‘I engaged in malicious compliance mode, and it cost him’: New boss costs company $6,000 following employees' malicious compliance, boss gets demoted

Author image for Eleonora Bader
Eleonora Bader
Apr 10, 2023 1:00 PM EDT

New jobs can be as exciting as they are challenging, but when you enter as a new manager, and you have a hotshot complex, this can be disastrous for a company and its employees. This boss in particular, who we'll call Steve, made especially unreasonable demands on his employees, essentially alienating them. Steve demanded that his employees come to an unnecessary in-person meeting out of state, on extremely short notice.

Because it was so unreasonable, the employees knew what they had to do. They decided to maliciously comply, which cost the company (much thanks to dear Steve) $6,000 dollars out of budget. See, the employees knew the rules inside and out. They realized they were entitled to overtime, a breakfast allowance, a lunch allowance, a dinner allowance, and so on… no wonder it ended up costing so much. This ultimately led to Steve's demotion, which the employees were overjoyed at.

To understand the full extent of what happened, scroll down below and read for yourself. For more stories like this, here are some funeral home owners that made it their mission to upset their new neighbors, leading to a series of unfortunate events (for them); AKA, petty revenge.

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  • 01
    Font - Posted by r/r/MaliciousCompliance u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic 2 hours ago S Yet another new manager facing the consequences of their actions story. L OC I'll keep the details as vague as possible because I'm still with this organisation. I work for a government department. We have offices and locations all over the state. I'm based out of a city that's about a two and a bit hour train ride to our head office.
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 02
    Font - At the time I was working in a team that had members working remotely all across the state, looking after policy, process, and quality assurance. Our old manager had gone and gotten himself promoted for being genuinely brilliant at his role. So our new manager, Steve, was hired in from the glorious world of banking, and he was here to whip us "lazy public servants into shape".
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 03
    Font - A few days after he began his role, he called us all to a teleconference to inform us he wanted all of us to be at the head office 8am, tomorrow morning for an all day in-person team meeting. He wanted to see us in "meat space", to "size" us up, understand what we were doing, and see where we "weren't keeping up with the private sector".
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 04
    Font - As I mentioned, due to the nature of the work we were doing, we were all across the state. So in-person, whole team meetings were rare and if they occurred at all, they were booked weeks in advance. We were all adept at videoconferencing looonnnnngggg before CC ).
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 05
    Font - Some of us tried to tell our new high- flyer manager that almost none of us were in the same city as him, and to be there on such short notice would mean travel expenses, meal allowances, overtime etc. He didn't seem to care, and told us in no uncertain terms to “just be at head office tomorrow at 8am" before abruptly hanging up.
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 06
    Font - Now, I should explain something. I'm one of a handful of union delegates in our department. I know our award back to front, specifically the sections dealing with travel, allowances, and overtime. So I engaged malicious compliance mode, if Steve wanted us there fine, but it'll cost him. So I quickly went about emailing my team what Steve had done by requiring us to be in the Head office at 8am and what to do.
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 07
    Font - Because we'd have to travel outside our normal work hours, our work day clock started ticking the moment we left our homes and only stopped once we got home. Some of our team travelled overnight, they were entitled to overtime to travel, a dinner allowance, and accommodation for the night, and the same returning. As someone travelling in the morning before 7am, I was entitled to a breakfast allowance, lunch allowance, and if I got home after 9pm, a dinner allowance also.
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 08
    Font - So, I left my house at 5am to catch the only train that would get me there in time. The train was running slightly behind, but I made it in time. So my first 3 hours of my work day down and I'd done no work.
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 09
    Font - After a brief period of us introducing ourselves to Steve, he proceeded to spend the next 4 hours telling us about all of the things he did at the bank, how he made so much money for them, where they'd sent him as a holiday bonus, how we're all stuck in the past in the public service, the work he'd seen wasn't up-to "private sector standards" etc. He had all the co ness of a finance bro who had always failed upwards because others had picked up his slack.
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 10
    Font - By 3pm my entire team were into overtime pay territory, and Steve was just warming up with his non-charm offensive. Another 3 hours go by with Steve verbally patting himself on his back, deeply in love hearing his own voice, but all I hear is 'cha-ching cha- ching'. Steve decided that 5pm was a good time to finish up. He stopped mid sentence, looked at his watch, and unceremoniously said "that's all for today. Go home now" and walked out.
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 11
    Font - After I and a few other gave a few awkward shrugs to each other, we all packed up and started to make our seperate ways home after doing no work all day. I, myself got to the train station pretty quickly, and saw a train was leaving soon that would get me home around 8pm... or I could catch the all stations train and get home closer to 9:30pm. You know what? No matter how fast I could run, I just couldn't catch that earlier train, damn I'd just have to catch that all stations train and be
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 12
    Font - I submitted my claims the next day, 4 and half hours at double rate, my train tickets, my taxi fares to and from the train station, my breakfast, lunch, and dinner allowances. For me alone it was close to a $500 expense claim. The rest of my team followed suit, and ensured they claimed everything too. Steve tried to fight us on approval for the claims, but quickly learned that unlike in the world of banking, most public servants are union, and we'd raise living hell if he denied our award
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 13
    Font - His all day Steve-fest symposium, blew a good $6000 hole in his budget. Needless to say, while Steve was our manager, he never required us to attend an in-person meeting again - videoconferencing was just fine. He only lasted 6 months before "leaving for new opportunities"... he just went back to his old job at the bank. Guess he was the one who couldn't keep up.
    via u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 14
    Font - Top-Put2038 I hate "I love me, I'm so successful" speeches with a passion. Vote +3.2 hr. ago Vote Reply Share Absurd-n-Nihilistic OP. 2 hr. ago He absolutely had a 'aren't I so great?' Shaped hole in his personality Reply Share
    via u/Top-Put2038, u/Absurd-n-Nihilistic
  • 15
    Font - NotHis RealName . 1 hr. ago I had a manager once who I didn't like but he did teach me a valuable lesson. If you come into an organization in a leadership role, do nothing but learn for the first 30-45 days. Vote Reply Share
    via u/NotHisRealName
  • 16
    Font - MedicBaker 2 min. ago At my job, we had our executive boss of the organization retire. His replacement was hired to the tune of $450,000 a year (government, with a huge oversight). He did what you suggested for a year. Vote Reply Share
    via u/MedicBaker
  • 17
    Font - thatburghfan +32 min. ago Heh, I remember when the company I was working for hired a new project manager and he was given a project they had just landed. He called like 15 people together and explained that in his entire career, he had never over-spent a project budget. He knows that's a common problem here, so he just wants everyone to know they will NOT overrun their budget. The people working on this project are going to show everyone it can be done.
    via u/thatburghfan
  • 18
    Font - Well, his project happened to be with our most difficult customer. And to my knowledge they had never made any money with that customer's projects, but they would make it up later on spare parts and extra work so it wasn't a big deal - but at the project level every one was a loser with that customer.
    via u/thatburghfan
  • 19
    Font - Short version, 18 months later and the project has spent all the money and still has 3 months to go - the most difficult months because that's when the customer has to install all the equipment. And the customer is all union. And the customer's subcontractors are all union. And they are extremely talented in making you pay extra for every little glitch.
    via u/thatburghfan
  • 20
    Font - Let's say one site is to be installed on the weekend. Should take 38 hours - leaving a few hours buffer for any problems because whether you're done or not, you must have all your ci ip cleaned up and everything running by 5 AM Monday. All three shifts will be fully staffed to grind through the work. The customer and their contractors work at a snail's pace. So we have to ask them to work overtime and overlap with another shift. Time and a half for overtime and double time if it's on Sund
    via u/thatburghfan
  • 21
    Font - a couple of things that we can't replace until next weekend. So everyone has to come back again to finish up. That $75,000 part of the work is now costing $120,000. They have to pay for the $500 in parts they broke, but made another $8,000 in overtime. So Mr. Project Manager had to eat crow about never losing money on a project as the customer schooled him big-time. He was warned but his ego made him double down on his insistence we would not lose money.
    via u/thatburghfan
  • 22
    Font - FatBloke4 +2 . 1 hr. ago Some banks are useless at saving money. Back in the 90s, I worked at a subsidiary of a very large US multinational bank. Between the US office, handling North America and us in the UK, handling everything else, we were losing $2 million a month. Every second Monday, our VP would fly to NY on Concorde for a meeting and fly back via Concorde on the same day. Each flight was $4000. The meeting was to explain to the big bank parent why we were losing so much of their
    via u/FatBloke4

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horrible-managers company budget toxic-workplace-stories malicious compliance company-costs malicious-compliance-reddit petty revenge demoted overworked-employees Horrible Bosses funny
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