'At the end of the month everyone was behind': Strict policy enforcement results in malicious compliance to derail micromanaging boss

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Dec 25, 2023 7:00 AM EST

Life is comprised of a series of rules, rules that, throughout our lives, are imposed upon us and, maybe, even set for us by ourselves. Some of these rules are paramount, and our ability to follow them will determine who we are, how we're perceived, and the effect on the world. Other rules are really quite silly, and one feels silly following them.

Chances are that these silly rules were written and enacted by someone who really had no idea what they were doing or were imposed by someone who was imposing rules for all the wrong reasons. Anyways, you'll run into plenty of these rules in your life, well before you've even finished school, and you'll run into plenty more through the course of your working life.

Sometimes, it even seems like workplace rules and processes are intentionally silly, except your boss doesn't seem to think so and doesn't appreciate that you think they are… making the rules far less silly and more frustrating when you're forced to adhere to them every day and follow processes that are superfluous and really don't make any sense.

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  • 01
    Posted by u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp 23 minutes ago Want us to strictly follow company policies? No problem LOC Hello everyone! First post here, on mobile and not a native English speaker, so forgive my mistakes. TLDR at the end. Hope this will satisfy your hunger of malicious compliance. This MC comes from a few years ago when I was working as an external developer for a software house.
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 02
    The team was great and the lead developer, let's call him Mark, was simply the best to work with. He was a very skilled developer with also the ability to easily coordinate the team's tasks. We also had a manager, John, who was also very friendly and easy to talk to. Our job was going smoothly. The company tracked the progress of the various projects in a software where John divided them in various steps. John set up these steps very broadly (es. Analisys, initial setup, development, release, ma
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 03
    We then needed to input the time we spent on each of these steps. If the project was missing some steps or hit the budget cap, we couldn't input our timesheets and (technicallly) weren't allowed to start working. Per company policy our duty was to inform our "direct superior" about this issues, in this case Mark. He then should have informed John, who finally would have to increase the cap.
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 04
    As the good manager that he was, John knew all this steps were a huge waste of Mark's and our time, so he allowed us to temporarily sign our timesheets locally and start or continue our work, gather himself all of our cap increase requests together, do all of them simultaneously, and then directly let us know we could input our timesheets in the software. Then, the company got acquired by an hedge fund. Suddenly a lot of new middle managers appeared, and John was moved to a higher position in a
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 05
    Phil tried to present himself as the "open to everyone's requests" manager, but it became obvious pretty quickly that he was more a "I'll stick to company policies as harder as I can" guy, probably to appeal to his ego or to some higher up. First thing he did was to completely change the projects organization, to "better check the project advancement". Now in a project EVERY TASK, EVERY LITTLE CHANGE, HAD ITS OWN STEP and budget cap. Remember that if the step was not in the software, we weren't
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 06
    He then enforced our daily timesheets input. It became mandatory to input them at maximum the next day, so we could "be more responsible about marking the project progress". It could have been ok if it wasn't for the fact that projects budgets were drastically reduced. Basically, after reaching the middle of our developments, we already reached those caps and could not insert any more timesheets. When we started asking Phil about creating those steps or raising the budget caps, like we did with
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 07
    Mark's job quickly became , as he basically had to spend half day asking Phil to create project steps or raise caps. We knew we were bothering Mark, and he knew we couldn't do anything else. He tried to talk to Phil about easing these policies, but without success. At the end of the month everyone was behind with the timesheets input, and some tasks were not started at all. Phil gathered us (and other teams) and started his rant about how "it was our fault since we required too much time to do o
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 08
    As our team leader, Mark was particularly targeted and probably missed some bonuses that he had no problem getting when John was the manager. His fault? Not letting Phil know soon enough that steps weren't available or budget caps were reached. It was enough for him, it was time to maliciously comply to company policies. He asked Phil to let us stay some minutes after the meeting to "explain us how to resolve this issues". He agreed but wanted to stay in the meeting too.
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 09
    Mark calmly said to us "it is imperative that you tell me, and only me, that steps are missing or caps have been reached as soon as you notice. You MUST send me an email with this precise subject. I'll then inform Phil. Only mail requests will be accepted" He remarked various times that the mail needed to have a specific subject format, like "Project X - Step Y - Missing" or "Project X - Step Y - Cap reached", and every time he was looking at us with a look that was saying "Just do like I say, t
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 10
    We started doing exactly what he told us, and soon discovered why he was so confident. A few days passed, and an angry Phil stormed in our room yelling at Mark that "his behavior was unacceptable and an urgent meeting with the higher-ups was scheduled in a few minutes". Mark went, and after about half an hour returned with a satisfied smile on his face, and after him a defeated Phil.
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 11
    He later told us that he basically set up a forwarding rule in his mailbox, which forwarded to Phil every single mail whose subjects matched the patterns above, with a predefined text like "Dear Phil, I'd like to inform you that the team brought to my attention the fact that project X id missing step Y" or similar. In those few days, he submerged Phil's mailbox with our requests. Phil probably hoped that the outcome of the meeting would have went in his favour, but the higher-ups stated that no
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp
  • 12
    Also, Mark now had proof that he was IMMEDIATELY notifying Phil about the projects issues, so nothing could be his or our fault anymore. I stopped working for the company shortly after, but after a few months they told me that Phil was demoted and moved to another position with lesser responsabilites. TLDR: new manager came in supervising our teams work, strictly enforcing company policies about projects timesheets input, and requesting to address budget caps increase requests to our lead develo
    via u/StuckToPcPleaseHelp

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