Your Personal Stories of Malicious Compliance

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Malicious Compliance: "The behavior of strictly following the orders of a superior despite knowing that compliance with the orders will have an unintended or negative result."

There is a thread on WP that explains Malicious Compliance ("MalComp").  There is also a Sub-Reddit thread that contains personal accounts of MalComp -- maybe WP could have one of its own.  Just stories, not debates over the ethics, legality, or morality of MalComp.

So, here it is.

She Gets the House, and Then Completely Loses It

tl;dr: Ex-wife cheats on me. I get my revenge in a perfectly legal way.

• • •

Ex-wife cheats on me with an insurance agent who had 'connections' with my employer. He gets me fired and pays for her divorce. I sign a "Quit Claim" document on the house, which she receives as her settlement in lieu of alimony. The divorce is finalized, and I enlist in the military.

Que the Malicious Compliance

The bank forecloses on the house due to her defaulting on the mortgage payments. I am not at fault because of the "Quit Claim". She cannot get alimony because the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act of 1940[a] prohibits this while I am on active duty. She pressures her boyfriend into marrying her. I leave the military (Honorably), and she still can not get alimony from me because she has remarried. He repeatedly cheats on her, but she won't divorce him because she is afraid of poverty. She now lives in quiet desperation with a man who does not respect her. Nobody listens to her sad sob stories, either.

Revenge of The Nerd

tl;dr: My ranking Non-Com screws me over. My compliance with her orders leads to her eventual humiliation.

• • •

I make Pay Grade E5 in near-record time.  My second ranking Non-Com dresses me down in front of our duty section for "crimes" I did not commit. When corrected, she tells me (in private) she will make it up for me if I let her pitch one of my ideas to the command.

Cue the Malicious Compliance

I dig up a suggestion that had been shot down in flames a few months before she reported to the command, polished it up, and present it to her. Her lack of knowledge regarding history of the command -- as well as her overall lack of technical knowledge -- led her to present the rejected and unpopular idea as her own, too. She received a stern reprimand from the CO for wasting his time and insulting his intelligence. Later that day, I received a Sailor of The Year award (for which I was nominated before she reported to the command), and she has to stand by as the CO presented it to me, shook my hand, and congratulated me ("Bravo Zulu!") for a job well done.

Power Corrupts

tl;dr: Good guy gets fed up with bad boss's demands, follows them to the letter, and the employer discovers just how incompetent the bad boss really is.

• • •

I become the "Go-To Guy" for any and all technical problems related to my place of employment. Old supervisor retires. New supervisor is a "Boss-Zilla", and demands all my notes on everything immediately.

Cue the Malicious Compliance

All my documents are in an obsolete and rarely-used format (and "Worded Perfectly", I might add). I submit them "as is" without converting them to the more modern and readable format used by my most other employees. Boss-Zilla does not look at them until a few weeks later, when he opens them up on his home computer, which shows a lot of seemingly random characters and "puppy feet" on every document. He then demands that I "fix" them. I ask what he did to corrupt them. We argue back-and-forth until Boss-Zilla threatens legal action. I call the bluff. Boss-zilla then has to explain to Human Resources, Corporate Legal, and The Big Boss At The Top what happened. I get to tell my side of the story, including just about every other of his screw-ups that I could remember (with full documentation, of course). Boss-Zilla ends up looking like an idiot to the employer, and is eventually dismissed.

It takes me only an hour or so to convert all the "corrupted" files to the company's "official" format and make them all readable. I end up looking like a hero, and the company promotes me to my old supervisor's position (not much of a bump; I was already senior to all the technicians). I take a mostly hands-off approach to management, and everyone is happy.

Everyone except for Boss-Zilla.

So those are three of my favorites.  I have many more.  Being already at risk of a reprimand for "Spamming", I'll stop here for now so that other people can post theirs.  Please try to keep to the same format.  Thank you.

I got nothing clever or elaborate.
Only countless small ones like that may repeat at any point;

-A person told me to say something; as they literally will say "Say XYZ to this person" and instead I'll say "Another person says XYZ to you" when they meant I'm saying "XYZ" only. It'll result outting them; never specified to not say it's them.

-Someone may tell me to shut up. I won't speak all day. Not out of hurt, but our of glee since it meant no more thinking of words. Wait until someone complains that I'm not saying anything...

-Write my name they say; but won't say where or how. I may write my name on a wall with a crayon, with a blue pen on someone else's folder, etc...

-Same vein as someone telling me to sit. I'd sit on the floor or on the table instead of whatever designated chair. Happened a lot at school.

-Someone may force me to sing. I'll deliberately sing in low monotone with wrong melodies. Reactions may range to a good laugh to WTFs...

-Playing clumsy. Someone told me to grab something; I may handle it wrong, or not-so gentle. Hopefully it meant not to bother me to grab stuff again.




I'm dealing with language processing issues since childhood.
Might be why I can't do anything that elaborate.

But this may also meant I'd get certain passes -- they won't know if I'd do it right or wrong, intentionally or unintentionally.

I may or may not commit more or these, intentionally or not. Conversely, also unintentionally not comply out of sheer misinterpretation making compliance itself a gamble.

Might as well a fact of my life, and had to just make do with it whatever outcome I get from it.

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I don't support this strategy unless absolutely necessary and you have tried honest confrontation, since it
is passive aggressive.

I have been on the receiving end of this when asking for basic respect of need for sleep and a clean communal environment,
and it just came across as really immature, nasty and destroyed our relationship.

I just remembered one -- and it's actually more recent that I thought...


Once upon a time, my boss wanted me to smile more -- regardless what I feel, she say -- just 'smile' even if I'm angry.

She's a huge proponent for positivity and optimism. That one just had to 'believe' and things will come true. All that simplistic crap.

I've been working with her for years already.
She should know better that I'm autistic and asocial.

She thinks I could just 'outgrow' my asociality.
That I'd stop and be more NT-like. She knew me enough that I'm not an optimist nor a positive person.

So she said to me that showing anger is not allowed, don't talk in blunt like tone, don't show your frustrations, because it's not appropriate, etc.

And I'm somewhat on a certain edge of mental threshold for different reasons.
Really, my job then was playing by my weaknesses; barely any of those practice improved me.
Of course, I'd be frustrated half the time, on top of other personal things that had less to do with the topic.

And yeah, I did as she told me alright.
No matter what -- even if she's utterly pissed, I'm still smiling, talking in a soft polite tone.

She can't say I'm being rude when she insists me smiling regardless of what I feel. She can't tell me to stop smiling and talk in a cheerful tone.

She doesn't know the magnitude of nuisances required for socializing when it's not so simple as 'smiling all the time'.

She wants me to mask -- and she'll get it.

She regretted it.
Everytime she gets pissed at me for doing something she knew better that I won't perform well -- I'm still smiling, cheerfully.

Forcefully into a sarcastic like manner. It made her walk away pissed every time it happens.
She really should know better and I'm frankly disappointed.


I'm capable of masking.
I just really, really hate it. And I refuse for such performance to be a baseline expectation of any of my relationship I'm into.


Hmmm...
Now that I realized it; I quit few weeks after that for different reasons.

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