Employee's malicious compliance backfires and turns into malicious acceptance, now he's being praised for turning 30 minutes of work into 2 hours: ‘Like bro, what do I even do?'

Author image for Elna McHilderson
Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor
May 31, 2025 10:00 AM EDT

When it comes to sticking it to the man, you have to be strategic. You can't just start doing something different and think that your boss is going to see that as an act of rebellion. Sometimes your "act of rebellion" can actually be beneficial to the person you're trying to stick it to. One man's fireable work is another man's promotable work! For example, you might think you're just doing some malicious compliance, but it might actually just seem like compliance to your boss. Entitled bosses have the audacity of a monster! So they really might just take your extra work effort as a form of respect rather than you trying to show them that they are being way too extra…

 

Take, for example, this employee. He got called out for what "not to do" in front of everyone, so he decided to do everything his new boss wanted him to do and more. He turned 30 minutes of work into 2 hours and the boss had to work extra for it. However, instead of getting called out for the inconvenience or unnecessary extra effort,  he got praised. Now he's stuck doing extra work forever… Or maybe that was just what he was supposed to be doing in the first place??

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  • "Complying maliciously kinda backfired on me"

    Not fired or anything, but how did you guys get these happy endings where your supervisors or managers backed off lol I work for a start up lab. We are a relatively small operation and usually do
    via Any_Caterpillar720
  • contracts with big pharmas and a nearby university. Of course our clients and the FDA come by once in a while to audit our lab spaces, but we're not and usually don't do GMP.
    via Any_Caterpillar720
  • When you hear GMP labs, think documentation, like a wholeeeeeeeee lot of documentation. Which brings me to my new boss. He worked for a nearby pharma company,
    via Any_Caterpillar720
  • and his company does GMP. As a result, he HATES the way we document our experiments here. It's puzzling, because one of our clients was his former employer, and they are always ok with it.
    via Any_Caterpillar720
  • One day, he dug up a lab notebook of an experiment I performed like 18 months. ago, and used it as an example of how to NOT document things. It made me very upset and honestly depr sed for a couple of days, so I strived to make him regret doing that.
    via Any_Caterpillar720
  • I went out of my way to document unecessary details and observations. I turned what was normally a 5 page experiment to 16- 17 pages on average. He's our boss now, that means. he has to check our documentation before we send it to our clients.
    via Any_Caterpillar720
  • I've basically turned what was a 30 min review into a 2 hr review. Given that he has to personally check every single website to see if I had the correct CofA, lot number, equipment IDs, etc. Even my former supervisor thought that I was being childish and petty.
    via Any_Caterpillar720
  • I started seeing him staying late and reviewing my work as I walk out of the building with malicious. glee. And it stayed this way for a couple of weeks. before he called me in yesterday and told me that
    via Any_Caterpillar720
  • he notices me "taking the necessary steps to improve the quality" of my work and that he's "proud" of me. Like broooooo what do I even do lol, it's actually a massive pain in the ass to do this, should I keep this up?
    via Any_Caterpillar720
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  • niikwei malicious acceptance
    via niikwei
  • ReluctantPhoenician Have you considered the possibility that by maliciously complying you actually did start keeping track of something important you were ignoring or missing before? If he's not a complete PIA to interact with,
    via ReluctantPhoenician
  • the right response to this might just be to find out what specifically he thinks was an improvement and why. Then you can drop the parts that are actually time-wasting and avoid punishing yourself with them any further.
    via ReluctantPhoenician
  • Twatt_waffle Sounds like you did what he asked, malicious compliance kinda requires your management to have consequences they were not prepared to deal with. Sounds like your supervisor was prepared to deal with it
    via T*att_waffle
  • KillrBeeKilld So your boss wanted you to put more detail into our work, then you did. That's not Malicious Compliance, just doing better to keep your job. You should thank your boss for his tutelage.
    via KllrBeeKlld

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