If you’re a manager or a boss, you gotta have faith in your employees so they can learn on the job and not have YOU breathing down their necks all the time.
And with that, you can probably imagine where this story from Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page is heading, right?
Read on to get all the details and see what happened.
“This happened at work about 10 years ago.
The context:
At the time of this incident I had been working for a big box superstore for about 12 years, 5 of which as a department manager. I managed 3 areas: fresh meat, frozen seafood and prepackaged deli and breakfast meats.
I supervised 2 part-timers and 2 full-timers. I reported to 3 supervisors, ranking in order: an assistant manager, a co-manager, and then the store manager.
The situation:
On a particular Thursday morning, it was just myself and one of my full-timers, “Carl.”
Carl was on duty until 3pm, myself until 4pm, and no one else after. My other full-timer was on his day off. One part-timer was not available Thurs-Sat, and the other was on vacation.
They were pretty shorthanded…
Coverage was thin, at best, and would continue to be that way thru the weekend. Having been super light on coverage all week due to one of my guys being on vacay, the deli wall was looking a little thin.
On this Thursday morning, I had to decide how best to prepare for the weekend.
I knew that I would not have enough staff to commit a person to filling the deli wall on Fri or Sat. As soon as I had finished breaking down Thursday morning’s delivery with Carl, I began busting my *** to get the deli wall as full as possible before I left that day.
That way I could have my guys focus on the fresh meat wall throughout the weekend where I knew it would be super busy. While I did this, I entrusted Carl to fill the fresh meat wall for Thursday night’s 4pm rush. He was a very hard worker despite his age and health. I knew he could handle it on his own.
And then Scott showed up…
Around 11am, Carl had to take his lunch break. While he is gone, my co-manager “Scott” arrives to work and sees only me. And I’m filling the deli wall while only half of the fresh meat wall had been stocked thus far. Scott does not like this.
He tells my assistant manager “Brenda” to have me swap to the fresh wall as it is “more important” for that night’s customers.
I immediately seek out Scott to tell him why this is a bad idea and why I am filling deli meats and not fresh meats.
Scott doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. I am to do exactly as I am told. He does not want me to fill the deli wall, only the fresh wall.
Did I mention that Scott is ex-military and still acts like he is enlisted?
Whatever you say, boss!
Cue the malicious compliance:
I did exactly as Scott told me. After having only worked about an hour on the deli wall, I put all the freight back into the cooler and began filling the fresh wall.
Carl returned from lunch, confused to see me. I explained what had happened before taking my own lunch.
Upon my return, the fresh wall was nearly finished. But I went ahead and helped Carl continue filling it. Soon, we were done, and just “topping it off” throughout the rest of the afternoon.
If someone bought a pack of beef, we both went back into the cooler to bring out another. Same with chicken, pork, anything. Walking back and forth, one package at a time, until Carl left at 3pm and then I left at 4pm. As I walked past the deli wall on my way out, it already was looking so much worse than it had when I had arrived that morning.
The aftermath:
When I arrived to work at 7am on Friday morning, the first thing I did was walk past the deli wall. I was completely caught off guard to see it had been filled.
As I’m theorizing who could have possibly filled it, Brenda comes by and sees the puzzled look on my face. She comes over to me with a bit of a grin on her face. The following is what she had told me had happened after I left the night before.
They got filled in on what happened.
The little bit that had been on the deli wall when I had left only continued to be shopped. More and more of the wall emptied out as people shopped. It began to look like people had been panic-buying, it had gotten so empty.
Around 8pm, a market manager came in to do his own shopping. I did not explain this before, but a market manager is who my store manager reports to. In other words, someone who has even greater authority than anyone in the store.
This wasn’t good…
Market manager “Bob” goes to buy some lunch meat.
Lo and behold, there is almost nothing on the shelf. He notices the entire wall is nearly bare.
He is furious.
Bob demands that Scott come over to the deli wall immediately. Scott runs over and gets his *** chewed out.
Bob orders Scott to get the wall stocked immediately.
Scott is only now understanding the scope of his blunder. The wall is so empty that it will take a few hours to fill.
And it is in this moment, Scott realizes how HARD he had messed up because he hadn’t checked the schedule earlier and is now discovering that there is no one in the meat departments that evening.
There is no one he can delegate this task to.
Get to work, buddy!
Guess who ended up having to fill the deli wall?
That’s right. Scott had no choice but to do it himself and he didn’t get done until midnight.
Remember, he had arrived just before 11am that day. And he had to be back at 8am Friday.
Also, Scott is salaried, so he got no overtime for the extra hours worked.
Scott never did apologize to me for not trusting my judgment and for not listening to me, but he learned his lesson.
From that day forward, he did not try to micromanage me and let me run my departments unimpeded.”
Here’s how Reddit users reacted.
One reader shared their own work story.
Another Reddit user talked about ex-military folks in the workplace.
This individual talked about true leadership.
One person nailed it.
And this person worked at the same place and said it was…chaotic.
That was a good one!
Hats off to a job well done!
If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.
Source: https://twistedsifter.com/2024/01/arrogant-manager-wouldnt-stop-micromanaging-employee-so-they-maliciously-comply-and-force-the-manager-to-do-a-lot-of-unpaid-work/