‘I have here are your termination papers and an offer letter to hire you back on again.’ A Telemarketer And His Boss Maliciously Complied With Corporate Policy To Give Him A Raise

“This is a story of Malicious Compliance that a previous boss had done, but involved me directly as will be explained. Timeframe is early 2000s for reference.

In my late high school / early college years, I had a job doing telemarketing work during winter and summer breaks. While it was boiler room cold calling, we primarily were soliciting donations for agencies that had contracted us to do the work, so felt less scuzzy.

Think police departments, fire departments, etc. We kept a portion of donations for operating expenses, everything over a certain threshold went directly to the receiving party. Everybody wins.

I enjoyed the job as the scripts were simple, I was allowed to read a book and such between calls, and a number of my friends were also employed there so we could hang out during lunch breaks.

The pay was a decent chunk above minimum wage at that time, so it was a good gig. I also had a knack for it, and at one point was 5th in “sales” across all their sites they had in operation, 2nd in our building.

One summer, while driving to work, my car promptly dies with no warning and I’m left stranded on the road. As you do in this situation back before cell phones for poor college students were a thing, I walk to the nearest house and ask to use the phone. I call my dad who starts driving to get me, and call my work to let them know I’ll be late. My boss says fine and that he will chat with me when I get in.

Father shows up with my mother in two cars, I take the extra and he begins the arduous process of “towing” my car back to the house. This involved tying a rope to the front of the car and to the back of his vehicle and crawling back home so he could fix it himself.

I’ve been in that back car, and did not envy my father being in the back car with only 10 feet of space between him and the car my mother was driving, but I’m off to work.

I arrive to work, clock in almost an hour after the start of my shift, and am promptly told by the front receptionist that my boss would like to see me in his office. So I head on back.

Beginning details completed. Cue the start of the MC story.

My boss and I have always had a good rapport. I’m a good worker, get good reviews, and he and I have some similar interests outside of work we can chat about occasionally. When I arrive in his office, he’s shuffling some papers around and has laid out a few documents facing me. As close as I can recall, this is the conversation that followed.

Boss – “Hope everything worked out with the car, glad to have you here. Couple things I need to discuss with you. First of all, as I’m sure you are aware, being more than 30 minutes late to work is considered a class C violation (3 classes, from C to A, C being the least egregious) if insufficient time is given prior to the occurrence. This is your first violation, so I’d like to talk to you about what happens next.”

I’m sweating at this point. I’ve never even been talked to about being out of order on anything while working here, and getting my first violation scared the heck out of me. So I’m sitting there, white faced, and he continues.

Boss – “No official writeup or anything occurs for a first violation, or even the first few Class C violations, but it is managers discretion on the punishment depending on past behaviors. Now, you are a good employee and I’ve put in to corporate a few times to give you a raise, but because you only work during your school breaks, it is denied as you aren’t considered ‘full time’. So the papers I have here are your termination papers and an offer letter to hire you back on again. So, in short, before I file these, I’d like to ask. Is it ok if I fire you?”

So we go through the process of him “firing” me, which then allowed him to extend an offer to me to rehire me at roughly a 25% increase in pay, since he could justify to corporate the bump as he was hiring someone with experience.

In talking with him, he let me know it was something he occasionally did to the high school and college workers to get around the corporate’s policy of not allowing raises to people that didn’t work 1,000+ hours in a year. It was his own way of being maliciously compliant with a policy that didn’t allow him to reward some people that he thought deserved it.

He had been waiting for me to do something that he could technically fire me for. The way their back end systems worked, it wouldn’t even show up as a break in service, since the firing and hiring happened on the same day, and since I never worked more than the minimum 1,000 hours each year I didn’t have any tenure or anything to be worried about losing.

The laugh he and the receptionist had when he walked me back to the front to introduce her to the new employee was enjoyable, and I’ve had a fun story to tell ever since.”