Manager bans chairs during shifts, employee take 'fatigue breaks' to maliciously comply

Author image for JR Atkinson
JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor
Jun 2, 2026 9:00 PM EDT

What would you do if your workplace took away your chairs?

If you've ever worked retail or in the service industry, you know how exhausting it is to work on your feet all day. You know just how tired you get after a day of working non-stop on your feet. You wish you could just sit down for a time, and you wonder why you can't. Especially as a cashier. Nobody loses out if you're sitting down, plus you'll have more energy to bring to your shift. Good managers realize this, and prioritize their employees' happiness over something as trivial as "appearances." Not this manager, though, in a story that was shared to the r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit. Appearances aren't everything. They're just ways for people to control what's happening while making the lives of their employees worse. So often, managers make decisions that affect their employees negatively without thinking of the consequences. They're thinking about the bottom line and how things look to their boss, and not considering the real-life consequences of their policies and regulations. Employees have to let them know what it's really like for the feedback to truly go the other way. But there's a power imbalance here that shouldn't go unnoticed. It's hard for employees to truly speak their minds, for fear of retaliation. You don't want to go off too hard and end up in a situation that you didn't want to be in. That's why these employees took matters into their own hands.

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  • 01
    Cheezburger Image 10635603712
    via Vitaly Gariev

    A grocery store worker holds a crate of tomatoes in his hands

  • 02

    Manager banned chairs during shifts so everyone started taking "fatigue breaks"

    Our store got a new manager a few months ago who was obsessed with "professional appearance." One of his first changes was removing stools from the registers because apparently cashiers sitting down "look lazy." Didn't matter that some of the employees were older or had back problems. If you weren't actively standing, he'd come over and make comments about "energy" and "customer perception."
    via DustCipherX
  • 03
    So people started following policy exactly as written. Company handbook says employees can take short recovery breaks if physical fatigue affects performance or safety. Normally nobody bothers because sitting at the register solved the problem already. But once the chairs disappeared? Suddenly everybody was getting dizzy, sore knees, foot cramps, lower back pain etc.
    via DustCipherX
  • 04
    Within like 2 weeks the front end became a disaster. Every 15 minutes someone was calling for a fatigue break and wandering off to sit in the break room for 10 minutes because technically that was allowed. Lines got insane. Customers complained constantly. The manager tried denying the breaks until HR reminded him the policy existed for liability reasons.
    via DustCipherX
  • 05
    Best part was when corporate visited and saw 4 empty registers during peak hours while half the staff was sitting in the back icing their knees. Chairs quietly came back the next Monday lol
    via DustCipherX

  • It sometimes feels so good to be a little bit petty. You know it's not your highest form of self, but it's a part of you that you're happy to engage when you need to. This can feel especially rewarding to do at work, when you know that you stand to gain a lot. That's what the employees did here. There was a policy change enacted that they couldn't abide by, so they took matters into their own hands and showed their bosses who was really in charge. Keep reading for the details and see what other commenters had to say about it.

  • 06

    Commenters gave their support and praise.

    kirradoodle Our local grocery has chairs at all the checkouts. I think it's a great idea. Why make your people wear themselves out when the job entails staying in one spot? It's a hard enough job without sore feet, legs, and back.
    via kirradoodle
  • 07
    TitaniaT-Rex You know which company has stools at all the registers? Aldi. They are also some of the fastest scanners I've ever seen. I know it's partly due to how their items have barcodes on all sides, but still. Give the people chairs/stools!
    via TitaniaT-Rex
  • 08
    Aanz RO ROSSO A GRAN ITALIA-SICILIA €3,50 CHILO
    via Prakriti Khajuria

    A person bags a bunch of tomatoes at a grocery store

  • 09
    Tychonoir I don't even understand how managers make these decisions. It's like they don't even put an ounce of thought into what will be impacted and how it will play out.
    via Tychonoir
  • 10
    Time_Cranberry_113 If chairs are not professional, why do thrones exist? Why do judges have a chair? Why does the president have the Resolute Desk?
    via Time_Cranberry_113
  • 11
    Bunkie_Knudsen D in I'm jealous. When I was a cashier at a liquor store in NJ like 10 years ago, half the time our front-end manager wouldn't even ok our lunch breaks. I ate Spaghetti-Os from a can at the register a couple times, and always made sure customers could see so they asked me why.
    via Bunkie_Knudsen
  • 12
    Bucktoothed Avenger If you're in California, removing those stools is against the law. I would take a good look at the labor laws where you live...
    via BucktoothedAvenger
  • 13
    Vegetable_Road8143 I don't give a cr p if they're sitting down. They are doing their job, how is that looking "lazy"? Did customers complain about the seated cashiers? Managers like that should be fired. I guess he's never heard, "If it ain't broke, DON'T "fix" it!"
    via Vegetable_Road8143
  • 14
    Boston PleaserBear I'm a customer at stores, and I *want* cashiers to be sitting and comfortable while they do their work. Why would a manager think that I want anything else?
    via BostonPleaserBear
  • 15
    LemonFlavored Melon Oh, so if sitting down doesn't look professional, why not get standing desks for the managers and corporate?
    via LemonFlavoredMelon
  • 16
    NeolithicOrkney It amazes me that management/owners think making people stand all day when they could sit on a stool makes them better workers. It does not. And sitting does not make them
    via NeolithicOrkney
  • 17
    lazy either. Fatigue is a real thing when standing all day and as a customer I prefer to know the people serving me are alert and not exhausted. (I have had to stand all day at a few jobs so I know what it feels like & it's insane).
    via NeolithicOrkney
  • 18
    twoonster2020 Managers who make remove chairs from staff like this should also have the chair in their office removed - as a customer I don't think it is professional for the sadistic manager to sit when they have made their staff stand - - lead by example
    via twoonster2020
  • 19
    Honest-Pepper8229 Ah, work to rule, always the best way to make tyrannical manglement policies backfire.
    via Honest-Pepper8229
  • 20
    NeartAgusOnoir OP, look up the story behind Aldi and the reasoning they have chairs at the registers. It actually drastically reduces fatigue and empires. productivity. While they don't publicly state the percent improvement of items scanned per hour, as an ex store manager I know it was in the 20-25% range.
    via NeartAgusOnoir
  • 21
    piperdooninoregon I really like how, outside of the US and Canada, checkout clerks are allowed stools. When I tell them how lucky they are, and that in America, they would have to stand, I get astonished stares and comments like, "Why on earth.."
    via piperdooninoregon
  • 22
    Salt_My_Watermelon I've never understood why stores think it looks better for cashiers to stand. Like the cost of the chair is factored into my groceries? C'mon.
    via Salt_My_Watermelon

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boss antiwork toxic-workplace job work coworkers working toxic-boss reddit thread bad bosses
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