This tale of malicious compliance comes to us from Reddit. It went viral, and it’s easy to see why. Read on for some incredibly satisfying revenge!
He Worked Remotely
It was just another day at work for our original poster (OP), a public servant working for a government department. He had been part of a team that had members working remotely all across the state, looking after policy, process, and quality assurance.
Their old manager had gone and gotten himself promoted for being genuinely brilliant at his role, leaving the team under the helm of a new manager, Steve.
Steve had arrived from the glorious world of banking, and he was there to whip these “lazy public servants into shape.” OP had a bad feeling about the new manager from the get-go.
New Manager Calls Face-to-Face Team Meeting
He seemed to be the kind of person who would take pleasure in enforcing arbitrary rules and making things difficult for people.
A few days after he began his role, Steve called everyone to a teleconference to inform them that he wanted all of them to be at the head office at 8 am the next day for an all-day in-person team meeting.
He wanted to see them in “meat space,” to “size” them up, understand what they were doing, and see where they “weren’t keeping up with the private sector.”
OP and his team were all across the state, so in-person, whole-team meetings were rare, and if they occurred at all, managers booked them weeks in advance.
They were all adept at videoconferencing long before COVID. Some of them tried to tell Steve that almost none of them were in the same city as him, and to be there on such short notice would mean travel expenses, meal allowances, overtime, etc.
He didn’t seem to care and told them in no uncertain terms to “just be at head office tomorrow at 8 am” before abruptly hanging up.
OP was one of a handful of union delegates in their department.
Time for Some Malicious Compliance
He knew their award back to front, specifically the sections dealing with travel, allowances, and overtime. So he engaged in malicious compliance mode. If Steve wanted them there, fine, but it would cost him.
So he quickly emailed his team telling them what Steve had done by requiring them to be in the head office at 8 am and what to do. Because they’d have to travel outside their regular work hours, their workday clock started ticking the moment they left their homes and only stopped once they got home.
Some of their team traveled overnight. They were entitled to overtime to travel, a dinner allowance, accommodation for the night, and the same on return. As someone traveling in the morning before 7 am, union rules entitled OP to a breakfast allowance, lunch allowance, and if he got home after 9 pm, a dinner allowance also.
This Meeting Was Going to Cost Him
So, he left his house at 5 am to catch the only train that would get him there in time. The train was running slightly behind, but he made it in time. So OP had spent the first 3 hours of his workday traveling and hadn’t done any work yet.
After a brief period of them introducing themselves to Steve, he proceeded to spend the next 4 hours telling them about all of the things he did at the bank, how he made so much money for them, where they’d sent him as a holiday bonus, how they were all stuck in the past in the public service, and the work he’d seen wasn’t up-to “private sector standards.” He had all the cockiness of a finance guy who had always failed upwards because others had picked up his slack.
By 3 pm, the entire team was into overtime pay territory, and S was just warming up with his non-charm offensive. Another 3 hours went by with Steve verbally patting himself on his back, deeply in love with hearing his own voice, but all OP heard was ‘cha-ching!’
At 6 pm, Steve stopped mid-sentence, looked at his watch, and said, “That’s all for today. Go home now,” and walked out. The team was dumbfounded. After exchanging awkward shrugs with each other, they packed up and made their separate ways home.
The Long Way Home
OP saw that there was a train leaving soon that would get him home around 8 pm or an all-stations train that would get him home closer to 9:30 pm. He decided to take the latter and be on the clock for another hour and a half, plus have his dinner paid for.
He submitted their claims the next day, including double-rate pay for 4.5 hours, train tickets, taxi fares, and meal allowances, totaling close to $500. The rest of the team followed suit.
Steve tried to deny their claims, but he quickly learned that public servants were unionized and wouldn’t stand for it. Steve’s all-day meeting had turned into an expensive lesson for him, leaving a $6000 hole in his budget!
OP couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Steve’s face when he saw the claims. It was the perfect revenge for Steve’s lack of consideration of his team’s work conditions and his rudeness to them in the meeting.
What do you think of this guy’s tale? Steve was certainly rude to them; hopefully, he learnt from that and treated his employees better in the future
Twist In The Story of a Wife Angry With Husband For Missing Emergency Because of a Tech-Free Weekend
This post His New Boss From the Private Sector Was in for a Rude Shock When He Joined the Unionised Public Sector. And It Was Gonna Hurt the Budget’s Bottom Line! first appeared on Wealthy Living.
Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock / Luis Molinero. The people shown in the images are for illustrative purposes only, not the actual people featured in the story.
Source: Reddit