Manteinance employee maliciously complies with his manager's new rule and in an unexpected turn of events, his manager loves it: 'As you can tell from the title, this did not go how I was expecting'

Author image for Olivia Arocena
Olivia Arocena • Writer and Editor
Jun 24, 2026 3:15 PM EDT

When malicious compliance turns into simple compliance

I was about to make malicious compliance my new religion until I came across this example of it going in the exact opposite way it was expected. Maybe it's time to give up on our mischievous endeavours and turn back to old, regular, direct communication.  When something like this backfires, we get two problems where there used to be one. The thing is, it's very hard to go back to how things were when your boss loved the new implementation. Should we invent an emergency protocol for when malicious compliance goes wrong? How should it be called? Un-complying?

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  • man taking his hands to his head
    via ahmad gunnaivi

    An illustrative image of the employee realizing his malicious compliance went wrong

  • When malicious compliance backfires

    I work in operations and maintenance on several small solar fields throughout the Midwest. Essentially, the companies. that actually own the solar sites hire my company to do routine and corrective maintenance. We have
    via stcaster
  • about 15 crews working all over the US. We have an internal ticketing software we use to keep track of how much time we spend at each site, and what work is being done. This is pretty important since we use all
    via stcaster
  • of our tickets to justify the site owners paying us. It can be a little frustrating to manage these tickets sometimes if there's a lot going on. For example, if I'm on site for company A and get a phone call from company
    via stcaster
  • B, I need to create a new ticket, or log that time on an existing ticket for company B's phone call. I can't just charge company A for 30 minutes I spent answering a bunch of random questions for the other company.
    via stcaster
  • There are also times when you'll be walking through the field and notice something and just fix it real quick. Like we'll be replacing a broken module (solar panel) and happen to see a broken zip tie and you just replace it. It's not
    via stcaster
  • what you were doing in that section, but it takes all of 30 seconds so you just do it. However, a couple months ago, our company's VP retired, and the new guy is... A little extreme. He wants to make sure we're
    via stcaster
  • really being diligent with our tickets and documenting everything. There was a company wide zoom meeting to introduce him, and he spent almost 20 minutes talking about tickets. We've all heard this before,
    via stcaster
  • and we're all pretty good about making sure our hours are accounted for with the appropriate tickets, so we didn't really think too much of it. A few weeks later, VP was out visiting one of my sites while we were doing
    via stcaster
  • preventative maintenance on 4 inverters. As I was setting up to do my work and the other tech was at the spare parts container on site getting some material, I noticed a module nearby had some damage. It was chipped
    via stcaster
  • from a rock or pebble, (we're in a pretty windy area) I took a picture of it, noted the location, then went back to the inverter. As I was walking back I called the other tech and asked him to grab a module while he was at the spare parts containers.
    via stcaster
  • man taking a picture in the middle of the road
    via Pablo soriano

    A representative picture of the employee stopping to take the photo that started everything

  • When I finished at the inverter, I closed that ticket, created a new one for the broken mod, we replaced it, and I closed that ticket, and we moved on to the next inverter in line. At the end of the day VP pulled me aside to ask
    via stcaster
  • why I wasn't managing my tickets correctly. Me: "I'm not sure what you mean. Every thing we did today had a ticket." VP: "Yes, but you didn't track your time correctly."
    via stcaster
  • Me: "I'm sorry, I'm still not sure what you mean. We worked a little over 8 hours today. We spent roughly 2 hours at each inverter, and then 20 minutes swapping that broken module. It's all accounted for."
    via stcaster
  • VP: "No it's not. You took about 5 minutes out of working on that inverter to look at that broken module and call the other tech. He then spent time loading a module into his truck to bring over, where was that accounted for? So there's
    via stcaster
  • at least 5 minutes on the inverter ticket that was actually spent on the broken module, plus however long it took other tech to load the new module. You should have logged out of the inverter ticket, created the module
    via stcaster
  • one and documented that time, then logged back into the inverter one. Other tech should have logged. out of the inverter one, logged into the module one while he was loading up the module, then logged back into the
    via stcaster
  • inverter one when he started driving back to work on the inverter." I was a little taken aback by this. It's not like I had spent the time doing work for a different site, it was all for this one, and we don't get paid differently for
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  • each task we do. Its all the same hourly rate. I swallowed my objections and told him I would fix the tickets. Cue the malicious compliance. Over the next few weeks, me and my other tech went from 3-5
    via stcaster
  • tickets a day, to close to 20 a day. I was walking through the field on one task and picked up a piece of trash that blew in? Stop and create a new ticket. I answered other techs question about the job he was doing while I was
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  • working on something else? Stop and log into that ticket. Broken zip tie? New ticket. Answer a text from my supervisor? New ticket. You get the idea. As you can tell from the title, this did not go how I
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  • was expecting. VP loved it. At the most recent monthly crew lead meeting, he absolutely gushed over how accurate our tickets were. How we set the new standard for how tickets need to be managed and everyone
    via stcaster

  • So, malicious acceptance is the only option left. Sometimes managers are so nitpicky that it feels like a dark joke, but at some point, it stops being funny. I had a manager once at a random vintage concept store (the name alone makes me tired) who wanted me to take away every second I looked at my cellphone during working hours from my salary. The reality is, nobody came into the store, and after I finished organizing and cleaning everything, I had nothing else to do for the rest of the day. I had to stare at the ceiling because looking at my cellphone was disrespectful in my manager’s eyes. Oh! Those were the days!

  • else needs to come up to our level. This was exactly what he wanted to see and wouldn't accept anything less.
    via stcaster
  • So yeah, sometimes malicious compliance will backfire and just make your life harder and make all your coworkers hate you. FML
    via stcaster
  • a group of men sitting around a wooden table having fun
    via Taylor Friehl

    An illustration of how the workplace used to be before the employee ruined everything with his malicious compliance

  • Not the coworkers hating him! It makes me so sad. I think he was too quick to determine that his malicious compliance backfired, because with enough time, the workflow can become so choppy that the manager has to reevaluate his pretensions. I can’t help but blindly believe in the power of malicious compliance, though I never had the intelligence to come up with it in my own life. I think I just found out I’m a people pleaser at heart. I saw a short film today about ‘People Pleasers Anonymous’, it was supposed to be a comedy, but it hit a little too close to home. I would’ve done what this employee did without the maliciousness. I think it’s about time that I become a little more EVIL! lol



     

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