'It was incredible how much money they wasted': Frequent traveler employee maliciously complies with 'petty' company rules, costs them tons of money

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Jul 3, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

Some companies seem to thrive on making their employee's work lives as petty as possible. This person can certainly attest to that with their place of work, which tried to make employees' lives harder, only for it to backfire spectacularly.

Many companies demand loyalty without ever proving that they're worth being loyal to. Some places want you to recall the past, when folks could work for a company for their entire career and earn a pension. But they seem to forget that people were loyal because that was earned — not just because someone at the company demanded they act that way. Plus, why would you be loyal to a company you're unhappy at? 

As this person writes in their post to r/MaliciousCompliance, they spent 15 years working for a place that required them to travel all the time. While the OP, u/vitus7, was based in Hawaii, they were initially happy with their travel circumstances. They even got paid a small bit for their travel time, which the OP called a "win/win" situation. However, travel from Hawaii to anywhere else is going to take quite some time. It takes a full ten hours just to fly from the island to the east coast of America, let alone traveling to even further destinations. When the OP was being fairly compensated for their travel time, it wasn't a big deal, but when the company doubled down on their "petty and aggressive" tactics toward employees, the OP simply complied as best they could. 

Up next, check out a batch of mildly infuriating moments — like the person whose tattoo artist slipped, and tried to pretend it never happened. 

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  • 01
    Water - 'You don't want to pay me a few dollars to save thousands? Ok...' 2010
    via C.Valdez on Unsplash
  • 02
    Human body - You don't want to pay me a few dollars to save thousands? Ok...
    via u/vitus7
  • 03
    Font - I used to work for a company about 15 years ago that involved constant travel every month, both domestic and international. We were based in New York but a lot of people lived all around the US, which worked out since we rarely had to travel to New York if you played your cards right. There were two main ways of making this work. You could volunteer for an assignment before your normal rotation started and they would fly you from your home to the work location, or if there was work at/nea
    via u/vitus7
  • 04
    Font - I was living in Hawaii at the time. There was a lot of work in Hawaii so I was fully taking advantage of the option to start in Honolulu. Since it was a roughly 10-hour flight from the east coast to Hawaii, I got paid about 3 hours and the company didn't have to buy someone airfare to get there - win/win.
    via u/vitus7
  • 05
    Font - This company could be very petty and aggressive towards its employees at times. It was a really strange company culture. They would fire or suspend people on a whim along with other questionable practices. For example, I witnessed 2 employees get fired for being in minor fender- benders with minimal damage and no injuries. The kicker was they even fired their immediate supervisors over it. It was totally random when they would go off the rails with someone so everyone walked on eggshells.
    via u/vitus7
  • 06
    Font - I was able to avoid the petty drama for the first year and a half that I worked there but it finally caught up to me. One day I noticed they weren't crediting me with the 1:3 travel pay for starting in my home city. Sometimes that happens and you just need to call in for them to fix it. Up until now, it hasn't been an issue. So, I call in to inquire about it and I'm told that they don't pay travel pay. I remind them of the policy and that I've been using it lately without issue. They tran
    via u/vitus7
  • 07
    Font - The manager tells me they are going to research it and find out who it was and counsel them. At that point, I remembered the person I spoke with two months ago was this manager. So I informed them that they were the ones that fixed it last time. Their response was "oh, well we don't do that anymore". I said "ok" and ended the call. Apparently, I pied them off somehow. I have my suspicions of what happened but whatever. Malicious compliance activated!
    via u/vitus7
  • 08
    Font - The next month, and just about every month after that, I volunteer to start early for an assignment in Germany. Now, instead of paying me 3 hours of pay for the flight I don't have to take, they are now paying the pay and airfare to fly someone else to Hawaii while also paying for my business class airfare from Honolulu to Germany (along with the pay for the travel). They're paying several thousands of dollars in airfare to save paying me a hundred dollars. I kept this up until I was fina
    via u/vitus7
  • 09
    Font - They also had a policy where if you were working in a place where they knew you lived or had friends/relatives that you'd stay with, they wouldn't pay you the per diem if you canceled the hotel reservation they had for you. So everyone would just check in to the hotel and then go stay at home or with friends/relatives. Now, instead of saving money on the hotel, the company was paying for the hotel AND the per diem.
    via u/vitus7
  • 10
    Font - This kind of thinking was common at this company. If they thought you were getting something too good, they would spend all kinds of money to make sure you didn't get anything, even if it didn't cost them anything or if they were saving money in the process. A few years after I left the company ended up going out of business. No doubt thanks to their shortsightedness and mismanagement.
    via u/vitus7
  • 11
    Font - wernercd A few years after I left the company ended up going out of business. All good stories need a happy ending :)
    via u/wernercd
  • 12
    Font - vitus7 OP Yea, it was incredible how much money they wasted. They were in a unique position to make a lot of money so they were sloppy. There was no way it was sustainable long term. I used to warn people that the gravy train wouldn't last and to try to find other places to work before it ended. I have no sympathy for that company and its managers for the way they treated people.
    via u/vitus7
  • 13
    Font - firnien-arya We would rather go broke making sure these ed peasants godd don't squeeze another penny out of us!!! GAHHH!!! *shakes fist towards the sky".
    via u/firnien-arya
  • 14
    Font - Hammer OfTheHeretics +3. Good businesses think in terms of positive sum relationships. Bad businesses think in terms of zero sum relationships. *Really* bad businesses think in terms of negative sum relationships.
    via u/Hammer OfTheHeretics
  • 15
    Font - ProfessionalDaikon16. Wow this makes me very grateful for my company. 85% of us work from home and of those 90% travel about 90% of the time. They give us a corporate AmEx, we book our travel, we keep the miles, hotel rewards, car rental rewards, etc. And in return we don't take advantage of the Corp AmEx. Downside I'm hardly home
    via u/ProfessionalDaikon16
  • 16
    Font - vitus7 OP We did get to keep the miles and hotel points, which was a good thing. We also had an Amex but that was only for special cases. Most of our travel was handled by a travel department. Being away from home for so long was rough. When I got home my days consisted of taking care of all the stuff that went wrong while I was gone, prepping stuff for me to be gone on the next rotation, and laundry/packing. Not much of a life even when I was at home.
    via u/vitus7
  • 17
    Font - nismo2070 I will never understand the idiocy that goes into some corporate policies. The sheer fact that their own effort to save money cost them more money should disqualify them from making decisions. It would be one thing if they broke even after those efforts. But nooooo00. Let's loose money trying to save money. The thing is, most of these bean counter types do not factor morale and loyalty into their little computations.
    via u/nismo2070
  • 18
    Font - vitus7 OP Me neither. I was completely shocked every time I turned around there. They did things like this on so many occasions. Sometimes it wasn't about being petty towards an employee, sometimes it was just bad decision-making and/or not having the full picture before making decisions.
    via u/vitus7
  • 19
    Font - There was a time they flew someone from New York to Japan. When he got in we asked him where he flew in from. When he told us "New York" we were blown away. We had a guy that just got sent to New York that was with us in Japan. They probably flew past each other. They were both equally qualified. It was a complete waste of money but at least those two got some good frequent flier miles.
    via u/vitus7
  • 20
    Product - Veriden_ Sounds like you moved on from the dumpster fire to better things 4 vitus7 OP Reply Share I did. I finally got out of there about 6-7 months after that.
    via u/Veriden_
  • 21
    Font - rolyf ingdiscopoly. Now I want to know the reason you suspect that they got mad at you... only if you care to share?
    via u/olyf***ingdiscopoly
  • 22
    Font - vitus7 OP I was in Europe and one of the people in the US gave me the wrong information when giving me information about my schedule. She said "tomorrow" instead of giving me the date. I was a day ahead so it caused a bit of confusion and some minor shuffling of things but nothing critical. It did not impact the job in any way. They got a hold of my boss in an effort to burn me over it -- which was stupid, it was just a minor mistake. As per
    via u/vitus7
  • 23
    Font - normal at this company, the boss came after me. I told him what happened and they went to go review the phone call recordings. They found that I was right and I heard the person got into trouble. Again, such an overreaction to a minor mistake that no one was upset about. At least not me. That is the way this company was though. They would overreact over the smallest issues.
    via u/vitus7
  • 24
    Font - So since she supposedly got in trouble over it, that office was probably upset at me over it. It wasn't long after this that the travel pay issue came up. It's the only thing I can think of that caused it. It didn't make sense to me but this company defied reasoning sometimes.
    via u/vitus7
  • 25
    Font - Here's another one for you. A few months later I get a call from my boss. He's really upset at me because they called me to notify me of something and I didn't respond fast enough. I told him I didn't respond because when they called me I was 30,000' over western China in an airplane. He said "Oh" and dropped it, no apology.
    via u/vitus7

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hotel work stories malicious compliance work malicious-compliance-reddit flight travelling finances Hawaii Travel business money
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