Update: 'I used up every sheet of paper in our 14-story building': Writer agrees to "print out the internet" at entitled boss's request

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Oct 13, 2024 11:00 AM EDT

You don't always get the chance to go absolutely crazy at your job, and this person decided to embrace it. They were told to print a frankly absurd amount of papers out, and they did it with gusto. 

In some jobs, you get pushed around so much that you reach a breaking point. You decide to stop trying so hard and to just do exactly as your boss says, no matter what they tell you. After all, what's the worst that could happen? You get fired and have to work somewhere you actually like? This person seems like they were on the brink of leaving such a job, thanks to their manager who continually berated them. In fact, their boss actually called them "stupid" to their face, which is incredibly disrespectful. So, this employee decided to get back at them in the funniest way possible. And all they had to do was follow the rules exactly as they were instructed to! You can check out the full story below. 

Up next, read about this worker who discovered that their company punished them in exactly the same way whether they were 3 minutes late or 3 hours late, saying, "No reasons for being late are accepted."

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    ว
    via Getty Images on Unsplash+

    This image is for illustration only, and the subjects are models; the image does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

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    Print out the internet? Yes Ma'am! 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 modern and actually useful doc (think one page with our policies and links
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    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. She calls me in her office on Tuesday afternoon and proceeds
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    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 first thing Monday morning. Mind you, this is now Tuesday and we usually had some of Wednesday off. I was not really planning to work Thursday
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    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." 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
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    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. On some of these, if you missed the publication date, your agency paid $100,000 a day in delay fees. Or you would ¡ off a congressperson, which is never a good idea. And I was really getting sick and tired of my bosses requests that took me
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    away from my actual work. 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 request. So I did work Thanksgiving. As I was doing
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    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. 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
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    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 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
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    everything. The charge was .... malicious compliance. I kept my job only because I did have her request in an email. ===EDITS Closed my parens. UPDATE and explanations. I did not expect this to get more than a few hundred views, so thank you all for reading and being amused. A few
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    explanations from questions in the comments: "I kept my job only because..." | say that because the boss was VERY UPSET and was going to HR demanding that I be put on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) where she could then take her revenge and create other issues that would have gotten me fired. I was probably not in danger of being fired simply for this action. But I was not put on a PIP. I was given a Disciplinary
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    Letter. So the only actual fallout was that I could not get a bonus (we get $1,000 bonuses if our performance is above average). I would have been ok in a RIF as this is a mild punishment. Yes, the charge actually and literally was "Malicious Compliance." That was what was written on the Disciplinary Letter. She could not get me on anything else. She had not set any limits (you can only spend x hours, print out x materials, etc.). And I
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    had her instructions in an email to print out the handbook and all pertaining information from websites. I do not remember the exact wording. I probably should have kept that all these years, but when I left the government after 3 decades, I pretty much threw out everything. The two six-foot stacks were not just the paper printouts. The handbook covered everything and was more of an intranet in itself. I had been working on this
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    project for a long time in my spare time. The handbook covered everything. In short, this was a well-organized intranet where you could quickly find exactly what you needed and no more. I had Human Resources policies on leave, tardiness, all disciplinary actions, retirement, health insurance, taxes, transfer requests, etc.; how to write all types of reports (planning reports, facility review reports, congressionals, etc.) along with all templates for the reports;
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    project management and public involvement processes, etc.; every position description and how to write performance reviews, award letters, etc.; emergency procedures for particular buildings, etc.; how to conduct and write a Job Hazard Analysis for any type of work on a facility, etc.. .. . There was absolutely no reason to print this out. And my boss never gave me a reason. I had been arguing against printing this for at least a year before my boss gave me the
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    order to even print the 200 pages I had in the first place. These 200 pages each briefly explained the situation (for example, why we do a Job Hazard Analysis, what it should cover, and who should do one) and then gave links (for example to the Word Template you could download and use and to good examples). So, I already had had a LOT of material that I just put into the piles. So the piles looked like:* Index tab with sticky for the topic* Sheet of paper explaining the concept*
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    Ream of paper printing out the internet (all of the pages with the related links), neatly put into a notebook.* Pre-printed examples of templates, reports, etc. We did have a printing unit off site, so major jobs were printed there. Thus we did not have that many copiers in the building (one per floor). And yes, before you ask, my boss ** could have** asked the copy unit to do the work. But the copy unit would only print things that were
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    already in a pre-approved pdf format. They would not have printed the internet for my boss. Yes, my boss kept her job. She was promoted soon after from being the group manager of about 15 people to being the Deputy Chief of a division of several hundred people. Yes, I worked at the same job (technical writer) for 30+ years. First off, I loved what I did. I was good at it. I never wanted to go
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    into management and deal with people headaches myself. Second off, I needed the health insurance and would not have been able to get a private company job because of my underlying handicap. So staying put in the government and doing what I loved worked out well for me. And I was quite effective at my job. I wrote documents that allowed decisionmakers to understand complex issues and make good decisions, employees use and protect our facilities,
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    etc.. My colleagues respected me and we worked well together. Yes, this is the U.S. Federal Government. And we did have a very ineffectual union where only a few people were allowed to be bargaining unit members. And the union could have done very little to save my job. Thanks for reading my funny little story.
    via u/SignSavings9270
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    itbeazombieyo Another day saved by CYA paper trail.
    via u/itbeazombieyo
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    Bovine_Arithme... I had a boss once tell me "do x" and I explained (this being my area of expertise) that doing "x" would ruin our product. She said that if I didn't "do x" I would be fired for insubordination. I asked her to put it in an email, which I immediately printed out and kept safe. So I did "X."
    via u/Bovine_Arithmetic
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    A few weeks later, when the product was due to be delivered, management discovered the product was ruined and undeliverable. I was called in to the vice president's office and asked to explain why I had done "X" when it was obvious that it would ruin the product. I showed them the email from my boss. They fired me because I "should have refused" to do "x."
    via u/Bovine_Arithmetic
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    Cfwydirk 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 first thing Monday morning. She heard you but didn't listen. Stupid is as stupid does.
    via u/Cfwydirk
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    She may not be stupid but, her actions say otherwise!
    via u/Cfwydirk
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    darknightofthe... I used to work as a tech writer at a defense contractor. There were several times when our customer (not tech-savvy at all) requested to receive the entire maintenance manual (also around 10,000 pages) be printed out and mailed to them for them to review. Thankfully, my manager killed that idea.
    via u/darknightofthesoul24

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