'I received a decrease in my pay': Employee gets pay docked for grammar mistakes, gets revenge on boss

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Dec 9, 2022 4:30 PM EST

Getting your pay docked because you didn't talk good?! Cue malicious compliance!

 

This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by u/Nancamp, who opened up about an experience they had editing English lesson plans for a company comprised mostly of non-native speakers. The Redditor and their boss also had differences of opinion because the boss followed UK English. This is clearly a case of bad management and unclear rules. If the Redditor knew it was part of their job description to call out other coworkers on their mistakes or their pay would be reduced, things obviously would have turned out differently. Instead, they just received a paycheck with a note after the fact. What followed was some gloriously petty revenge, as the original poster started calling out mistakes on lesson plans as instructed. Whose mistakes did they just so happen to discover? Isn't it obvious? Their boss's errors!

 

Keep scrolling below for the full play-by-play. For more, check out this post about a group of technicians' very own malicious compliance.

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 9718000640
    via charlesdeluvio
  • 02
    Font - Knock money off my paycheck for grammar mistakes? Let me point out all the mistakes on my bosses work. M OC Years ago I took a job in another country for a very small company that taught English. My responsibilities included reviewing and editing lesson plans created by non-native English speakers.
    via u/Nancamp
  • 03
    Font - Many of the lessons taught EU English while I am accustomed to US English, my boss (and the only other native English speaker) was from the UK. Therefore there were certain nuances that I was unfamiliar with. That being said, I was one of the better people on the team QAing but I wasn't perfect by any means. There were often glaring mistakes I saw slip through on lessons not assigned to me to review but I never purposefully called people out for them. It was kind of a company and bad less
    via u/Nancamp
  • 04
    Font - One pay period, months after I had been working there, I received a decrease in my pay along with a note explaining that the reasoning was because of X and X mistakes that had slipped through on my work. I was pissed as this was not a part of my contract but I couldn't really contest it in this foreign country.
    via u/Nancamp
  • 05
    Font - The note did however note that this decrease in pay for "mistakes" made on job duties was for all employees in my department. I knew that there were tons of mistakes on other lesson plans that weren't mine. So I pulled up the first one and began sending messages in the group chat of every mistake I could find. And there were a lot.
    via u/Nancamp
  • 06
    Font - I did this rapid fire until my my boss who was sitting across from me sent me a message that essentially said: "Don't worry I can assure you I am being held to the same standards and expectations" before he got up and walked away in a huff.
    via u/Nancamp
  • 07
    Font - After he walked out of earshot my other coworker laughed and said he had messaged her and asked how I knew that particular lesson was one he had QA'd. I told her I didn't know I had just pulled up the first one I knew there were mistakes on. I didn't get anymore money taken out of my paychecks after that but I left the company shortly after. Edit: Have learned I'm stupid and it was British English.
    via u/Nancamp
  • 08
    Font - MiaowWhisperer +2. 6 hr. ago Who's the person deciding upon the mistakes in order to deduct pay? Surely they should be doing the job you were doing. And what happened when they missed mistakes?
    via u/Nancamp
  • 09
    Font - KFiev 5 hr. ago If i had to guess, probably the manager trying to be slick. As a manager its likely his job to report errors by spot checking them, pulling x number of lessons from each agent and double checking their work. I also doubt this manager was actually being held to the same standard, if theyre making so many more mistakes then theory would hold the QA after their QA affecting their pay would incentivize him to pay more attention to what hes doing, but sounds like thats not the
    via u/Nancamp
  • 10
    Font - Frankjc3rd +3.4 hr. ago America and England, two countries separated by a common language.
    via u/Nancamp
  • 11
    Font - MajorNoodles +2.1 hr. ago I worked QA for a company with dev and product almost entirely outsourced to India, so we'd have so many strings come in that were written by people educated in UK English instead of US English, which, since we were a US company, almost always needed to be updated. Occasionally there would be a few where I liked how it sounded better in UK English so I'd push to have those left in.
    via u/Nancamp
  • 12
    Font - rokohemda 28 min. ago We had native speakers at my English school in Tokyo from the US, UK, and Australia. We used to love doing the crosswords in one of the papers on break but it broke everyone as they would mix the different spelling styles in the answers.
    via u/Nancamp
  • 13
    Font - arkie87 26 min. ago Seems like it would be illegal to retroactively change a contract without consent. Going forward, sure, because you can just quit; but retroactively, no way
    via u/Nancamp
  • 14
    Font - Jabberminor 2 hr. ago That's poor management. Surely it would be best to tell them that there are grammar mistakes first so they can fix it. Not 'I'm telling you the moment you find out your pay is decreased.'
    via u/Nancamp
  • 15
    Font - sarah-vdb 7 hr. ago There's American English, British English, and an "International English" that mashes up the two into the most commonly-used form of a word/term in theory, but is a bit of a free-for-all in practice. I'm a former copy editor and each house style guide would be wildly different from the next.
    via u/Nancamp
  • 16
    Font - Don't get me started on English where the non- native speaker thinks they know best because they happen to be Dutch, who are the "best" non-native speakers in the world, apparently... (if I see "welcome at" one more time I will scream. One day I'll get arrested for running through the city with a fat red marker, correcting all the signs, and I will have no regrets whatsoever).
    via u/Nancamp

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antiwork job malicious compliance english revenge work petty revenge paycheck reddit thread Reddit
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