'I have to pay for that $0.10 personal call charge? Done.': Company charges employees $0.10 for personal calls, employee makes processing that fee cost more than that

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Jun 22, 2023 9:00 AM EDT

Companies love to introduce small fees as a means of saving a few dollars or adding an extra stream of revenue. Hey—if you're a bank or network provider with 70 million customers, charging each of them a $0.10 fee every month is going to shore up a clean $84 million in revenue a year, and that's not going to look bad for some senior manager's bonus figure.

These tactics can be employed against your employees, too. Nitpicking small costs and introducing small penalties can cause broad-sweeping changes in revenue that will make it look like you, Mr. Manager, actually know what you're doing. But there are always drawbacks, chiefly in damage to morale which results in mass turnover once veteran employees pack it in after watching the quality of the workplace decline one step too far in the name of a fatter bottom line.

This employee wasn't going to put up with a $0.10 fee that was levied every time they wanted to call their family while away on business trips. Or rather—they were, but they weren't going to without making an example of the outrageous change. So, rather than allowing the fee to be deducted directly from their expense report, they took two nickels—mailing them using the company's stamps and envelopes to their supervisor. A bewildered call from one of the bigwigs a few days later led to the rule being overturned.

Read on to see this brilliant, classic story of malicious compliance and the response it generated when it was originally shared on Reddit. Next, check out this IT manager who quit and cut off their company's entire internet.

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'I have to pay for that $0.10 personal call charge? Done.': Company charges employees $0.10 for personal calls, employee makes processing that fee cost more than that

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