‘I Think You’ve Made a Mistake’ : Terrible Boss Adds Extra Workload on Employee, Won’t Pay More, Leading To Delivery Time Delays and Malicious Compliance

Eleonora Bader

Feb 7, 2023 10:00 AM EST

First, I think it's important to mention that the employee in question was a teenage girl. The job in question was being a newspaper carrier. And the boss in question was a complete and total idiot who thought she could cheat her employee out of a proper wage. When you're a kid entering the workforce (If I may call it that), you are probably going to be taken advantage of, salary-wise. Today, being a paperboy isn't as prevalent as it was back in the day before we could access the News on any and all digital devices.

Thirty years ago, newspapers in the suburbs were delivered by kids on bicycles. The weather could be rough, but rain or shine, the kid would load the papers into a delivery bag, and ride off in the cold wee hours of the morning, hurling them at the front doors of the homes in the neighborhood. The routes were always relatively close to home. The strain these heavy bags had on the kids' shoulders was brutal.

Now, to our point. Bosses back then were no better than they are now. It's nothing new that they try to trick you into doing more work, for exactly the same amount of pay. When you're a kid, you're even less likely to speak up. So if you were efficient, you were rewarded with more work — or picked up the slack of others, and your paycheck remained the same.

A woman took to Reddit, recounting a tale of malicious compliance she'd had back in the day when she would deliver papers. Her boss thought she could sneak in extra work, requiring more hours from the deliverer, without proper compensation — assuming naively that she'd get away with it. Ah well, that's what malicious compliance is for, right?

Scroll down for the full story — I've provided all the screenshots you need. You can also check out this Karen who picked the wrong employee to mess with, leading to a Karen face-off.