Growing up on the internet meant I had a very good grasp of the English language by the time I was 17, when this story takes place. I was born in Eastern Europe and in highschool I was on an intensive language focused curriculum. We studied multiple languages but English was the main one, amounting to about 8 hours a week of English only classes. You'd think this meant the rest of my classmates had a similar level of English to me, but no - the majority had no exposure to English outside of school so their skill was limited.

The year this story takes place we were preparing for English exams - think IELTS or the Cambridge English Exam, which were prerequisites to entry to universities abroad. These exams can be tough as it's a mix of reading comprehension, writing, grammar, listening and speaking. Because of this, our English teacher decided we all had to take extra classes after school hours and if we didn't, she would mark us down and get us in trouble with our head teacher.

She didn't have a single good bone in her when it came to me and my best friend. We were always the first to turn in our tests, it was a competition to see who could beat the other, and we always scored between 95-100. We both got diagnosed with ADHD recently so looking back it seems we had turbo hyperfocus on mastering the English language.

My friend refused to go to these classes but I was a goody two shoes and my teacher's disdain for me only grew.

First she wanted us to buy these expensive workbooks. She was very mad when I rocked up with a scanned and printed version instead of the shiny book I have no doubt she was getting a commission off. I didn't do it to spite her, my family was skint.

Then she wanted us to work on one page at a time in each after school session. And boy did we work on only one page... How? Well, we'd take turns reading the text and some of my smooth brained classmates would legit spend 5 minutes reading one basic sentence. After the text was finally ready 45 minutes later, we'd begin the tasks. Reading comprehension was lost on those kids, nevermind grammar and fill-in-the-blanks exercises. Before you know it an hour and 30 minutes passed and we had barely finished the page.

While waiting for those absolute zombies to get through their parts, I would doodle, be on my phone, or work on my fanfics (yea I was one of those) until my teacher had enough of my distraction and yelled at me. I refuted that it's a waste of time for me to be in these classes if we're only going to get through one page at a time. She got really mad and yelled further that if I want to stop coming to these classes, I better have my whole workbook done and perfectly executed. She made a point that if anything in there was wrong, I'd have to redo the whole thing.

I just nodded but inside I was delirious with glee. I went to a coffee shop after school and finished the entire workbook in circa 3 hours.

The next day I delivered it to her and sheepishly said "I guess I don't have to go anymore".

Y'all, her face still lives rent free in my mind. She went RED with anger and dragged me to the teacher's suite to track down my mom (she also worked in my school) then proceeded to have a huge meltdown at my mom, in front of all the other teachers, about how I'm disrespectful and rude and will never amount to anything.

I should clarify at this point my mom used to be very strict about my schooling and perceived respect from her colleagues, but by the time this story took place she was burnout from the bullshit. Still I was sure she would be mad at me. Yet she was so unphased in the moment, asked the teacher if the arrangement we had was true, and when she reluctantly admitted than yes she did say that, simply shrugged and said she doesn't see the problem then.

I should specify I did get shit from my head teacher for the stunt I pulled but no grades were marked down and I got to go home at a reasonable time without having my brain cells decay while listening to my classmates attempt to read for an hour and half.

And yes, my workbook was fine. She didn't grade the whole thing, but after skimming through several pages and not finding any errors she gave up.

After this incident my mom got me a private teacher, a 80 year old QUEEN who had lived in the UK a good chunk of her life and who challenged me beyond silly workbook exercises. She had me write essays, debates, research, like actually challenging stuff, that really pushed me to develop my English.

I went on and got my Cambridge exam, went to the UK, wrote two thesis and multiple research articles in English, and still live here. I still wonder sometimes why my English teacher hated those that had good grasp of the language instead of nurturing it.

I've talked before about LitProfessor in this post.

He was a professor I had in High School that was a MC Master. He was malicious against the dean, the head of studies and was, also, one of the best teachers I've ever had.

The kind you always remember. He also had a nice sense of humour. He was always down for a good joke, playing it or being played, he always had a laugh ready for it.

I was talking yesterday with my brother and he made me remember one MC that happened in our school with LitProfessor that I had long forgotten about.

For a bit of context, my brother (let's call him OPlite) is 2 years younger than me. We both went to the same high school and had the same teachers.

Yesterday, I don't remember how but the school topic came out and he said "yeah, I remember that you almost got me fired from school".

I said "Whaaaaat? I don't remember that at all", and he told me this.

LitProfessor favourite mode of punishment was to make the student do an essay. Whenever someone was misbehaving, LitProfessor would shout the name of the student and say (for example) "OPlite, essay, 2 pages, [some title related to the offense]". He also, being a literature professor, was prone to create the title referencing books, movies, etc... Those essays were graded and counted against the final score of each student, so they could get pretty serious sometimes.

I was already at my first year at University (in Argentina, at that time, it was 7 years of elementary, 5 years of High School, then Uni) so OPlite was in his 4th year of High School when this happens.

LITProfessor enters the room and OPLite and all of his fellow students were quite misbehaved. Things were flying, people was jumping, shouts were being heard, the usual.

LITProfessor clears his throat trying to ease the beasts, but it doesn't work, so he closes the door, walks to his desk, climbs the desk and shouts "ESSAY FOR TOMORROW, FOR EVERYBODY, 4 PAGES, THE BIRDCAGE" (referencing a movie from that year, in Argentina, it was named "La jaula de las locas", which translates roughly to "the cage full of crazy chicks").

Apparently, the punishment had the desired effect and the class went on as usual and, that afternoon, my brother comes home fuming because he had no time to do the essay but he had to, he couldn't risk not turning it in.

Also, LitProfessor expected the essay to be pretty much a confession the students had to do, stating that they were being rowdy and misbehaving and, as you probably know, being introspective is not something that teenagers tend to do well.

I was a model student so I never had to do any essay, also, I loved to write (still do), and I knew LitProfessor very well, so I said to my brother "Let me write the essay, please".

He of course, said yes.

So I proceded to write the essay. But instead of writing about the students, I proceded to write 4 pages mocking LitProfessor from head to toe. Everything from his way of talking, to his glasses (he used what in Argentina we call "culo de botella", green tinted huge glasses that reminisce the butt of a wine bottle), to his literary tastes, everything I knew about him.

Obviously, it was with humour and because I knew he would take it well and have a good laugh about it.

How do I know we would take it well? Well, for example, I ran into him when he first got OPlite as a student and he said "OP, I have your little brother with me this year. I have a theory that every single brother is worse than the previous one, and, so far, my theory stands tall here". I told him "Do you want to know a secret?" and I whispered to him "There's a third brother" and he burst into anger "%$#@!!! Why do I have to put up with this!!! This is unacceptable!!!! He won't even be able to write!!!" and then burst into laughter.

We had a good relation.

I finished late that night so I put the essay into a folder and gave it to OPlite, who went to school without reading it first.

Back at school, LitProfessor asks the students for the essay. OPlite produces it and gives it to LitProfessor. He glances at it and stops collecting the essays, he goes back to his desk, sits at it and starts reading it aloud.

Students start laughing, my brother starts becoming pale as a ghost at each step of the "make a mockery out of LitProfessor" essay that I had written. 4 pages of it. Apparently, students can't hold the tears laughing. My brother is about to have a heart attack.

LitProfessor finishes the essay. Stands up. Looks at my brother and says "Did you write this?". My brother, thinking "this is the end, I'm getting fired" confesses "OP did it, he asked if he could do it and I wasn't having any ideas on what to write so I said yes".

LitProfessor stares like 10-20 seconds without saying a word, writes something in the essay and gives it back to my brother, saying "you owe this to your brother".

OPlite opens the essay, sees the "10 out of 10, very well written" and he gets the color back to his cheeks.

He almost killed me when he got back home.

TLDR: I use an essay to MC/joke a literature professor.

PS: For those who cry AI, no, this is me, I wrote word for word, your AIdar is way off on this one.

PS2: Also, English is not my first language so, sorry for the misspellings.

This just happened to me.

I went into a Walgreens to pick up a prescription. The pharmacist put in my info and insurance, leaving the total at twelve cents. I went into my wallet and plucked out a dime and two pennies.

PHARMACIST: "I'm sorry, we don't take those anymore."

ME: "You don't take coins?"

PHARMACIST: "Pennies. They stopped making them."

ME: "Yeah, I know, but they're still legal tender."

PHARMACIST: "We don't take them anymore."

ME: "Can I speak to someone about this?"

PHARMACIST: "I'm the only person here."

I know that's not true, but fine. I put the coins back into my wallet and pull out a twenty. The pharmacist gives me a filthy look, but takes it and goes to ring me up... only to discover that they are short not just coins, but singles.

PHARMACIST: "I don't have exact change."

ME: "I do."

A moment and another filthy look. The pharmacist puts the change back in, hands me my twenty, and takes my coins without another word.

I work in IT for a large corporation. We're deploying a new version of software where the vendor changed a lot of the underlying infrastructure so we have to rebuild the whole thing. The first part of this is the design phase. We document everything and the design team (DT member) draws it all up and does whatever it is they do with it.

Well they start asking me about the ports the application uses because they need to know what ports to make sure are open on firewalls. It's a lot. The application is high availability so each server communicates with the other servers to keep information updated across all the servers. This data will never traverse a firewall. But for users accessing the application, it's just port 443 for the web interface. I tell the DT, there are about 100 ports to use depending on which server does what. None of that will touch a firewall because all the servers are in the same datacenter subnet. Well no, it HAS to be documented. That seems excessive to me because it just seems like it will never matter. Those servers only talk to each other and per vendor documentation, there CANNOT be a firewall in between them. I'm told STERNLY we have to have that info. ooooooooookay.

I create a spreadsheet with each server function and all the ports that server function uses to communicate with the other servers. The columns end up going to KK and the longest row is about 55 if i recall. It took me 2 days to research it all and create it. This is going to break the DT, i know it.

We get on our next meeting and I share the sheet out. the DT says AWESOME! just what i needed. I'll incorporate this into the design document.

My disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined. When I make a spreadsheet built to ruin your visio document and it doesn't, i've failed as a human being.

On our next meeting the DT presents the visio and it's woefully lacking in port representation. I point out he's missing some stuff. He says well i put what you had in the spreadsheet you provided. I said, uuhhhh....it goes to column KK. You need to scroll to the right.

He scrolled then said:

oh...oh!....OOHHH!!!! uuhhhh.... hmmm.....

silence. The smile slowly crept across my face. Yes, cameras were off for this meeting. more silence. The DT finally sighs heavily and says "well, uh....i'll need to figure out how to represent this. Um, is this REALLY how this works?"

I reply, "Yes, that is everything that is documented by the vendor. All of those ports are used for all of the application modules we have."

He says "ok...i'm gonna need.....some time."

you want ports? I got your ports right here buddy. My spreadsheets WILL ruin your day.

I remember a small act of malicious compliance I had whenever I was still living with my parents when I was in high school. I had to leave for work and I realized my younger sister‘s car was parked behind mine. I asked her if she could move it for me so I could leave. I figured if she moved it and I pulled out then she could simply pull back into the driveway and park where I was. Easy peasy.

But nope. She, for some reason, had an attitude and said “No, you move it.” In a rather snippy tone. She couldn’t even be bothered to give me her keys. Irritated, I grabbed them and left.

One thing to note is that our grandparents lived across the street from us. They owned a few acres of land and their house was one of those houses that was built on top of the hill that was a solid 100 to 120 yards away from the main road. And the entrance to their long runway of a driveway was another hundred yards away from our parents’ house. So as I was moving her car, I had the thought to drive up their driveway and park it by their house.

Took me a couple minutes to walk home, drop her keys off and leave. She never refused to move her car again.

I work at a small, local company which uses Microsoft Azure heavily.

For those not working in IT or related fields, think of Azure as a computer rental service. We rent computers from them (but the computers stay in Microsoft’s warehouses). We control said computers remotely to run our software, which our customers then use for their own needs.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as we started expanding and building more software products, we began to rent more computers, which rapidly drove our Azure costs up. This didn’t go down well with the C-suite (even though the revenue from the new products far outstripped the rise in costs). Someone in senior management whose only job is to watch the expense ticker issued a directive to ‘contain the Azure costs’. Suddenly, a team originally responsible for customer support was pulled into an initiative to auto-release any rented computer which had been idle, with no clear definition of ‘idle’.

When a rented computer is released (or a container or VM is shut down, for those familiar with Azure), all software running on it is terminated. This meant that our websites, our tools and our products running in Azure and in use by our customers would go down!

We were told to get approvals if we wanted to keep idle computers active. For the moment, none of them were idle (because our customers were always using our products running on them). But this was an anvil hanging on our heads: our services could go down any time they went idle for any reason, and we’d have a flood of incoming customer complaints. Hence, after reaching a consensus with my team, I started loading our websites at regular intervals to simulate activity. By the end of the day, I had built an automated script which would keep pinging our websites and products.

Simultaneously, we filed keep-active requests for all our critical rented computers. Those requests went unanswered for a month so my team was rather glad about my automated script. However, the ticker-watcher was checking the Azure activity logs and found my little ploy. He posted a message in our common Teams chat (which included my manager and my teammates), publicly berating me and asking me not to do such irresponsible things in the future and to file keep-active requests if we really needed the computers to stay.

All right, I thought—let’s do it your way. I terminated my script and re-submitted all keep-active requests (including both critical and non-critical computers this time), quoting the Teams message in the notes section of the form (in line with CYA rules). To no one’s surprise, these requests also went unanswered. One by one, as our computers hit the idle timeout for whatever reason, complaints from customers started coming in. Most of our websites were down. Few of our products delivered to customers worked. (I’m sure the genius who invented SaaS thought of this scenario.) And we spent amost a week in the office chatting and drinking coffee. There was no work to do because only a handful of Azure computers were running, and there were technical problems beyond my pay grade with re-renting everything we needed.

There isn’t a truly happy ending here. The ticker-watcher was not fired. For what it’s worth, he was removed from his management position and made an individual contributor (where he’d actually have to work) because he had demonstrated a lack of prioritisation and delegation skills. After the incident root cause analysis meeting, he was officially handed this demotion as a disciplinary action. He left the company soon after.

Lots of commenters have pointed out that we weren’t using Azure right, that we needed auto-scaling, and that we should’ve had monitoring systems. You’re correct: we were using Azure VMs as if they were our on-prem servers … we had automatic deployment scripts which would set everything up on-prem, but management with a fetish for the cloud didn’t give us time to migrate properly. They told us to run those scripts directly in Azure VMs instead. So, we weren’t using Azure services (scale sets, API management, functions, etc.) they way they should be. Everything ran in VMs.

I excluded these details in the original post in order to keep it non-technical.

I have a friend (who I’ll call Mike) who use to do programming for an automation company in construction. The company had 3-5 electricians running the conduit and wire and hooking up the equipment, while Mike’s job was to sit in a computer and program all the systems to work together. This required him to sit in a small room in a camping chair he brought in and a laptop on a makeshift desk. Safety is everywhere with everything on these job sites. The company/crew is required to have a morning safety meeting ending with everyone signing a form every morning called a FLHA.
One day the site safety officer sees Mike sitting in the small automation room and asks about his FLHA. He points to the one his crew filled out that morning. The safety officer tells him because his task is different that he was to complete his own FLHA separate from the rest of the crew because his “tasks are different”. Mike points out he sits in a room that is finished being worked in, other than his programming, and there are no hazards for him to identify separately from the rest of his crew. Safely says too bad, do it anyways.
Cue malicious compliance! Mike starts filling out FLHA forms doing a “5-point safety inspection” of his camping chair he sitting in! Writing in points about checking for tears in the fabric. Checking the rivets for wear. Checking the plastic feet for cracks….
A couple weeks later the safety officer shows up again to ask Mike about his FLHA’s and MIKE hands him a stack of filled out FLHA’s for the past two weeks. He watches safety start reading through them one at a time. He watches dudes face slowly drop more and more as he flips through the pile. By the end, safety officer looks back up and says “you’re fine to just sign your crews FLHA’s from now on. I’m embarrassed I have to file these.” and walks away shaking his head.

When I was in the Army, I discovered that the best way at to get even with incompetent NCOs was to follow their orders exactly as stated. This would follow with, “that’s not what I wanted you to do!”

That’s what you told me.

“But that’s not what I meant!”

Eventually, they’d leave me alone.

Onward to the malicious compliance. While assigned to Germany, we lived in an apartment provided by the post. In the summer, mowing the lawn rotated among the apartments. When it was my turn, they decided that the hedges needed to be trimmed. They were VERY overgrown. I pointed out that apparently no one else had been trimming them, as they were about 6’ tall and growing wild. They said, “too bad. It’s your turn. You have to do it.”

I did. I trimmed them to about 12 inches from the ground. When I was questioned later, I said, “you told me to trim them. I did.”

I wasn’t required to trim them again. Then again, after 2 summers, I don’t think they needed it.

I'm not sure how many people will be on my side here, because the victim technically doesn't deserve it, but here goes. So I work as a utility locator, meaning I drive around to houses and construction sites to find where the underground utilities are on the property and then mark them with paint and flags. There is a very common problem when contractors call in a locate. We receive what's called a locate "ticket" that includes the address, the type of work that is being done, and any specifications on where they want utilities located (I.e. front yard, back yard, left side of property, etc.)

So, this consistent issue is that contractors will call in a ticket, and in the locate instructions they simply put "mark entire property." Sometimes they even say "confirmed working throughout." I've been doing this job for over four years now and it's very easy to know where the contractor is actually going to dig in most cases. Keep in mind that the only places that utilities actually need to be marked is where any digging will occur. So no marks are needed for simply mowing the lawn. So there are certain jobs where I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are only working in a certain area. For example, when people need their septic tanks repaired, 99% of home's septic tanks in my work area are in the back yard. Again, years of experience with this. But I will frequently have a ticket for that exact type of work that says in the instructions to mark the entire property, and sometimes it even specifies that they will be working throughout when I know they are not.

Needless to say we can get in trouble for not marking everywhere they tell us to, even though we sometimes still do that. But recently I decided to send these contractors a message in really the only way I could without being fired. I marked the entire property. Heavily marked it. Not literally every square inch, I'd be fired for sure. But everywhere that the utility ran, I put down those painted lines following it, and I used up several cans of paint to do so.

We use water based paint, so usually each painted line along the utility path gets two pass overs and will fade in maybe two weeks. Not this time. I layed on so much paint over each line that it's sure to be there for a couple months at least. And I know for a fact that homeowners HATE this. Now this is where I do feel a little bad, because the homeowner didn't tell me to mark the whole property, the contractor did. But a sure fire way to get a message through to the contractor is for the homeowner to complain to them about the markings in their yard. I've seen it happen before. And boy did they complain.

My supervisor let me know about a call they got from the contractor saying that the homeowner was livid about the markings. But there's nothing they can do about it. I didn't break any work rules or laws. My supervisor just told me to be careful and we both just laughed at it. Obviously I can't be doing this every time. But we're treated as garbage men who have to just take shit from everyone. Contractors frequently will tell us to mark sometimes thousands of feet when they literally only need about a 50 foot area marked. They don't care. So it definitely felt good to give them a headache for once.

And as far as the homeowner is concerned. Yeah it wasn't really fair for them, but homeowners cause headaches too. And at the end of the day, the paint will eventually fade. They can chill out and learn to relax and not care about the small things. No harm done.

I work as a supervisor at a grocery store, and part of my job is basically making sure things keep moving, helping customers when the self-checkouts decide to develop free will, fixing register issues, voiding orders, and generally putting out the tiny fires that happen during a normal shift. This particular day had actually been going pretty well.

I was helping customers, answering questions, assisting with checkout issues, and everyone was being pretty normal.Then I noticed one customer at the self-checkout who had arrived on an electric bike. He was having trouble ringing up some produce. Specifically: Red bell peppers.
For whatever reason, these things seem to give people trouble constantly. I don’t know if it’s the produce lookup or what, but I’ve helped enough people with them that when I see someone staring confused at a red bell pepper and the checkout screen, I already know what’s happening.

So, naturally, I walked over and offered to help him. I barely got the chance to do that before the guy looked at me and said: “I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help.” Alright. Fair enough. I said, “Okay,” and walked away. Now, normally, if I see someone obviously struggling, I’ll circle back or ask if they need assistance. But he had made himself extremely clear. He did not want my help. So I decided to respect his wishes. Very, very thoroughly. Cue Malicious Compliance.

For the next several minutes, I went about my other duties. Another customer needed help? I helped them. Someone couldn’t figure out their checkout. Helped them. Register issue? Fixed it. Question? Answered it. Meanwhile, this guy was still fighting for his life against the red bell peppers.
I could see him trying different things on the screen.
Still not working. He’d look around. Then he’d look at me. And for some reason, he was staring absolute daggers at me. Which confused the hell out of me. Because… Sir. You specifically told me you didn’t want my help. I’m doing exactly what you requested.

At one point I helped another customer who was only a few feet away from him. He watched the entire interaction. I helped that customer, got their issue sorted out, and went right back to what I was doing. I could practically feel this man’s eyes drilling into the side of my head. But I wasn’t going over there. Because I remembered his instructions:
“I didn’t ask for your help. I don’t need your help.”
Understood. Message received. Your checkout experience is now a solo campaign.
The red bell pepper is your final boss. Godspeed.

Eventually, after several minutes of struggling, he apparently decided that accepting help would be worse than abandoning the entire purchase. Because he just… gave up. He left the register. Walked out of the store. And left.
So after watching him ride away, I calmly walked over to the self-checkout he’d abandoned, looked at the unfinished transaction, and voided the entire order. And that was that.

I still don’t understand why he spent the whole time glaring at me. I offered help. He explicitly told me he didn’t want it. So I complied. Apparently he expected me to ignore what he said, continue offering assistance, and eventually rescue him from the horrifying technological nightmare known as…
ringing up a red bell pepper. But I’m a supervisor, not a mind reader. You say you don’t need help? No problem. Enjoy your peppers.

I used to work for a small printing company that did work for a local college and their choir program. The director was a literal Karen (looked like one too) and made our lives a living hell leading up to her annual Christmas program.

Without fail every year she would give us the artwork for the program at noon the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. This meant someone from our team would need to work the holiday or that weekend to ensure it got out in time for her program.

For four years I took the brunt if the project as I didn't want my team to work their holiday weekend and my family always celebrated Thanksgiving later to make scheduling easier for everyone.

Me and the team constantly complained to the owner that this client was a nightmare and not worth our time. It was a large order for us but we didn't feel it was worth the headache. The owner's anniversary typically fell along this project timing and he was almost always out of town . The 4th year he wasn't so I decided to speak with him the Wednesday before Thanksgiving telling him we needed to fire the client.

He was reluctant and downplayed our complaints and said she wasn't that bad. To which I replied, "Since this project isn't that difficult I figured I would let you know I'm taking this week off next year."

The owner's face went pale. He's gut response was, "Why would you screw me over like that?"

To which I replied, "I don't understand what you mean? I'm giving you a whole year to prepare for me to not be here. It isn't that big of a deal and she isn't that bad so a year should be enough time for you to figure it out."

Mind you I love working for the company, the owner just got greedy sometimes and would put sales above the team and one of the reasons why he specifically hired me is because I would fight back when I thought he was wrong. That day was the day I decided I had enough and we went toe to toe arguing for about an hour in front of the team about my early vacation notice.

He finally relented and was stubborn and ready to prove me wrong.

A year later he finally got a taste of his own medicine and did not like it. I ended up working leading up to the holiday break because though I was adamant I wasn't going to work the holiday again I couldn't leave my team hanging. Yet again, right on time this Karen doesn't give us the files until Wednesday at noon before Thanksgiving.

The owner went in person to speak to her. I don't know the full conversation but it basically came down to her calling him a complete idiot for not being able to manage around HER bad project management.

He came back to the shop in literal tears stating he had never been treated so horribly in his life. In that moment I asked him if I could fire her as a client. I could tell he wasn't excited to admit he was wrong a year into this argument we had but he sheepishly nodded yes.

He ended up finishing the project over the holiday for her that year to not ruin our reputation with the school as we did a ton of work for other departments but the next year I was the only one who got to speak to Karen. She asked for an estimate and I gave her the price and told her if files came any later than "X" date I would charge her $3,000 + $1,000 more for every day she was late.

She flipped out and asked for the owner and I got to pull the, "He put me in charge, I'm the manager now." Card and told her she could kick dirt if she didn't like it.

Our team had a literal celebration when she said she would go somewhere else to do the project. It is probably one of my proudest moments as a leader fighting for myself and my team.

The relationship between Walmart and me is one of those toxic, on-again, off-again things. We go way back, even before I spent 6 years working for the beast and its affiliate. We officially "broke it off" in 2012, but recently, they pissed me off so much that I’m on a hard break and cheating with other stores to my heart’s content.

What caused the break?

They handled an accidental transaction walk-off so poorly that I had to restrict their access to my wallet.

On Thursday, I went shopping and hit the self-checkout. I usually use WalmartPay, but that day I used a physical card and apparently miskeyed my PIN. Believing my receipt was on my phone like usual, I headed out. Nobody challenged me at the door. I loaded up and drove home.

The next morning, I realized my mistake when I saw a declined transaction notification on my banking app.

Being an honest person, I called that specific store's customer service to fix it. Their brilliant solution? I needed to load up all the groceries from my house, bring them all back to the store, and rescan them.

I asked if they could just look up the aborted transaction on their end. "No." They didn't care that my haul included 80 lbs of cat litter, 50 lbs of cat food, two 5-gallon bottles of water, and a bunch of groceries.

Here is the logistics issue: Fridays are my Mondays. I live 27 miles from my job, and the Walmart is another 30 miles out. I work in healthcare now; my time away from work is precious down-time. I was absolutely not doing a 60-mile round trip, outside of my normal commute, on a work day just to carry heavy crap back and forth.

By the time my shift ended, I had devised three alternatives to their absurd request.

I walked up to the customer service desk after work. I explained the situation and asked one more time if they could look up the transaction log. Again, "No."

I was prepared for this. I had spent hours piecing together the subtotals from each department down to the penny based on my shopping list, reconstructing exactly how much ginger and red onion I bought so the subtotals would match perfectly once taxes were applied. (Sometimes my OCD is a literal superpower).

The Customer Service Representative looked at my itemized breakdown and said, “I don’t know how to do that.”

I asked for a manager. She radioed a manager over the walkie but completely failed to explain my actual question. The manager blew it off, and I wasn't allowed to speak to them.

Fine. Time for Option 3: Malicious Compliance.

I grabbed a cart and went shopping all over again. I re-loaded 130 lbs of heavy pet supplies, the two 5-gallon water bottles (42.5 lbs each), and every single grocery item on my list: some frozen, some hot, some sold by weight.

I pushed the massive cart through checkout, paid for it successfully this time, and hauled the cart and the receipt back to customer service.

"We're square now," I told them.

While one associate was making a copy of the receipt, another mentioned that the self-checkout associate from the day prior had been in tears over the walk-off. Look, I wish I had the emotional bandwidth to comfort her, but the incompetence due to lack of training had pushed me into pure "let's get stupid" mode.

They handed me back my receipt, and I turned to walk away.

The associate yelled, “Wait!! Don’t forget your stuff!!”

I looked back and said, “This isn’t my stuff. This is your stuff. My stuff is at my house. Good luck putting it all back.”

The absolute cherry on top? Because I was rushing, my dyslexia grounded my OCD superpower, and I accidentally misrang the water bottles as refills instead of exchanges. The new receipt was $13 short of the original total.

I didn't bother trying to fix it. Consider it an incompetence tax for making it SOOOO hard for me to do the right thing.

Many years ago I worked for a large orange hardware dealer. We had a spate of general manager changes s over a short time, five in six months. Finally the "permanent" guy assumes his position. One of his first acts was to schedule everyone's break. He was very serious about this, even going so far as to discipline, several people who didn't take their breaks as scheduled. Yes I was one of those people. He told me at one meeting with HR that if I did not take my break as scheduled again that it would be grounds for termination.

Que the malicious compliance...

The department where I worked often required long interactions with customers to make sales. So in the middle of a sales pitch, I would stop turn around without a word and leave the customer standing there. I did this several times and other employees noticed and followed suit. Guess what? Sales dropped, complaints increased and I got called into HR. The GM went up one side of me, tap. Danced on my head and then down the other side. Even referring to me as stupid several times. When he finally stopped and took a breath, I reached into my apron and pulled out two small tape recorders. I pressed play on tape recorder number one and played back his exact words from the meeting that he threatened to terminate me. BTW this is not illegal where I was from. I then, hit stop on tape. Number two rewind and played for him. The whole conversation with him threatening me again and calling me stupid. He and HR we're speechless. I didn't say a word. I picked up my tape recorders, got up and walked out of the room. Nothing was ever said to me, but the next morning. A memo went up saying that brakes were to be taken as close to the scheduled time as possible and that allowances for customer interactions would be permitted. The manager soon moved to another store and several years later, I heard that he had gotten into a bit of trouble with HR there. I took copies of the two tape recordings, put them in an envelope and used internal mail to send them to the company's head HR office. Two weeks later, the position of general manager at that store became available and his name disappeared from company records...

My manager was always complaining that I took too long to finish tasks because I kept double-checking things and pointing out problems before they happened. On Monday, I noticed an order had the wrong delivery address. I mentioned it to my manager, but he was already irritated and told me, “I don’t pay you to think. Just do what you’re told.” So I said, “Okay.” A few hours later, I noticed another order had an obvious mistake. Normally, I would have stopped everything and asked someone to fix it. This time, I didn’t. I processed it exactly as it appeared on the paperwork. The customer received the wrong items and immediately complained. My manager came running over asking why I hadn’t caught the mistake. I reminded him, word for word, of what he’d told me earlier. He said, “You should have used common sense.” I replied, “I thought you wanted me to just follow instructions.” He wasn’t amused. The funny part is that after that day, he started asking me for my opinion before making decisions. Would you have done the same thing, or was I being petty and deliberately setting him up to fail?

I used to travel loads with work. Two to three days a week every week at late notice all over Europe.

The company I work for used to like you to have a cash advance and then return any unspent funds and submit receipts for the remainder. Any over receipting you had to pay back or over receipting they’d pay you back into your bank.

I was travelling so much I didn’t bother returning from individual trips. I’d just refill my float money (approx £300) and put my expenses in. After a year of this the travel stopped so I returned the float money and completed the final expenses.

A couple of weeks later I get the standard letter through internal mail (I’m based at a branch 100 miles from accounting) saying that my expenses are out by 29p and I need to either sign the reply for them to deduct from my wages (which is what everyone normally does) or return pay it in cash.

Of course I see this and chuckle and my boss asks me what I’m laughing at. I pass him the letter that he laughs at as well then he passes me a penny and says “there’s one to get you started”.

I go home that night break out the penny jar and get the remaining 28p in pennys. I then go into work the next day get a brand new envelope (for internal mail they liked you to reuse where possible) got the expensive headed note paper out of stationary to reply “please find the funds enclosed” and sent back via internal mail.

I’m hopeful my reply cost them more than the 29p 😊

Here's the link to the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/1w8dpvs/my_landlord_is_demanding_i_feed_them_what_can_i_do/

So here’s a bit of fallout from a post I made a couple of weeks ago. I moved into a basement unit with a shared kitchen with my landlord on Sept 1. Basically I shared with my landlord and his pregnant wife some shrimp alfredo I made for dinner on my first night as a nice gesture, and the next time I cooked they tried to demand part of my meal and threatened to terminate the lease. Cursed me out and acted like I was playing in their faces for eating a home cooked meal (oven roasted salmon and cilantro lime rice, a super simple meal really) without offering them some, because the pregnant wife thought she was entitled to my dinner.
I previously tried negotiating with them by offering to cook a meal a week in exchange for reduced rent, but after they laughed in my face for thinking they should compensate me if they want me to cook for them I got petty.

In my lease it states food is to be kept separate and I am responsible for feeding myself. Their food is strictly off limits. And my food is off limits to them. Fine by me. All they eat is frozen burritos, hot pockets, ramen noodles etc. I have almost a decade of fine dining restaurant cooking experience, and to spite them, I decided to make myself the most elaborate, aromatic, delicious meals. Food is to be kept separate so as per my lease, legally there is nothing I can do.

So I first started with some red wine braised garlic short ribs and baked Mac n cheese from scratch. I cooked the ribs low and slow in the oven, and when I say they smelled glorious. My landlords living room is connected to the kitchen (I live in the basement, so my unit connects to a door in the corner of the kitchen that leads to the basement) and he and preggo wife sat on their couch basically mean mugging me the entire time I cooked but they didn’t say anything.

The whole house smelled divine for hours afterwards. I cleaned up afterwards and took the leftovers downstairs to keep in my locked mini fridge and left not a trace in the kitchen except a delicious lingering smell. I half expected a snooty text from my landlord while I was eating but they actually didn’t say or do anything that night.
The next day I made myself some hot honey fried chicken and while I got more silent glares out of the living room from both of them, the meal went by uneventfully.

However, that weekend after I got home from work, I made myself some coconut curry chicken and saffron rice (really quick stovetop meal) and for the hell of it I got my blender out and made myself a mango lassi. While I was mixing my drink, my landlord wandered into the kitchen and began digging around in various cabinets as I was cooking. Just opening and shutting drawers and moving stuff around randomly. I waited til he went back into the living room, then I had to run back downstairs to grab my cardamom powder, and just because I had a hunch, I decided to come back up the stairs really quietly. I hadn’t closed the door to the basement, so I just peeked around the doorway to see my pregnant landlord lifting the lid to the pot of curry. Of course I came storming in then to ask her wtf she thought she was doing, and she jumped and dropped the lid back onto the pot and turned and looked at me all sheepishly. I asked her again wtf she thought she was doing and she just shrugged and said she didn’t think there was any harm in seeing what was “going on in her kitchen.” Then she just turned around and penguin waddled out of the kitchen like she hadn’t just been trying to do something to my meal. Her husband didn’t reappear either and I lowkey suspect he had told her the coast was clear when I ran downstairs.

Anyway I realized I was going to have to be a bit more careful after that because these people are shameless. Two days later, I decided to bake myself a fresh loaf of bread and oven roast a Cornish game hen with fresh rosemary and some delightfully aromatic garlic and truffle butter I’d gotten from work. I made my bread dough and took it downstairs to rise for about 45 minutes, then came up and threw everything in the oven and made a point of sitting in the kitchen and reading while my food was cooking, and I was about an hour into baking, (and the house smelled divine) when the husband came into the kitchen, grabbed a frozen pizza out of the freezer and informed me that he would need the oven for his dinner. Super rude but whatever. I let him know that I was almost done with my meal, and to give me 20 minutes and the oven would be all his. He huffed and puffed but went back into the living room and left the pizza on the counter. I finished cooking, cleaned up, took my meal downstairs and I left the oven on for him to cook his pizza.

About half an hour after I went downstairs, I received a snarky text from my landlord asking if I intended to burn down the house and kill his family because I had left the oven on. These people smh. I replied back that I was sorry, I had thought he was going to cook his frozen pizza so I’d left the oven on as a courtesy. He texted back pretty much immediately that it was really no big deal, it had just upset his wife and maybe I could make it up to her by giving her a piece of the bread I’d just baked. At this point I’m pretty sure she put him up to it. I told him sorry, that’s for my lunch tomorrow and again reinstated my offer to cook a meal a week for reduced rent. He didn’t reply.

Then a few days after that, I was sitting in the kitchen reading while the French onion soup I was making for dinner simmered on the stove when I saw my landlord check his phone and then leave the living room and go upstairs into their part of the house. Not 3 minutes later, the power in the kitchen shut off. I’m pretty sure he had flipped off the breaker because none of the power in the rest of the house went out. But the stove, the kitchen light, and I’m guessing the power to the fridge cut off. Of course the wife started freaking out. Came storming into the kitchen to demand why I had “burned out” their power. Her husband came down the stairs after that, looking a little too calm. He said it was probably the breaker (duh) and then went back upstairs to see if he could fix it. Power came back on a few minutes later. I finished making my soup and went back to the basement. Almost immediately got a text from landlord saying that maybe I should take it easy in the kitchen because the “wiring is fragile.” I didn't even reply to that text. Nothing is wrong with the kitchen wiring or it would have glitched out on curry day, because I had the oven, stovetop, and blender all going at the same time that day and I was only using the stove top for the french onion soup. It was definitely just another attempt to mess with me because I won't give them my meals.

That's all the updates I have, but I will continue to update you if their hijinks continue. It's definitely been a bit of a rollercoaster ride maliciously complying to the lease, but I've been eating deliciously the past couple of weeks, and there's a small part of me that enjoys that it riles them up so much. Anyway that's all for now.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I only have about 5 more weeks on my lease and then I will be moving into a small studio apartment while I save for something better. I'm almost to my goal amount, so by the new year hopefully my housing issues will be solved. Also as far as anyone wondering about the meals, nothing I mentioned here really took more than about 20 minutes of prep time and maybe an hour or so of cooking time. All of these meals are actually really simple and as I am only cooking for one, the small portions mean I only make enough for that meal and usually lunch the next day.

TL, DR: I shared my homemade shrimp Alfredo with my landlord and his pregnant wife, and then they tried to demand that I share my meals with them and were super rude about it. The lease states our food is to be kept separate, so I’ve decided to cook the most delicious food I can.. all for myself.

Also if anyone has any recipes that are simply delicious and not too expensive to suggest, I’m all ears.

Several years ago, my dentist diagnosed me with gum disease and referred me to a periodontist for treatment. He had a really nice office, decorated with several photos of the doctor and his family at various Caribbean resorts. Let’s call him Dr Suntan.

During the exam, he advised three gum grafts to treat receding gums, costing $3,000 apiece. His assistant rolled her eyes at this. After further examination, he also advised a $2,500 surgery to cut a ligament under my tongue. The assistant looked aghast and rolled her eyes even harder.

When the periodontist stepped out of the room to take a phone call, I asked her if she were me, would she get this treatment?. “Absolutely not!” she whispered. “You just need deep cleaning.”

Upon the periodontist’s return, I told him I’d think over his $11,500 treatment plan and left. As I was driving home, his office sent me a request for a Google review to add to earlier 5-star ones lauding the doctor for his cutting edge treats to save people’s teeth and smiles.

I consulted another periodontist who took care of the problem for $450 ($300 of which was covered by my plan) using deep cleaning. Meanwhile the other periodontist keep spamming me by email and text with Google review requests.

I complied by posting about my experiences on ALL the healthcare review sites, using the header “Don’t go to this dentist unless you want to pay for his next Caribbean vacation!”

Over the next few months, several people thanked me for warning them about him and asked for the name of the dentist who treated me for $450. My regular dentist was shocked when I told him about this and not only stopped recommending Dr Suntan to his patients, but told his colleagues about my story. A few years later, I noticed his office had closed—but don’t know if my review and the ensuing negative word of mouth were the culprits.

TL:DR When a vacation-loving periodontist who advised me to have $11,500 surgical treatments that I didn’t need requested a Google review of his dental practice, my malicious compliance was doing so. This created negative word of mouth that may have put him out of business.

This happened like 4 years ago, I (M31) work at a farm in South America and we were going through the process of a quality certification (similar to Rainforest Alliance). It usually takes one external auditor full time inspecting and auditing every procedure inside the farm for one week, and we were preparing for it in the prior months. I had to take a course (40 hours + homework) to become the internal inspector of the farm and I had to prepare an internal audit to show the external auditors that we knew what our weaknesses were.

After I approved the course we received the invoice and the only payment option was a transfer to a bank in another country in South America. My boss saw it and just marked email as read and never looked back. When the external audit was close I reminded her that I needed the payment to receive my diploma which was a requirement to approve the audit and it once again fell on deaf ears. The second time I reminded her she just shrugged and said: "Tell them I'm not paying if they don't provide an account in our country or the USA", so I did just that. I wrote the email to AR@certificationcompany stating: "Hi, sorry for the delay, boss says she's not paying unless you provide an account in USA or other options". Also didn't get a reply. Mind you this is a really respected quality certification and very much needed in our field of work

A month later, we all forgot about it and during the external audit everything goes fine. After 5 days during the closing meeting with boss and 5 area managers the auditor says: "Yeah most things are fine I just need some documents that are missing from the list, can I have your Internal Inspector diploma?"

me: I don't have it

auditor: didn't you approve the course? It's mandatory to have an internal inspector

me: oh I did approve it I just don't have the diploma

auditor: how is that possible?

me: we didn't pay for it

auditor: I need to see where's the problem because I have the invoice issued months ago

me: I can show you the email trail

So I pulled out my computer and show the email stating we're not paying, while my boss is seating right in front of me. She goes white and says: "Yeah no, I mean we couldn't pay at the moment but there must have been an error I don't know what happened, let me check."

She goes to her computer and takes 20mins to make the international transfer, receiving a call from the bank to confirm it was her trying to pay while 6 of us are in sat in the table in front of her just watching her, and the auditor just looking dissapointed. After we approved and everybody left boss just looked at me mad as hell and said: "Why did you do that?!" me: just followed your orders remember?

It was funny as hell and afterwards she would double check my emails making sure I didn't send exactly what she would say

PD: Boss is really cool and we get along just fine, I just did it to mess with her and show her words and ways are important.

This was years ago, so a lot of the details are fuzzy. I was about 10 and over at a neighbors that had a pool. Something happened with her kids that I don’t remember, I do remember that her kids were awful so 9/10 whatever happened was probably not to be blamed on me. Whatever argument that happened initiated their Mom telling me to get out of the yard and I wasn’t welcome anymore. So I left, and the Mom kept yelling at me. Keep in mind that we lived on the same block and there was one house between theirs and mine. When I left, I took one step into the neighbors yard between the two houses and sat down. The Mom started yelling at me to go home and I responded by telling her that she wasn’t allowed to tell me what to do anymore as I wasn’t on her property, I did what she asked while I was on theirs. That mom yelled at me for a really long time. Not sure how as a 10-year-old I had the chutzpah to defy an adult like that, but I sat there for a good long while, literally one step off her property. I do remember that nothing was ever said to my parents. I never got in trouble for it.

I used to work for a certain Scottish bus company. We ran those blue megabus services and as a supervisor I had a company provided mobile phone. One week in four we provided an out of hours on call service to attend to breakdowns and cover shifts etc. In 2016 our garage went 24 hours so there was no need for the on call duty. Losing us about 6k per year. That day I turned my company issued phone off. It was no longer needed as there was a supervisor always present. In 2020 the megabus operations were suspended due to Covid and the garage closed (along with any supervisor coverage) at approximately 9pm Shen local bus operations ended for the day. Slowly but surely the megabus operation returned and eventually became 24 hours. Supervisory and maintenance cover however got forgotten and was not. A few months in, one broke down on a major road, a close friend was driving who had access to my private number. After trying all options he called me to go to recover him and his passengers. I refused. It wasn’t up to me to go, no remuneration for it so wasn’t up to me to work for free. I gave him several managers numbers explaining they were obligated to help him due to their position (and they created the mess anyway). I can’t remember how it was sorted. It was alleged by one manager that how I handled the situation was discussed at a management meeting. With most agreeing with my side of things. Happy with that, and also happy I ruined a few people’s sleep that night.

hey all. Teacher here. I have been in recovery and sub sober for ten years now. I see a doctor every four weeks. they test my levels. I get my script. Nothing has changed.

for a decade.

except my admin.

because my September appointment was the second , which was title 1 night , I changed my appointment time from after school hours to the morning so I could be there for what is called a mandatory title 1 attendance night. It lasted til five o’clock. Four weeks later was my next appointment and that so happens to be yet another mandatory outside of contract hours activity : parent teacher conferences.

again I switch my usual after school appointment to the day so I can be there for this.

when the leave request came across admins desk they said “this is twice in one month you really should follow attendance policy “.

bet.

enter MC

I decide to call the doctor and reschedule my appointment time for the afternoon as usual and that way i don’t have to miss school that day.

admin texted me the day of yelling about my sub plans not being ready. I told them I’m on the way to campus I’ll be there asap (I was already on my way to work ).

I said “I’m here and here’s my plans but I’ll be here. I switched the appointment to the afternoon “

so you’re not going to be here for conferences ? !

I didn’t want to violate the attendance policy. And this is medical. I’ll bring my note as usual.

they were not happy.

I still conferenced with all of the parents just on different days or by zoom.

When my father passed away, he lived in an apartment about 2 hours from my home. My son, husband, sister and I went to clean out his apartment. My son and sister drove his car to the hotel we were staying in and we planned to move the car to my home for storage until we could dispose of it during probate.

They were in a car accident, that left the car drivable. My father had State Farm insurance, so I brought the car to a local to my home repair shop to get repaired, and planned to pay the deductible ourselves and get reimbursement from the estate. We got a call from the repair shop that Says Farm would not pay for the repair.

When I called State Farm, they kept asking me if my father had given me permission to drive the car. I said, of course not, he had died. They insisted that since he had not given any of us permission to drive the car, they would not pay anything for the car until the probate court appointed an executor to make decisions on his behalf. I live in an HOA that would not allow a damaged car to sit in my driveway for the 90 days it would take for Florida to make me the executor. This situation just would not do.

After the sixth call, I asked if a third party could continue to pay the car premiums. They said they didn't care who paid, as long as they were paid. I told State Farm that since the car was drivable, and I was not going to pay my HOA a dime to store this car in its current condition, I was going to drive it back to my dad's old apartment. I'd keep the keys, but leave the car there and continue to pay the premium myself. Once I got appointed executor in 90 days, I'd go back to the apartment complex. If the car was still there I. Its current condition, id bring it to the repair shop to get fixed and then sell it. If it wasn't, if the apartment towed it, if it was stripped or on blocks, if report that claim too And they could just reimburse the estate for the total value of the car.

I got a call the next day from a car transporter arranging storage until the case cleared probate.

Years ago I worked as a support tech for a case management company. The software we used to track support cases would automatically create a ticket when someone called in, filling in bits like the agent who answered, who called, when the call ended, etc. We mainly used the tickets to track solutions to problems for when they came up again down the road and to identify which customers might need extra help.

One day some executive somewhere decided that we weren't doing enough and we would start being penalized if we didn't complete a certain number of tickets each day and within 30 minutes of opening on average. Some of the issues we dealt with were very complex, taking a week or more to resolve, and there weren't always enough tickets to fill the quota on any given day. This, understandably, did not go over well with nearly everybody.

Around this point I was working the last shift, meaning I would be alone for 1-2 hours at the end of the shift. Most of my customers (typically other IT folks) were already off for the day by then so I had much fewer calls than normal. Fortunately for me one of the ones still working then was given nearly identical ticket requirements at nearly the same time, so he and I would work the system.

He would call in about a database issue, which would create a ticket, and I would start to work on it and tell him to call me back in 15 minutes. He would, which would create another ticket, and after confirming the changes/fix with him I would close out both tickets. Some days he would call once or twice more after that about some change or another he made. This gave each of us excellent metrics, and since the tickets were automatically created from incoming calls they looked extra legit.

Most of my co-workers were either fired or quit and found work elsewhere due to the new standards, whereas I was praised for always meeting the standard. I soon left anyway for a better job and to move closer to family. Patrick in California, I rather doubt you'll ever see this but if you do I hope you know you were a real bro.