'The charge was... malicious compliance': Tyrannical boss demands employee 'print out the internet', employee jams boss's office with 6 feet stack of paper

Advertisement
  • 01
    Font - Posted by u/SignSavings9270 29 minutes ago Print out the internet? Yes Ma'am! MOC This is about a decade ago, but still well within the realm of the internet. I was a technical writer for the government and had slowly been transferring our old employee handbook (think government bureaucracy from the 1940s) into a
  • 02
    Font - modern and actually useful doc (think one page with our policies and links to useful websites, like Office of Personnel Management, forms for workman's comp, etc.). My boss wanted the whole thing printed out, on her desk the next morning. This was Monday of the Thanksgiving weekend. I printed out the 200 or so pages and just had the links to the various websites in bold. This took about an hour, and I left it on her desk before going home that night.
  • 03
    Font - She calls me in her office on Tuesday afternoon and proceeds to yell at me at how stupid I am, do I think people can just go to a website when it is on paper? No. I need to PRINT everything out. I calmly tell her that these sites are pretty dense and deep and it would be about 10,000 pages. She says she does not care, it needs to be ON HER DESK DA MIT first thing Monday
  • 04
    Font - morning. Mind you, this is now Tuesday and we usually had some of Wednesday off. I was not really planning to work Thursday Thanksgiving or Friday, as I had applied for leave and was looking forward to a nice relaxing long weekend. I don't have family, but I had plans. But ok. I asked for, and got the request to have "everything pertaining to the employee handbook online in a printed format."
  • 05
    Font - I also had real work and real deadlines. A quick bit of context: She was my boss, she did my performance appraisals and she could make my life miserable and possibly fire me. However, my clients were teams that put together engineering plans, biological assessments, scientific journal articles, reports to Congress, etc. that had real-world deadlines.
  • 06
    Font - On some of these, if you missed the publication date, your agency paid $100,000 a day in delay fees. Or you would p is off a congressperson, which is never a good idea. And I was really getting sick and tired of my bosses requests that took me away from my actual work.
  • 07
    Font - So I was printing and printing all the rest of Tuesday afternoon, and then Wednesday. I had to go to the site, print, click on the next link, print, etc. On Wednesday, we got a congressional (a letter from a congress critter that was actually important. Had we not gotten that, I might not have done what I did... I got overtime approved pronto to take care of this
  • 08
    Font - request. So I did work Thanksgiving. As I was doing that, I kept on printing. And printing. I used up every sheet of paper in our 14 story building. I kept on researching the response for the congressional, printing, going to the next floor to carefully get that packet of paper to tuck under the appropriate page, etc. I had paper in about 20 different conference rooms.
  • 09
    Font - I could have done the congressional in about 8 hours. BUT it was not due until Monday. And all of this printing took me a good 24 hours of work. So I put in for 32 hours (Thurs, Fri, Sat, and Sun). Got it done. This is now two stacks of paper, each about 6 feet high. I was waaaay under in my estimate of 10,000 pages as it was more like about
  • 10
    Font - 30,000. (Remember, I had at least 5 printers going at once for 4 days etc.). I put this in my boss's office (which was already none too clean and pristine). I got written up, with a disciplinary hearing and everything. The charge was .... malicious compliance. I kept my job only because I did have her request in an email.
  • 11
    Font - SignSavings9270 OP. 9 hr. ago Should read "got the request in writing..." Ironically in an email. ✩ Vote Reply Share Reonlive420 Print it for prosperity ✩ Vote +2.8 hr. ago Reply Share
  • 12
    Font - SignSavings9270 OP. 8 hr. ago Funny enough, we had a Department of the Interior lawsuit going on and had to print out every single email we ever got. It was weird. Vote Reply Share
  • 13
    Font - itbeazombieyo - 9 hr. ago Another day saved by CYA paper trail. Reply Share Vote +2.9 hr. ago CYA emails/paper trials and CC/BCC are critical tools for surviving bureaucracy. smaguss Vote Reply Share ♡
  • 14
    Font - Sfelex 9 hr. ago Did nothing happen to her? For her "I don't care" stupid request? Vote Reply Share SignSavings9270 OP. 9 hr. ago She got promoted. Vote Reply Share
  • 15
    Font - SteamingTheCat +2.9 hr. ago Did she give you a good performance review? Reply Share Vote SignSavings9270 OP. 9 hr. ago No. But I would have gotten written up for NOT having done it, as well. So heads she won, tails I lost. Luckily, she moved on.
  • 16
    Font - bujoojoo 8 hr. ago · You should have filed a protest through the OPM. Any disciplinary action received based on complying with written instructions would likely be overturned. If she persisted with further actions against you, you then could file a grievance and state you were being subjected to a hostile work environment and request reassignment
  • 17
    Font - to a different group or organization. Your HR dept did you a big disservice by not instructing you of your rights as a govt employee. As long as you had no previous write- ups and your past assessments were good, you probably would have won your case. Vote Reply Share
  • 18
    Font - SignSavings9270 OP. 7 hr. ago Yeah. But the only discipline was that I could not get a performance bonus that year. $1,000 at stake. Big whoop. So I just shrugged it off. Reply Share Vote
  • 19
    Font - bujoojoo 7 hr. ago So because of the write-up, you can be subject to lowered assessment scores, which can affect your retention status if there is a RIF. It can also be used against you if you ever seek another position in a different organization, and your eligibility for a merit promotion.
  • 20
    Font - A disciplanary write-up can seriously mess up future opportunities. So, pretty much a big whoop. But you do you, boo. Reply Share Vote
  • 21
    Font - Ion Otter +1.6 hr. ago So because of the write-up, you can be subject to lowered assessment scores, which can affect your retention status if there is a RIF. I was just going to say, they work for the government. Government don't have no RIFs. Besides, if that was ten
  • 22
    Font - years ago, then I'm going to wager they started work no less than six year before that, maybe more. So instead of punching a brick wall and eventually getting through it, they just LOLd, shrugged and carried on. And now they're four or fewer years from retirement with a pension and full medical.
  • 23
    Font - Sometimes, it's not worth making waves. Especially if the only person it hurts is yourself. ↑ Vote Reply Share
  • 24
    Font - Soggy-Plenty7516 +1 · 9 hr. ago that's dumb. she requested it but you got in trouble. i understand it was years ago. but the fact that she didn't understand she could just look at anything and everything on the computer and didn't need a physical copy? if it was some HR thing? that would be malicious compliance on her part. but government jobs think different. so it is what it is. it happened.
  • 25
    Font - var poconn3 8 hr. ago “The charge was... malicious compliance.” Really?!? Oh please, please, please tell me they used those actual words in the write up. Certified by the federal government malicious compliance... you win! Reply Share Vote
  • 26
    Font - SignSavings9270 OP. 7 hr. ago Yes, somewhere in my personnel file, I have the official write up with the actual charge on the charge line "malicious compliance." She could not get me on anything else, not even wasted government supplies. The only way she could have gotten me on government waste was if she had put a limit on things. Usually, we have a limit
  • 27
    Font - (you can spend up to 10 hours on this project or spend up to $10,000 on this action). If you go over that limit, THEN you can be in trouble. But in her original email order, she had NO LIMIT. She could not get me on disobeying her order, because I obeyed her email order. The only thing she had to get me on was "malicious compliance."
  • 28
    Font - This, by the way, is not a charge that is covered in the HR handbook. HR handbook has things like you get a 2 to 7 day suspension for drinking alcohol, depending on the circumstances, or you get a suspension to being fired for lying on your application. But there is no set charge discipline for malicious compliance.

Tags

Scroll Down For The Next Article