rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance A Grocery Store Karen Got EXACTLY What She Asked For!

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

r/Maliciouscompliance Ever stand behind a Karen at a grocery store? They're always in such a hurry because their life is just SO important! This Karen gets pissy that the grocery store clerk isn't following all of the rules, even though this particular rule is a huge waste off time. The clerk happily complies with Karen and wastes the Karen's time by giving her exactly what she asked for! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to R-slash, a podcast where I read the best post from a cross-reddit. Today's subreddit is R-slash malicious compliance, where a caron at a grocery store gets a heaping dose of justice. Our next reply is from here for the jokes. I just witnessed the most beautiful piece of malicious compliance at my local supermarket. It has a deli counter where you take a paper ticket and wait your turn. There's a digital display that shows the next number, but when it's quiet, the staff often just serve the next person. There's a digital display that shows the next number, but when it's quiet, the staff often just serve the next person without advancing the number on the display and it gets out of whack.

Today was one such day. I pulled ticket number 87 and the display said 29. There were two people ahead of me at the counter. Some guy who was apparently 85 and what turned out to be a Karen at 86. While the Deligor was helping out man number 85, Karen launched into a tirade about the display being on 29, yelling at the young girl behind the counter that she was lazy and causing confusion. I just rolled my eyes and threw a look of understanding sympathy to the girl behind the counter as she finished up with guy number 85. What happened next?

Was priceless. Karen sees a number 85 guy What happened next was priceless. Karen sees a number 85 guy leave and launches into her order. The deli girl cut off Karen's order with a saccharine sweet smile and said, One moment please ma'am. She picked up the clicker for the display and clicked it over and over and over again until it reached 86. It took… It took quite a while. Needless to say, Karen was pissed.

She glared at the girl behind the counter the whole time while I just stood there with a huge grin on my face. And the best part, the Karen couldn't even criticize the deli worker because she was the one who was complaining about it being wrong. After finishing Karen's order, the deli girl tried to apologize to me for the delay, but I told her that she'd absolutely made my day. It's not often that you get to see staff deliver a customer service slap down, but when you do, it's glorious to watch. Opie, the thing that would have made that better is, ever she picked up the clicker that

was at 29, she should have been like, click, 30, anyone? Is there a 30 around? Click, 31, anyone, 31? Our next reddit post is from Notive Ranveer. To give some background, I was working as a data analyst at a company in the educational tech sector. For one of my projects, I created a report that we could give to the sales team that they could then use when asking clients to renew their contract. Clients were typically

school systems or individual schools. The report only used graphs, even adults like pretty pictures, and it showed the client data on how teachers and students were using the product. So the idea was, our sales guy could show the graphs to the school people and say, hey, x percent of your students and teachers are using our software X times a week so you should sign a new contract with us. I developed this report for our biggest client and I had all the top people from sales give their input when developing it. Our biggest client renewed which was great! Our sales people love the report and they wanted to use it for all renewals and we have over

5,000 clients. So I had to automate the process and everything seemed peachy until I had a problem. The data for this report was pulled from our database. I was in the research department and I didn't have access to the database. Instead our IT team had access to the database. If I wanted data, I had to put in a ticket, name all the data points I wanted, and I could only name one client per ticket.

Also, IT did all their work in Sprints, which are basically two week periods of work. Tickets were always added to the next sprint, so I ended up having to wait two to four weeks for data. This was fine for the big client report, but now that I was trying to create reports for our 5,000 clients, this was not going to work. Now, if you've worked with sales, you know they don't typically plan out 2-4 weeks in advance. I reached out to

IT and requested direct access to the database, so I could stop putting in tickets and just pull all the data myself. Well, that was immediately denied because all data requests will only be filed by IT. And as a research person, I had to stay in my lane. You might see where this is going. I wasn't happy, and sales wasn't happy with the delay, but there was nothing anyone could do. So, I reached out to one of the sales managers to discuss the solution. Since data was going to take 2-4 weeks to arrive, could he please send me every single client that had a renewal coming up in the next 2-4 weeks? With over 5,000 clients that averaged something like 100 renewals each week, he smiled and

understood what was going on, and he happily sent me a list of about 4,000 clients. Time for malicious compliance. Armed with my list of over 400 clients, I figured out when their next sprint started and I cleared my schedule for the day before the new IT sprint started. At about one ticket per minute, I was going to take about 6 hours and 40 minutes to submit all the tickets. So that's what I spent my whole Friday doing. Let's not forget, they had to get all the data for these tickets during their next two weeks sprint, as long as I submitted these tickets before 5 PM today.

This meant that they had to take care of all 400 tickets in the next two weeks. Plus, I submitted tickets through their spring planning meeting so they couldn't even plan for it all. Most of them had push notification set up, so they got pinged every time a ticket was submitted. I would have paid good money to be a fly on that wall during that meeting, watching a new ticket pop-up about every minute. So then, I didn't hear a p from them at all that Friday.

To their credit, on Monday, I started getting data from my tickets. Now, I had automated the reporting process on my end, so each report only took me a few minutes to run. I was churning out reports as quickly as I received the data without an issue, and sales was loving it. I saw tickets coming in from every member of the IT team, and during the second week many tickets came in after working hours, so obviously they were struggling to keep up. Again, I'll give them full credit.

They fulfilled every single ticket, but there were a lot of long days for them, and everyone was salary, so no overtime pay either. This is of course on top of all the other tickets they needed to complete, so it was quite a stressful sprint. Undeterred, I met with the sales manager again right before the next sprint and asked for the next set of clients with renewals. Then, the day before the next sprint, I began submitting tickets again. My work day started at 9am and by 10am the head of IT ran over to me. He was bugged and asked me how many tickets I was planning on submitting. I told him the same amount as last time.

This time I actually only had 200 tickets, but he didn't know that. And I'm pretty sure that I saw him break on the inside. I did feel bad at this point, so I said, alternatively, you could just give me access to the database and I could query the data myself. And I had access before noon. Okay OP, I'll admit completely 100% that this is classic malicious compliance. You asked for something, they said no, do it the official way and you did it the official way and they suffer the consequences. So yeah, malicious compliance. However, OP, I'm going to be honest with you, you're kind of a jerk in this post. Because what it sounds like is you made all the worker bees stay extra for unpaid over time because

I guess their boss rejected you so it's not their fault but you're punishing them for something they're bossed it. I feel like there would have been a much more diplomatic way to approach this where you just like have a meeting with the director of IT and explain the situation and explain that you can't individually send in 5,000 IT tickets a year because that'll just clog up the system. Or alternatively, you could ask the sales team because in companies that I worked at before, a sales team typically have a lot of weight because they're the money makers. So if you get the sales guy on your side, then maybe he could go talk on your behalf.

But like, getting workers to do unpaid overtime, just because you feel like being snarky, kind of douchey. OPM, I'm going to be honest with you, it's kind of a douchey move. So great malicious compliance. Don't get me wrong. This is grade A, malicious compliance material. It's just, nah, I feel like they're a little undeserving on this one. If I had to stay late and work unpaid overtime, just because my boss didn't realize the extent of what someone was asking on some random email, then I would be really pissed off of that person and at my boss. Our next Reddit post is from ICD, the background.

I've been a freelance contractor for over 30 years in the UK and I've worked for many companies, usually on an hourly or daily rate. About 10 years ago, I had the opportunity to work for a client on a 6 month contract on a daily rate, and also to work from home except for some site visits for meetings. Since I was working from home, I was able to work my own hours. I was basically judged by my output, not by my actual time worked. I would work whenever I wanted, on an hour here or there, multiple breaks during the work day, and also sometimes at weekends whenever I wanted, an hour here or there, multiple breaks during the work day,

and also sometimes at weekends whenever I felt like it. However, I ensured that I at least complied with the 40 hours a week minimum even though I was on a daily rate. The way this contract worked was I would submit my time sheet for my boss to sign. That time sheet would be sent to my agency and my agency would calculate how much money I should be paid for the work I did that week. I didn't have to submit invoices directly to the agency. They used something called self-invoicing.

Now because of the hassle of trying to record all the start times, it was a pain to fill in the client time sheets. Their time sheets only allowed for one start time, one lunch, one break, and one end time. So because I was on a daily rate, I would just record a standard 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. start and stop times and a 30 minute lunch break for every weekday. That way I knew that I was putting in the right number of hours and I wasn't cheating the client. This was all well for a couple of months.

My boss would sign the time sheet, the agency would invoice the client and just send me the money each month. At some point I would reconcile my books noting the payments against my day's work. The compliance. At some point, my boss balked at how I was filling in my time sheet and asked for it to be more detailed. This was where the malicious compliance took over. I would carefully record all the periods that I was working, which I did anyway, and then

create a time sheet for the week. This resulted in several pages of time sheets rather than the previous five lines, now showing all the periods I worked, all the breaks I took, the total hours for each day, and the total hours for each week. My boss would need to check all this over and sign it and we continued that way for a while. The fallout. Now, you may think that this was only a small malicious compliance.

It took me extra effort to comply. My boss got a detailed time sheet and nothing changed. However, there was an unexpected consequence of this compliance that was rooted in the contract that I had signed and the contract the client had signed. It came down to the definition of a working day. Remember, I was on a daily rate, not an hourly rate, even though the client insisted on a breakdown of all my hours. After a few months when I was reconciling my books, I noticed that I was getting paid more than I expected. Forty percent more to be

precise. When I investigated, it turned out that I'd overlooked my contract that stated that I was paid a full-dazed contract rate irrespective of how many hours I worked on that day. So, it didn't of how many hours I worked on that day. So it didn't matter how many hours I worked in a day, I would still get paid for just a day rate. But if I worked just one hour on a day, then I got paid for the entire day on that day. Since I was now giving a time sheet that showed me working on Saturday and Sunday, in addition to Monday through Friday, then I was getting paid for an extra two full days of work, even though I was only working for 40 hours a week. I decided not to bring this to the attention of my boss.

After all, he was signing off on my time sheet every week anyways. This resulted in an unexpected pay raise for the final couple of months on my contract. I just wish I'd complied earlier in my contract. Our next reddit post is from IBS means no pizza. My sister and brother-in-law are born again Christians and a sect that doesn't condone alcohol or gambling. I have no problem with their beliefs, but my brother-in-law loves to shove his religious views down our throats at every family event, and it's draining! My parents were brought up in the same religion, but they're very laid back about their rules, and believe that what they do is their choice alone.

Everyone else can do their own thing. I'm agnostic. I play the National Lottery for two bucks a week, and I like to have a glass of wine with meals when I go out. My brother-in-law comments on this every time we meet. He comments, it's a sin, and I say it is for you, not for me. This year, I won a few thousand dollars at the lottery. I decided to give away some of the money to my parents and in-laws so they could go have a lovely holiday next year with the grandkids. So, here's the malicious compliance. My brother-in-law found out about the money and got my sister to call me asking for their share. I said, sis, your husband has made it very clear that gambling is a sin, and any money received is tainted by that sin. I wouldn't want him to compromise his faith by accepting sin full money.

My sister laughed and said she would relay that message to my brother-in-law. My brother-in-law is now not speaking to me. Oh dear, what a shame! O.P. The second you said that you won money from the lottery, I knew exactly where this was going, and still, it was so satisfying to hear. Your brother-in-law sounds like a class A hypocrite. Next time you're around of O.P., you should give him a lecture about the dangers of gambling and how risky it is to accept gambled money from family. After all, it is a sin!

Our next reddit post is from Mountain Apartment. After my spouse's grandfather, Bill, died suddenly of a heart attack, my spouse's grandmother, Frankie, was understandably devastated. But she went about closing his estate with a stiff upper lip. That is, until she got to one bank account that was only in Bill's name, she didn't have a joint bank account that had both their names. Despite having the death certificate, will, and other documentation required, the bank would absolutely not let Frankie close Bill's account.

But for whatever reason, they would allow her to withdraw money. Being the type of woman not to suffer fools, Frankie withdrew all but one cent from the account. The next day, she got a call from the Banks Branch Manager explaining there was a minimum balance requirement, and the bank account would be subject to a service fee if it didn't have a certain amount of money in it at the end of each month. No problem, Frankie tells the manager. Just let me close the account.

We can't let you close an account in someone else's name, the manager, just let me close the account. We can't let you close an account in someone else's name, the manager says. At this point, Frankie realizes that it doesn't affect her if a bank account in someone else's name goes negative because of service fees. The manager won't budge and neither will she. So the next month, the account goes negative after the bank applies a $2 service fee. That was 17 years ago. The bank still calls her from time to time asking her to pay off the balance. But when she asks about closing the account and they tell her only bill can close it, she promptly hangs up on them and goes back to playing bridge with her friends.

This is like, what do they even expect this old lady to do? Co-Grab a shovel? That was our slash malicious compliance, and if you like this content, you can sponsor my podcast to unlock extra episodes. Also, be sure to follow my podcast, because I put on your Reddit podcast episodes every single day.