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Anyone who has worked at customer service knows this: there is always a customer who arrives at the very last minute, and then makes you wait for him to finish, and you end up closing the store 45 minutes late because you aren’t allowed to say you need him to go asap so you can close. I genuinely don’t know where these people come from, nor why they don’t seem to have any empathy or understanding of the phrase ‘we’re closing’.

Entitled customer demands employee to open the store even though he was warned it closed in five minutes: 'Like do some customers need to be hand held now or what?'

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Company demands worker cancel pre-approved PTO or lose his job after sneaky managers hide vacation and sick day policy changes

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Company forces employee to cancel approved PTO after policy change: 'They may now try to fire me if I don’t play along'

IT fails to fix employee's computer, leading to their account and login being deleted, employee spends over two weeks unable to work: ‘What a clown show’

IT fails to fix employee's computer, leading to their account and login being deleted, employee spends over two weeks unable to work: ‘What a clown show’

Employee stops volunteering extra work until manager notices, leading them to finally acknowledge and change the workload: ‘It made me invisible’

Employee stops volunteering extra work until manager notices, leading them to finally acknowledge and change the workload: ‘It made me invisible’

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Boss refuses to admit they underpaid employee after they quit, then proceeds to blame them for their lack of empathy for the business: ‘The working conditions are not sustainable’

Boss refuses to admit they underpaid employee after they quit, then proceeds to blame them for their lack of empathy for the business: ‘The working conditions are not sustainable’

Receptionist gets told off by boss for talking to employees for too long, so she stops greeting people altogether, forcing boss to admit: ‘[People] are concerned’

Receptionist gets told off by boss for talking to employees for too long, so she stops greeting people altogether, forcing boss to admit: ‘[People] are concerned’

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Widowed mom plans to marry her boss 4 years after losing her husband, her 15-year-old son explodes weeks before the wedding and gives her an ultimatum: cancel it or lose him

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Volunteer refuses to come back after being bossed around, given no water, no bathroom breaks, and nearly having her phone confiscated, gets emails a year later telling her she needs to be a better team player

I was about to make malicious compliance my new religion until I came across this example of it going 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.

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'

Some things we can only figure out in retrospect. People often act in ways we deem incoherent and irrational, and only after everything ends can we see the underlying motives for their behaviour. Becoming too close way too fast with someone might be a cause for concern.

Resentful manager goes from bonding immediately with new server to sabotaging her every move: 'Looking back, it suddenly made a lot more sense why she seemed to go from friendly mentor to treating me like public enemy number one'

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I think there is something to say here about a road paved with good intentions, but anyway. Sometimes we analyze a situation and come up with the best solution we can think of, and we end up breaking something that was steadily functioning. The key to success might be communicating our plans to fix the thing instead of doing it as a surprise, but well, everybody makes honest mistakes, and it even feels unfair to call a situation like this a mistake.

Employee spends months thoroughly organizing communal folder in secret, only to wind up causing office chaos: 'I’m sitting here, staring at the perfectly organized, color-coded, and searchable directory I created, terrified to say anything'

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Tech guy gets fired at 58 after 35 years in tech, and instead of panicking, sees it as a chance to retire early, do DIY, and work part-time at a hardware store: ‘It's actually a relief, I was getting SO sick of the corporate stuff’

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Travel agent discovers manager has been skimming hours for 18 months, spends 8 months quietly documenting it, then gets called into a meeting where the manager accidentally exposes herself to head office

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Professional butcher gets back at his boss 5 years after he stole his paternity pay: ‘When I left that shop, I had the biggest grin on my face’

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Boss argues with employee because he is paying attention to how much he's getting paid, boss said that he was stealing confidential information: 'She accused me of stealing confidential information.'