rSlash - r/Maliciouscompliance "OK"
Episode Date: August 25, 2020r/Maliciouscompliance In today's episode, OP has a confrontation with a shady landlord who's trying to squeeze all of his tenants for extra money. OP isn't about to get screwed over, so he carefully r...eads over the leasing contract and realizes that OP isn't in trouble. Actually, the owner is in trouble! Now it's time for some malicious compliance! If you like this episode, be sure to follow me for more daily Reddit content! 🔔 Subscribe: https://bit.ly/2E3A8i6 💬 Discord: https://discord.gg/VD6eYD3 🎧 Podcast: https://link.chtbl.com/rslash ⚓ Send me a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rslash 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rslashyt/ ♪ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rslash0 🛒 Merch: http://bit.ly/rSlashMerch 🎁 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/rslash Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Welcome to R-Slash, a podcast where we'd the best post from across Reddit.
Today's subreddit is R-Slash malicious compliance.
Our next Reddit post is from Indomit.
I've never met anyone that said,
Oh good, an HOA.
We all have trash cans,
but the sight of them offends the delicate eyes of some.
So I complied with the new rule of no seeing bins from the street. I get a notice about
my bins being out, which is surprising because I'm the only one who touches the cans, and
I know I'm 100% compliant. I call in and ask where I got the notice. The full description
says, bins in driveway with lids off. I asked if this happened to be a Tuesday, and sure enough it was.
Wednesday's pick up, and I was doing my weekly cleaning.
I was effing using them.
I calmly explain this through gridded teeth.
Oh, okay, I'll remove the notice.
Great, but how do I prevent this from happening again?
Oh, I guess notify us. All right, I said I'll notify you every time I'm using my trash cans.
Oh, that won't be necessary. Clearly it is.
That was five two stays ago.
Today, I once again called promptly at 10 o'clock and let Alan know that I was going to use my trash cans.
You know what, OP? I'm just gonna put a hold on any trash can notices for you.
Hey, that would be swell Alan.
That would be swell.
Our next Reddit post is from Fiona Sapphire.
A few years ago I was looking for a place to live, and I came across an interesting advertisement
looking for property guardians.
The idea behind property guardians is that disused buildings are far more secure if they're occupied.
So owners of empty properties will allow someone to live their temporary early for an incredibly cheap price.
So the Guardian gets to live in a usually quite interesting disused building incredibly cheaper.
The owner makes a small additional bit of income and has someone keeping an eye on their place.
This arrangement is usually done through a third-party guardian company who acts as an intermediary. This particular advertisement was for a pub that had recently
closed. My interest peaked, so I went along to a viewing. The space was huge, and they
were only asking for a few hundred pounds. All bills included. So I went for it, along
with a group of other people. We all picked our rooms. I got the bar area. A huge room
with an ensuite ladies and gents toilet. A big fireplace and cozy pub decor. We all picked our rooms. I got the bar area, a huge room with an ensuite ladies and gents toilet,
a big fireplace and cozy pub decor. We all had full use of the sizeable pub kitchen, beer cellar,
dish washing room, double garage, car park, and a massive garden with a barbecue area.
For the most part, it was a great gig. I got to live in a pub, have all the space I wanted,
and as the building was due to be destroyed, we could do pretty much whatever we liked with the internals.
I put up curtains and temporary walls and made it my cozy home for the next couple of
years.
Other Guardian's mood didn't end out over the months, but myself and a couple of others
were there for the long term.
Aside from the odd dodgy person coming and going, I had two of my tires slashed at one point,
but that's another story.
It was all pretty cushy.
The owner of the Guardian
Company and thus the person I paid my rent to was a large red face man who was quite full of himself.
He tended to be quite bossy and sometimes aggressive, but I stayed out of his way.
As long as I paid my rent and didn't cause him trouble, he left me alone, all until the end of
the tendency. I had moved out, returned my keys, and I was awaiting the return of my security deposit. At some point, a car had been dumped on the property.
I hadn't noticed because one of the previous guardians who I'll call Rob had pushed it
around to the back of the property and had been working on it. I just assumed it was his
car. The first of the emails from the Guardian Company read,
The Volvo dumped in the car park was not reported to us and must be removed from the site.
Rob has declined to take responsibility of the vehicle and has alleged it was reported
to the police and yet none of you have reported to us on such a serious issue.
I would suggest that it be placed on the public highway and then the police will deal
with whomever owns the vehicle.
Did you just incite us to commit fly tipping?
I emailed back and said the car wasn't my responsibility and thus I won't be moving it.
Things went back and forth like this for a while with the owner insisting that we were
all responsible.
So stop arguing as I don't care and if it's not gone then you will all be accountable
to the issue.
Rob has contacted me and has said that it's not his, and now the burden falls on all
of you that knew about the car and failed to report it.
At this point, I mentioned small claims court as an idle threat to see what would happen.
You have failed to report an incident that is something that is detrimental to the property.
You're in breach of the license for failing to do so.
Happy to see you in court and explaining that you were put into a building to act a security by occupation.
And while there, you failed to report a dumped car.
Right, it's on.
I pulled out the contract and went back over it with a fine tooth comb.
At this point, another email came through.
Dear all, please be aware that you were all under license of the property and not tenants.
Under the license, you act to security for the
property and were responsible for reporting any incidents, and also were responsible for
keeping the property safe, secure, and as stated. Any items left will be charged for removal.
The items left were dumped outside, and certainly were not there throughout your time on site,
and must have been placed there by one or more of you.
This was accompanied by photographs of even more stuff to the guardians' elect in the
property, furniture, etc.
But, I wasn't going to be responsible for any of their stuff.
The guy thought he could bully us out of our money because we didn't have a legal
tendency and were therefore not covered by UK laws protecting tenants.
I wasn't going down without a fight.
We may not be covered by tenants' rights, so everything would fall back to basic contract law. I have found all
the interesting parts of the Occupation License Agreement that I had with the Guardian
Company. Damage Security Payment means the amount payable by the Guardian to cover the
cost of any damage caused by the Guardian. But not anybody else. And since this contract
is between myself and the Guardian Company with no jointly and
severly liable clause, I can't be held responsible for anyone else's mess.
Great.
And there's more.
This one is interesting.
The Guardian Company provides services to property owners to, among other benefits,
secure premises against trust passers and protect such premises from damage.
The Guardian Company has agreed to provide such services to the owner in respect of the property.
So, we don't provide security. That's the responsibility of the Guardian company,
which we are not part of. But wait, there's more. The Guardian will not remove anything from
the property other than things that he or she brought there. Boom, gotcha. I fired back an email.
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Please see section 3.1 on the license agreement signed by myself in the Guardian Company owner.
It stipulates that you, the Guardian Company, provide security. Not us, the Guardians.
Please also see section 10.1.10. Given that I didn't bring either the car or the furniture onto
the property, it would, in fact, be a breach of your own license agreement for me to remove it.
In this case, I'll be complying with your contract and thus will not remove the items that I
did not bring onto the property. Please return my security deposit within 3 working days, or I'll be forced to take legal
action.
Their response
At this point, we're happy to see you in court, and please do not contact us unless
buy your lawyer, as we'll be charging for our time to deal with such matters.
If you can demonstrate who's responsible for leaving the items for us to deal with, we'll
take a look at it.
But as stated previously, these items were not here previously and have been dumped outside.
Oh, if you failed to report the car. Sounds like he was a little shaken up and probably hoped I
was bluffing. Unfortunately for him, I wasn't. I filed the court papers after three working days.
He caved as soon as he received the court papers and realized that I wasn't bluffing. He repaid our deposits along with my court fees the very next day.
Victory.
Down in the comments, I'm going to read this reply from Fatcats to Fat because I was
thinking the same thing. Good for you for using the contract to your advantage, but
this whole guardian thing sounds super sketchy. It sounds like a way for an owner to make money off
of an abandoned property by renting commercially-zoned property for residential use while dodging
tenant protection laws. Our next Reddit post is from For sure Girl. Our next Reddit post is from
Corian. I used to work as a manager at a small business. I was the only employee on site during
the day, so I was expected to answer the phone, check in deliveries, help walking customers, etc. any time that they came in.
Because I constantly needed to be available, I didn't have a real lunch break.
I would just eat my lunch at my desk when I had time.
One afternoon, one of my bosses called me on the office phone and very casually asked,
hey, what's going on?
What are you working on?
I told him the project I was in the middle of, and he said, really?
Because I've been watching the camera, and you've been messing around on your cell phone
for the last 5 minutes.
I explained to him that my fiancee had texted because there was an emergency that had
come up, and I was trying to help him handle it.
Giving him the account information, logins and passwords, etc.
Since I was working and couldn't handle it.
His response was,
I don't care. I don't ever want to catch you on your phone again. I tried to explain that I
didn't get any breaks or anything during the day, so I didn't have any of my own time to handle
things that may come up, but he didn't care. So knowing full well that the owners, the other managers,
and staff members constantly texted me throughout the day whenever they needed something, I complied.
The next day I came in and I left my phone in my purse.
I had a smart watch so I could see when I got a text, but I didn't answer because I wasn't
allowed to be on my phone.
After two days of me ignoring the request during the day and only answering their texts
after leaving, saying, sorry, I didn't see your text because
I'm not allowed to be on my phone at work. I've already left for the day. My boss came in and
told me we needed to have a discussion. He called me out of my malicious compliance, but also
acknowledged that I was essentially locked in the office for eight hours a day. So going forward,
I could take a half hour lunch break where I didn't have to do anything else, and I was allowed
to use my phone during the day, as long as I didn't abuse the privilege.
During my last semester, my bachelor's degree, I already applied for my master's degree
at the same university.
So I go through the normal application process and get accepted.
Yay!
But as I didn't have my bachelor's degree at that point, I had to produce a certified
copy of my degree as soon as I could.
Yes, I had to give a certified copy of my bachelor's degree to the university who issued that degree in the first place.
And no, these were not different departments.
It was all done by one lady in the examination office.
But whatever, weird bureaucracy is weird.
And boy, was it annoying at that university because all students in my
department had to go through one lady. And I think she just hated to do anything. Like seriously,
she was so annoyed when you showed up at her office to just do anything. When I turned in my
bachelor thesis, she straight up said that she's so effing annoyed that all the students turned
her thesis in at her office. Well, we don't have another choice.
There is seriously not another way to turn my thesis in.
And don't even think about asking her anything.
So I'm already looking forward to picking up my Bachelor's degree.
No, we don't have a fancy celebration.
Normally, you would get an email when your degree is ready, but since she hates our
Effing Guts, you just have to guess
when it's ready. We don't get an email. Two weeks after your last grade is put in a system,
it's probably ready. So I did just that. I show up at her office and her a my degree is ready.
She says, here, without even looking at me. Thank you, but I need a certified copy of that.
Excuse me, what? I need a certified copy.
Could you please copy it and certify that it's a copy of the original?
I know what a certified copy is.
You can get that at the town hall.
I know, but I can also get it here.
I know for a fact that you have to give me one if I request it.
A five-second staring contest ensues.
FINE! it. A five-second staring contest ensues. Hhhhh, fine! She takes my degree back, turns around, copies it, and signs that it's a certified
copy. The lady hands me the degree in the copy.
Here! Thank you. Now I would like to give you a certified copy of my bachelor's degree
for my application for my master's degree. I hand her back the certified copy. Are you
serious? Yeah, I thought if I'm already here, I could turn that
in as well. So I don't have to come back again later. Another 5-second staring contest
ensues. The lady just takes the copy out of my hand and turns around, and with that,
I left with the biggest grin on my face. What did she expect that I go to town hall
wait there for probably 1-2 hours? Get a certified copy that would cost me 13 euros, the one at university was free, and then come back another day?
Hell no.
Especially because she had the weirdest office hours ever.
It was something like two days a week for one and a half hours in the morning, and one
day for one and a half hours in the afternoon.
So I probably would have waited days to turn that in.
But her face when I asked for a certified copy was just glorious.
Down in the comments, we have this story from Chaos for Quality.
Ugh, I had to do something like that once at my government job.
I needed to fill out a form and give it to a guy named Joe.
So I fill it out to the best of my knowledge I give it to Joe and he says, you need to fill
out this field here.
It's some ID number associated with my account.
Okay, but how do I get that info Joe?
He gives me a blank stare.
Okay, well I'll try.
Then I spend half my day going to visit my co-workers, my boss, the floor admins.
How do I get this number?
I get various iterations of, I don't know, or go talk to Bob.
Try Linda.
I'm running around the office like I want to scaper your hunt, which of course I am.
But alas, no luck.
Nobody knows what this number is.
I go back to Joe and tell him, sorry, I just can't find it.
Joe stares at me for a few seconds, then he sighs, opens a drawer, pulls out a stack of paper, finds the magic number, and copies it onto my form.
He had it the whole freaking time!
That was our Slotch Malicious Compliance, and if you like this content, then be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcasts every single day.
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