'I told you to throw that chair away': Boss demands that employee's squeaky chair be taken out of the office, cue malicious compliance

Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor

Apr 5, 2023 8:00 AM EDT

Every office has that coworker with the noisy chair. The one that squeaks every time your coworker moves even just an inch. The one that even makes a crazy amount of noise on conference calls. In this story, that coworker's name was Joe. His boss, Carl, had enough of the squeaky chair, as was documented via this thread on Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit.

Joe, however, really liked the chair and didn't want to give it up. After his boss discovered that Joe was still using said chair, he demanded that he never use it in the office again. That's where some good old-fashioned malicious compliance comes in. Sure, Joe never used the chair in the office again, but that didn't mean he couldn't take it from the office entirely and use the chair when he worked from home. Good on you, Joe, for standing up for yourself and for your chair!

For more stories like this, here's another one about a boss's attempted sabotage.