'You don't want to SEE these anymore? No problem!': Supervisor tells employee to stop being late, employee relays his words verbatim to HR and now no one ever gets reported late

Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor

Sep 1, 2023 10:00 AM EDT

If you have never heard of "malicious compliance," let this tale be your introduction to it. What it means is that you do exactly what you are told, I mean eeexaaaactlyyyy. You take every word literally. So if your boss says they don't want to see you being late anymore, then say "no problem!" and just stop letting them know you're late. Because they said they didn't want to see you being late anymore. None of those words told you to stop being late. You get my drift here?

This Reddit story is exactly that, it is malicious compliance in its most raw form. The OP was working an hourly job that he knew should be salaried because of the odd hours he had to work. However, since it was hourly, he had to clock in and out for every single little reason. Due to this, his supervisor was getting constant notices of him being late or too early, etc. This went on for months—OP tried to explain why it was happening, but the supervisor wasn't listening. He told him he didn't want to see these late reports anymore. So he said, "bet."

OP marched to HR and told them exactly what his supervisor said, that he didn't want to SEE these reports anymore. So… Stop sending them to him. HR also said "bet," and they stopped sending any late reports. Period. Life went on, the supervisor became very happy with all of his employees and it became a very happy work environment. Funny how if you stopped caring about the amount of hours you're getting from your employees and focus on the quality of work, it works out for everyone! Welcome to 2023, upper management.