. I tell him that I was on my lunch earlier when he told me I needed to go help the customer, and because my lunch was interrupted, I had to restart.
He of course says he thought I was on my break and asks why didn’t I tell him I was at lunch. And I tell him I tried to twice but he kept interrupting and told me to help the customer now and restart my time, so I thought he knew I was at lunch.
I can still see his fat face get so red and tell me that’s not at all what he meant, and he will talk to my manager tomorrow.
There wasn’t much fallout. I got pulled and questioned the next day, but I had messaged my boss and told her about it, and the times I was at lunch to cover myself for time theft, and the photo employees backed me up on everything, including that electronics never told them a customer needed help or sent them the customer.
The manager had to admit that he did tell me that I needed to go help the customer right then, and he never asked if I was on the clock or not. The assistant manager who questioned me did try to make it seem like I was being dramatic and should have just went up when I was paged. But I just asked what would have happened if I left for lunch (as I usually did, I think it was bad weather that day, so I had stayed inside, but I normally sat in my car just to get out of the building), and would never have heard the pages?
And asked if I had been given incorrect information before by the store manager? To which she agreed I was correct. I did make it known that had they talked to the customer, then called me in the break room and told me someone needed help with a contract phone.
I would have probably clocked in early and went to help and that I’d done that before. But since the first time the customer just wanted to know what card to buy, and they paged me instead of helping or having photo help them, I wasn’t going to interrupt my lunch multiple times when I’m off the clock.
I am pretty sure they talked to the electronics employee because he never paged me like that again afterward, and a couple of employees who didn’t know the lunch rule before learned it that day! And I got paid to read for an hour that day!”
Another User Comments:
“I feel that this is just a mild example of how many employers abuse their employees’ off-the-clock time. If you’re given an hour for lunch, not paid for it, but are still effectively on call at the whim of the business, that’s not really your time anymore, is it?
Your “malicious compliance” was more like the minimum anyone should do to assert their rights as a respected employee.” yParticle
9. Think We're Overcharging You Rent? Sure, We Can Look Over The Expenses To Make Sure!
“I live with my partner and my good friend in a huge apartment. We have a 3rd bedroom we used as a craft/hobby room.
This past spring, my best friend was going through some HARD things at home: his parents found out he ‘likes girls and boys’, and he’s part of a very strict religion with no tolerance for the ‘rainbow community.’ So after talking with my housemates, we invited him to come live with us.
To say he was grateful was an understatement. He cried like big, manly, ribcage-wracking sobs. He moved in immediately.
The first month was great. I told him I wasn’t going to charge him rent the first month because he had moving expenses, and his parents were kind of extorting him and use of his SUV.
The written expectation we all signed was rent, utilities, and the cost of one big meal per day divided by 4. I wrote it all down as:
Rent: $1,800/4
Gas and Electric: between $100-$150/4
Monthly grocery cost for 4 adults: $400/4
Evenly split: $537/month. He agreed and promised to pay it by the 1st of every month starting in May.
Well, as things usually go, that first month was as good as it got. He cooked and cleaned, made me coffee in the mornings, helped take care of my cat and my fish tank, and was always super friendly and understanding. By the end of April, he approached me and said he didn’t think he could pay full rent that month.
His parents said he owed them $6,000, and they hadn’t given him his car back (he was working from home due to the ‘world pause’), and just all sorts of trouble. I said no problem. We had been getting along fine without him, and he hadn’t ever, ever lied to me or given me a reason to doubt him.
$300 for food and utilities was fine.
Things got crappy as they usually do. He kept demanding more of my time to talk about his feelings. Got jealous when I spent time with my partner alone and started asking if I was mad at him, like literally every day.
Developed a big crush on our other roommate and tried to woo her and was crushed when she said no. Started eating our private food. Criticizing my way of doing things without offering constructive feedback. The electricity spiked to over $300 because he left his lights and 3 computers on all the time.
He caused a $50 overage fee for our wi-fi. I asked him to pay the difference, and he did but complained that we needed unlimited internet so he could do his job. I said okay but that he’d be on the hook for the extra charge.
Things got worse, but they were still workable. I figured it was just him adjusting to living with other people.
In July, he sat me down and said we needed to change our rental agreement. He felt he was paying too much for his share, and his sister in Arkansas said that his portion was outrageous and that their household bills were less than $1,400 a month for a mortgage and a family of five people.
So we went over the bills. Turns out, I had made a mistake; he was absolutely right! The correct breakdown should have been:
Rent: $1,800/4 (I had typed in 1,600 on my calculator originally!)
Gas/electric: $320/4
Internet: $90/4 plus $25 extra for his unlimited high speed.
Groceries: $400/4
His new monthly payment was $677.
I rounded down the change because I’m a good friend.
He stayed 3 more months before getting “traumatized” by my other roommate after she brought a date home and broke his heart. We’re still best friends; we just figured that we didn’t mesh well living together.”
8. Take You To Court? Sure Will, Buddy!
“This was back in 2019, I was training to become a level 2 swimming teacher, and the guy who ran the courses (we’ll call him Bob) asks me to do him a huge favor and work in Scotland for a month as a lifeguard at one of the holiday resorts.
I liked the sound of it, and it was also great for me since I’d lost my job about a month prior and could really do with the extra funds!
So I go and work there, I do great, amazing experience and fun. They ask me to stay on an extra month, I agree a little begrudgingly, since I have a swimming teacher job offer waiting, but after speaking with them, they are ok to wait the extra month.
After a couple of weeks, they hire a new lifeguard. He causes some trouble with me, and I decide that I’ve had enough and speak to the resort manager about leaving early. Since I wasn’t meant to be staying later anyway, and they have new lifeguards now, I figured I could go home.
After having a chat with him, he agrees that it’s ok. I try to talk to Bob, but he’s off on holiday, so I tell his assistant, and she says it should all be fine!
So, he owes me just over a week of wages, about 120 hours = $1,250ish.
When he comes back from his holiday, he tells me he isn’t going to pay it because I walked out on the job. I call the resort manager to see if they have paid him for all my work there, and they had. I was STEAMING.
I called Bob and basically told him he had to pay me what I had earned, but he just kept saying, “You walked out,” “I have the upper hand here,” and “You can take me to court, but my lawyer says I will win.”
So I thought, ‘Court it is!’
It had to go through tribunal first, so I took this opportunity to gather my evidence. The holiday resort was on my side, so they were happy to sign all my hours off and send them to me. In that time, I realized that I was only asking for wages, and holiday pay was mandatory, not optional. I wasn’t expecting any kind of holiday pay beforehand, but since Bob wants me to go through all this trouble to get my basic pay, I may as well go full pelt and ask for holiday pay for the whole month and a half I was there.
After speaking to a lawyer once I had the tribunal certificate, they calculated my missing pay and holiday pay to be about $2,000.
He paid it all to me the day before our court date.”
7. Don't Like Seasoned Food? Try It Bland, Then
Don’t worry; she’s flexible with her cooking.
“So, my partner and I live with his mother. She basically sits in her recliner and takes advantage of me working, my streaming services, and my eventual frustration at things not getting done, so I do it myself.
My partner is disabled, and it’s hard for him to do much more than laundry and some dishes and light cooking. I work 50+ hours a week in a restaurant. Even through all the crap the last few months, I’ve remained full-time.
The food my store serves isn’t the healthiest, so I try to only bring home leftovers as a treat for me not having to cook.
Now, I have a very midwestern, German, hearty way of cooking. I make a lot from scratch, but I also know how to utilize condensed soups and elevate a hamburger helper. My man loves my cooking, and I’m always having him taste-test things. We love cooking together and have always been experimental and up for trying new things.
However, this stopped when we moved in with his mom because she’s very, very picky. She used to cook her share, and we would get by that way. But slowly over time, she got flogging lazy and now won’t do more than microwave ramen or make a sandwich.
It’s fine. Whatever. But my partner can’t stand up long enough to cook a whole lot either, so it falls on me.
10-hour day on my feet, I revel in my partner’s enjoyment of my cooking. That brings me joy.
So, he has a new favorite dish of mine that I can’t tell you the clever name of because it’s named after a certain situation we are dealing with as a country, but it IS clever.
For it, I utilized (mostly chicken) condensed soup since flour and butter were hard to find. I had plenty of powdered milk in the freezer, and we had plenty of frozen veggies of all kinds and a butt load of rice for the dish.
I usually use cream of mushroom or celery and a couple of cans of mushrooms with peas and carrots – all creamy and good over rice.
But last week, I was doing my weekly grocery shopping and saw cream of broccoli and cheddar cheese soup. That sparked an idea because my hubby looooves broccoli soup and cheese. So, I made the fixins with that along with a bag of frozen broccoli.
Oooooh, was he happy! And it was good.
Anyway, a few days ago, my hubby lets me in that my mother-in-law was complaining about my cooking. This was not the first time. I hear all the time about how I don’t do things right, or more like, not how SHE does it.
I went on a cooking strike for a while until she whined about she’s spending too much on takeout. Like, REALLY!? There’s a full pantry, and you are getting take out every day!?
She complained that my meals were “too heavy” and had too much salt and pepper, and she didn’t like all the cream sauces I’d use.
Yet, she eats like three servings.
So, cue the malicious compliance. I didn’t go on a cooking strike this time. I made dinner tonight. My partner wanted chicken and broccoli with rice again. So, we went to the store. We got the stuff and came home.
The plan all hatched in the car, and my man thought it was brilliant.
I must also add that my partner and I both love spicy food but generally only add chili sauce or extra spice to our individual plates because my mother-in-law doesn’t like spice (relevant later).
I cut up the chicken, but I saved about half. I cook most of it with copious amounts of garlic and butter and ranch powder like always.
But in a separate skillet, I only added olive oil and her chicken. No salt or pepper or garlic.
I sauté it up and set it aside. I then make the cream sauce and add most of the broccoli. I saved about half a cup and steamed it. I made the rice like always but reserved a half-cup of plain rice and added the rest to the fixings and mixed it up.
My partner taste tests and tweaks.
And then he surprised me. He added black pepper and our favorite chili seasoning to it. I’m wide-eyed, and my mouth is watering.
I dish up the plain rice, broccoli, and chicken into a bowl and hand it to my man.
My mother-in-law can’t be bothered with coming to get her own dinner.
We must take it to her. He’s giggling like a child. I just smile and feel satisfied that maybe she will like her dinner now.
I dish up a bowl of fixins for myself and head to the bedroom where binge tv is waiting.
I hear the exchange though.
“Here’s your dinner, Mom.”
“Oh, well what’s this? I thought Godiva was making fixins?”
“Oh, she did. But I told her what you said after her last batch, and she wanted to make you something more to your palette.”
“Well, why did you tell her that? I told you that in confidence.”
“I didn’t want to set her up for failure, and she wants you to like her cooking. So, I told her, so she’d have a chance to fix it.”
“Oh, ok.
Well, thanks, I guess.”
My man joins me. All grins. We eat, and he hears her shuffle to the kitchen.
“Can I have a little cream sauce for my chicken?”
My partner replies, “Go for it. But I did put black pepper and chili powder in it.
We didn’t think you’d want any so we added our spices.”
“Oh. Ok.”
I think she ended up adding some salt or something but no cream sauce. She ate it.
She then let us know that she was thinking of making dinner tomorrow since I always do the cooking.
Gotcha! Go for it. I’m not a fan of her cooking either, but I welcome any day that I don’t have to cook.
I guess you could also file this under petty revenge as well.”
6. Think The Shelves Are Stronger Than They Really Are? Believe What You Want
“I was attending an animal care course in college, and as part of the course, I was required to complete work experience.
My manager, who shall only be referred to as Manager, was notoriously difficult to work with and seemed to enjoy making people’s lives difficult.
I had been working there for several months on a weekend basis and had only minor problems with Manager so far, such as her asking me to eat my lunch on the counter in full view of customers, which made me very uncomfortable, and a few customers even asked Manager why I was doing this.
But, one day, I was given the task of unloading an unusually large delivery after the store had been cleared out by an animal event in town needing a lot of supplies.
I told Manager that the shelves couldn’t hold anywhere near the amount she had ordered, but she requested I do it anyway.
I pulled up the safety sheet, which clearly outlined the maximum weight per shelf, but she insisted.
I had just finished loading up all the shelves and saw them visibly bending under the weight, so I informed Manager, only to get told that was “normal” and went back downstairs to attend to my other duties.
5 minutes go by, and a crash rings throughout the entire store. We all head upstairs and find every shelf demolished and thousands of dollars worth of equipment in tatters.
Manager immediately blames me in full view of the entire shop, despite the fact that all the staff clearly knew she was at fault for this.
Regardless, I was fired, and the letter of termination was mailed to my tutor, which led to a meeting with Manager, me, my tutor, and the principal of the college.
Upon hearing my side of the story, my tutor accompanied me to the store, so she could investigate, and she had found that the shelves were built improperly and had also been jury-rigged together after breaking previously.
After this was found out, Manager’s store was blacklisted from the approved work exp providers list for the entire district, and she was facing severe charges for blatant health and safety violations.
A few months go by, and a lack of customers and employees led to her having to sell the shop.”
5. Won't Let Me Go Home Early When I Don't Have What I Need To Work? I'll Continue Working
“A number of years ago, I worked for a small, fairly local outsourcing company. I was assigned to work with a particularly high-profile client of theirs. The client’s office was just around the corner from my employer, but my employer insisted that I remain within their own offices to work, so the client provided me with a laptop to use that connected to their network remotely.
It’s important to note that whilst the clients were decent, my employer had a totally fear-based management culture. The managers wanted eyes on the employees at all times because they assumed people would slack off given half the chance.
After almost a year of working there, I got a call from the client notifying me that my client-given laptop needed some critical updates, and I would have to bring it in, so IT could apply the updates locally.
All sounded very reasonable to me.
I brought this to the attention of my manager and advised I would be out of the office for a while, so I could take my laptop to the client site around the corner for critical updates. No bueno. My manager ignored everything about the ‘critical updates’ part and focused instead on the ‘out of our office for 2 hours’ part.
They insisted that they knew I had a remote connection to the client’s office, so any updates could be applied without me needing to leave and take my laptop anywhere. I got the impression they thought I was lying to get some free time off.
I decided that this had the potential to teach my employer / the managers a great lesson about not trusting their own employees, so like the model employee I was, I shrugged, “You know best, Boss” and complied with their request, continuing working as usual. Until the following morning, when I switched on my laptop, and nothing would work.
The machine refused to connect to the client’s remote network. The various software applications I used for my job also wouldn’t run due to the lack of connection. Error messages flashed up on every file I tried to access, warning that my credentials had been blocked. I was left holding a very expensive brick.
My manager was livid when I explained I couldn’t do any work. They clicked around on my laptop trying to fix it themselves, but there was no other solution to be had. They sent me around the corner to the client’s office, so I could hand in my laptop to IT.
I took my time enjoying a coffee and breakfast in the client’s onsite cafe whilst IT worked on my laptop, but when I went to check on it after an hour I believe, the client IT manager’s words were, “It’s done.” The critical update mentioned before was intended to repair something wrong with the way the remote connections worked. When my machine didn’t get the update, it lost connection with the client’s network and immediately locked me out of everything, effectively blacklisting my credentials.
The IT manager explained that they would have to build me an entirely new machine and set up new accounts, a process that would take about a week to ensure everything filtered through correctly and could be tested.
The client was fine and understanding about it, but when I returned empty-handed to my employer’s office my manager got extremely snotty with me and insisted I still had to work somehow.
I pointed out that I had no client laptop to work on, so instead of sending me home, they forced another employee to share her computer with me. For the next week, I and my colleague shared her computer, one hour each at a time.
As I had no access to any of my files, client data, etc., so all I could do was do the barest minimum of work, sending a few emails from my colleague’s account.
After a week, I got my new client laptop, and things went back to normal, but the week of sharing meant my employer had lost around 40 hours of productivity from 2 employees.
The shared pain of the experience with my colleague brought us closer together, and when my employer lost their contract with my client a few years later, she helped me get a new job with my employer’s competitor.”
4. Want The Ice In The Freezer Scraped? No Worries, I'll Get It Done
“I was a recent engineering graduate, working full-time making pretty good income. I decided I wanted to propose to my partner and needed a good diamond ring.
So I randomly took a job as a waiter at a local diner and would work afternoons, nights, and weekends. Making pretty crap funds, but I’m a sucker for funds, so I didn’t care. If you’ve ever worked at a job you don’t need, it really is eye-opening, but that’s another story.
So as I’m sure most of you know, waiters and waitresses have “side work” to do at the end of their shift, which to me seems pretty bull, but whatever. The state I lived in paid $2 an hour for servers on top of whatever tips they take home.
On my second week at the job, my end-of-shift side work was to scrape down the ice cream freezer frost buildup. When freezers run for a long time, condensation forms and then freezes on the inside of the freezer walls. I had worked at an ice cream shop as a teenager, so I was very familiar with ice cream freezers.
Normally, you just let the freezer warm up and melt the frost off, but these fartmuncher owners didn’t do it that way. Instead, I was encouraged to pay a busboy $5 for him to scrape the frost. Now, in my mind, that just sounds like I am paying an employee to do work at a restaurant I don’t own, nor profit from.
So I said, “No, I’ll do it myself.” The manager didn’t like that at all, but she couldn’t really do anything about it. My tips were already in my pocket, and she couldn’t force me to give my funds away.
I open up the freezer and see that there are about 3 inches or more of frost on the walls.
I know from experience this is several years of frost build-up. These walls haven’t been frost-free in years. So I asked the manager how much frost she wants me to remove, warning her it would take a while to scrape them down to the bare metal. She snidely said that the busboys remove every scrap of frost, every week (bullcrap), and that’s what she expected from me.
Okay, you asked for it.
Over the next two hours, I scraped, sweated, grunted, and struggled with this frost. It was a chest freezer, so I was bent over, head inside the freezer. The ice cream had to be moved out of the way, so it all melted and dropped onto the carpet.
The freezer was in the dining area, so guests were treated to awful noises and my butt in the air. I sweat like a maniac and probably smelled awful. Everyone in the whole restaurant could hear this cacophony.
The manager kept coming back to heckle me and ask, “You gonna give up?
Come on, just pay the busboy. It’s late, and I know you have work in the morning.” Fellow servers (mostly mid 40s people) were actively rooting against me. My arms were wrecked for weeks after this. It was 1 in the morning (24-hour diner), and I had been on my feet at two jobs for like 18 hours.
But I was earning, and $2 an hour was enough to keep my resolve ironclad. Plus, I was so angry off at the insistence that I pay her employees for her. After two hours and six gallons of melted ice cream, the manager gave up and sent me home.
Only 1/3 of the frost was gone. And I was $4 richer.
Tip your servers; they probably put up with so much crap.”
Another User Comments:
“Darn US labor laws.
And, for anyone else who has this task: rubber mallet. I worked for an ice cream company back in high school, and that’s how we’d handle buildup like what’s described. You take a rubber mallet and give the ice a good tap so it cracks, then you can just pull the chunks right off.
(And to be specific: I worked as an assistant for the maintenance department. We went around to service the ice cream cabinets we lent to stores to sell product out of, and lots of places don’t manage their ice buildup. So this was a pretty common task for us.)
As long as you don’t swing too hard and don’t hit the cabinet wall directly, it won’t damage the cabinet. (You really don’t want to burst the refrigerant coils embedded in the walls. But indirect taps straight on the ice are fine.) Just tap the ice, generally only on the thick parts.
Once you’re down to a small layer of frost on the wall, you can use a scraper on that, but most of the time, the ice just breaks directly off the wall and leaves very little behind.
Honestly, thick buildups like this are almost faster to clean off than thin layers of frost.” Laringar
3. Since You Wanna Scam Call Me, We Might As Well Have A Chat
“The phone rings waking me up from a sound sleep.
Me: ‘Hullo?’ (very groggy someone better be dead…)
Computer: ‘Your credit card was used on eBay…blah blah spiel…’ Oh heck no you wake me up with this crap and tell me to push 1?!
It’s ON! I pushed 1.
Enter hopeful scammer from the dark bowels of a warehouse in a jungle.
Scammer: ‘Blah blah Visa credit card used for international purchases…’ (I don’t have a Visa)
Me: (yawning) ‘Oh dear what am I to do?’
Scammer: ‘Yes Mam!
It is very sad! I will need to confirm your credit card information. Can you please tell me the name on the credit card?’
Me: (contemplating coffee) ‘Ronald McDonald.’
Scammer: ‘Ronald McDonald? Is that R-O-N-A-L-D?’ (getting excited)
Me: ‘Yup. Oh me oh my whatever shall I do?’
Scammer: ‘Yes Mam! Can you confirm is your credit card gone and where it is gone from?’
Me: (beginning to enjoy myself)’ Oh dear it is gone. Oh woe. is. me. I am dismayed. Oh me. Oh . My…’
Scammer: ‘Can you tell me where you lost your credit card?’ (I’m beginning to drool thinking of coffee)
Me: ‘It must have been at Whitehouse Burgers. Gosh. darn.’
Scammer: (practically bouncing off his chair) ‘Yes Mam! That is it exactly! Can you tell me any strange purchases made on your credit card?’
Me: ‘Well there was that call yesterday saying someone bought an illegal firearm.
I was wondering about that as I already have one…’
Scammer: (panting from excitement) ‘Yes Ma—– ‘(voice in the background filled with disgust speaking in their dialect something that must translate to YOU IDIOT! followed by a slapping sound)
….silence….dial tone
Sigh. Just when it was getting good too.
Oh well, next time! I need coffee.”
2. Only One Smoke Break? You Didn't Say For How Long, Though
“I work on a building site.
We’re renovating a building on a university to be ready for the students in September, so we’re on a pretty tight schedule. Despite this, we’ve been making good time. I work on the electrical team with 6 engineers including me and the supervisor.
We had just finished installing some lights, so I and two others headed off to the smoke shelter while the supervisor set up the next job.
There’s no general policy when it comes to smoke breaks. As long as you’re getting your work done in a reasonable amount of time, you’re pretty much free to do whatever. This helps to keep work morale high. We generally take about 5 minutes.
As we’re stood there talking, the site manager walks past us.
He didn’t say anything, but we could feel him staring daggers into us. We just smiled and continue talking. After we finish, we walk back on-site and get our next task. The day continues as normal.
The next day, we’re informed by the supervisor that we will only be allowed to take one smoke break per day, and we would need to let him know before we took it.
We protested, but the supervisor told us it was out of his hands. While we only took around 3/4 smoke breaks, there was a noticeable drop in morale for the day. Little did they know I was planning my revenge.
A few years prior, I took a trip to Cuba and brought back some stuff to smoke.
I slipped three into my bag before I set off to work the next day. We finish off a task and let the supervisor know we’re taking our smoke break for the day. I headed straight for the break room to grab them and meet my co-workers at the shelter.
Barely able to contain my smile, I ask “Hey, wanna try?” Their faces light up as they realize my malicious compliance. They told us we could only have one smoke break. They didn’t say how long.
About 15 minutes in, the site manager spots us and comes over to ask what the heck we thought we were doing.
We just told him we were taking our smoke break, and we just wanted to make the most of it. He let out a loud laugh, and we continued talking for a while.
He let us know that people higher up in the company weren’t happy with the progression even though we were ahead of schedule.
We told him how we usually take smoke breaks between tasks and how this wouldn’t affect our productivity, and he gave us permission to take smoke breaks whenever we want since we seem like good people. Just don’t tell the other workers. Our supervisor nearly doubled over with laughter when we told him.
Yes, it was dumb, and yes, we could have lost our jobs over this. We’re lucky he had a good sense of humor. Was it worth it to see the look on his face? Absolutely.”
Another User Comments:
“It’s bizarre being a contractor. He’s not your boss and can’t really dictate hours or breaks.
But he can easily terminate the contract.
Before now, I’ve had a contract where nobody from the company hiring me was on site (so I had a manager I never saw), the manager on-site from the main company had no direct authority, and the project manager was also a contractor.” williambobbins
The management knew it wasn't worth pissing off the smokers. My friend had a valid point.
1. Your House, Your Rules? No Problem
There comes consequences to that, you know.
“So a few years ago, my dad was moving out of his house and in with his parents due to some health problems with my grandma.
This was over summer break, and I was just out of high school at the time, about to go into college, so I had absolutely nothing to do all summer as I waited to move out of state.
My dad never was and still isn’t super organized, whereas I alphabetize my own bookshelf with a full system Type-A about keeping things in order.
Call me weird, but I really enjoy reorganizing things/cleaning; it just hits that button for me.
So being that he had about 2 months until he closed on the house, I just start to pack up some of the house for him (basement was a DISASTER, and I had wanted to tear it up for years).
Within the first day, I had made a significant dent in the basement, which ended up being a very involved process. I didn’t realize that when we had moved in that a lot of the stuff from our old house was still packed haphazardly because my brother and I were too young to really help.
So I went through the process of unpacking the still packed boxes from house 1, labeling the boxes the way I wanted to, and then repacking those boxes appropriately. After about 3 days of this, I get about 50% done, including cleaning/packing my room and some of the garage.
My dad comes down to help me — all good with me. I start explaining where things go, and my dad wants to change it. I resist, explaining that I already have the system and that I have been doing the bulk of the packing, so he should probably just go with me on this one which is when he hits me with the namesake of this post.
So I relent because I know what will happen.
Anyone that’s really a type A will agree with me that the only thing more frustrating than things being chaotic and out of order is things that are slightly out of order. Which is what I KNEW would happen.
Regardless of the fight Dad and I had, he ended up almost following the system. Mostly things that belong in the labeled boxes went where they were supposed to, except for a few VERY important odds and ends that got put… well… not where they were supposed to.
I noticed this, but because of “my house my rules,” CLEARLY he has a plan, so I don’t say anything -.-
I knew the payoff was going to be a slow burn, and it came several months later when I was in school across the country and unable to help.
Dad calls me one day very flustered because he can’t find something he NEEDED. He had been in the storage unit he rented in my hometown for the better part of three hours looking.
Now the storage unit got packed HORRIBLY by the moving crew.
I have been in there a few times after this story, and I feared for my safety; it’s a legitimate labyrinth/jungle gym and a nightmare to get through, not to mention that this was mid-summer, and there was no AC.
So Dad is mad on the phone asking me where it is, and I ask him if it’s in the box I labeled in big red sharpie IMPORTANT CRAP.
He says no, and I smile a bit. Then he says, “Well, you were in charge of packing all of this stuff, and now I can’t find it.” That’s when I calmly reminded him of the blowout fight we had over this exact issue and how he commandeered my operation afterwords.
I told them that if I was actually in charge, it would be in the box labeled important crap. He hung up on me after that.
I love my dad, and I had no problem helping him out. We laugh about it today, but I can’t say I didn’t get a good chuckle at the thought of him sweating and cursing climbing around in that flipping storage unit death trap.
He recently found another place to live now that my grandparents have more in-home assistance, and I’ve already worked out that I’m gonna come help him move.
We already agreed I’m in charge this time.”
Another User Comments:
“The father of a friend of mine used to slightly adjust small items in a room just to mess with my friend because he has your same OCD.
My friend could sense something was amiss almost immediately and couldn’t rest until he “fixed” it.
That’s got to be just a freaking exhausting existence.” misterid
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