My wife recently performed some tasty malicious compliance so I thought I'd combine it with her previous MC from 6 months previous.
My wife works in the finance dept for a government contractor, they're Hybrid but mostly all work from home due to limited office space, with the expectation her Team is on site Mon/Tues.
In this role she has a busy end-of-month every month with the whole team working to post figures and is often required to work late into the evening or a few hours on the weekend to finalise the month-end...this is important for later.
Due to insane commuter traffic, she prefers to start at 7 and finish at 3PM so that the commute is 30 minutes instead of AN HOUR or more, each way just sitting in congested traffic.
6x months or so ago manglement issued an edict requiring "core hours" (8-4) when in the office AND more in-office days. My wife emails management stating that requiring her to sit in traffic for a, wasted, additional 4-5 hours a week would mean her evening & weekend flexibility would no longer be available.
Cue a management response of "Team Player blah blah". My wife responds with a breakdown of time within her paid 40x hour week and how the flexibility established and continued since Covid has benefited the Team, but as that flexibility is being reduced it has a natural effect on HER flexibility.
They insist.
So she leaves the office after "Core Hours", gets stuck in traffic and suddenly misses the end of day Teams Call. Of course Manglement don't appreciate this reality but she has the emails of their insistence, can't control traffic patterns and Manglement don't want to schedule the meeting earlier. If they want her on the call, either she reverts to her original schedule...or enters into Overtime to take it in the office. They suggest her previous schedule for the "foreseeable future" to aid..."Team Cohesion".
Recently her Manglement decided that all overtime has to now be approved by a direct line manager.
Cut to last week, my wife has been exiting meetings on the dot at the hour; "Sorry, I've got a hard stop now due to no approved OT" BAM! drops from the meeting. She's even starting to affect other Team members, with her and a colleague ceasing work on the dot due to "Not approved". Management is of course on the hook for incomplete end-of-month figures and starts enquiring; the Team replies with the OT edict..."All OT to require Manager approval."
"It wasn't pre-approved so I stopped working to adhere to the new policy."
My wife mentioned they haven't responded to this yet, but it's been weeks already.
All of this after Management still hasn't backfilled an open dept position for 5x months, so they're down an additional person.
I am now thoroughly enjoying her work stories and think reading this sub to her over the years may have had a positive impact.
LOVE that she just drops straight out of the meeting at closing time. What a legend
Right?! I'd never have the guts for that
I did that once in an online training. Friday before a long weekend. Everyone else in my unit got early release, but I was in this training. Ok. Trainer asks if we want to cut lunch short so we can finish a few minutes early, we all agree. End of scheduled training comes, trainer still droning on. At 1 minute past my end of duty day, I interrupted to say I was leaving. He asked if I could just complete their little survey first, and I said no (I had tried to do it early and it would let me submit and zeroed out my responses). I was not happy.
This has happened to me as a teacher. Many of my colleagues are fine staying late bc “it’s what teachers do” but I’m not ok with being taken advantage of. One day during a training one of the directors was talking on and on, simply reading off a sheet of paper they’d handed to us. I got up and walked out the door when it hit 3 minutes after bc I could tell she wasn’t going to stop talking anytime soon. I actually had a couple colleagues follow me out the door.
Side note, many of us have second jobs we have to get to so staying past scheduled hours isn’t really an option.
Teachers have long been abused into thinking they have to put in all these "extra" hours they don't get paid for....meanwhile admin has been continually attacking faculty salary for....fucking ever?
You are the kind of teacher we need today....and it's complete fucking bullshit you should need a second income stream AS a teacher.
They do that a -lot- in my city. They work so much, and must use most of their pay checks for class supplies, they bring home about $300 a month after everything.
Can never survive as a teacher, need a working partner (or live with the parents) in order to have a roof over their heads. Yet the school district still advertise $80k teaching jobs. They don't tell you that you actually bring home $3,600 and work 6.5 days a week, including summer times.
It's.. pure evil. Union is of no help either.
Yeah. Spouse and I were both going to be teachers so we got right out of California as soon as we graduated (sadly, because we loved it there). One of us ended up staying in education, the other didn’t. But we knew we had no hope of ever buying a house or living a reasonably middle-class life in the Bay Area on two teachers’ salaries.
Teaching is bullshit enough in Australia, but it sounds like the pay and conditions are magnitudes worse in the US!
Yep, the number 1 form of theft in the US, wage theft.
yup. I used to get a ton of flak for not doing teaching related tasks over the weekend or at home but the reality is that I am under no obligation to do so and my tasks still get done. besides I already put in enough unpaid time with extracurriculars
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I once quit a job and it became known how much better my new job's pay would be. This after the engineering department got a piss poor annual rise (the second year running not even keeping up with inflation). Within a week, other staff started talking openly of looking for a new job, as IT was really booming at the time. Management scrambled to offer better pay.
Sometimes you can do your colleagues a massive favor by quitting.
I did this on a TV show I was editing many years ago. I had about 6 weeks before my next job started, so I accepted a month-long gig on a show to help them out. But the day rate they were paying their editors was much lower than the going rate.
I agreed to accept their rate… for an 8-hour day. Most editor rates are for 10-12 hour days (I know, it sucks).
Anyway, every day at 5pm, I’d stop what I was doing and leave. And the producers would want to screen the day’s work at 4:30. Which means I’d walk out in the middle of a screening. Every time they got upset, I reminded them what our deal was, and that I’d been ready to screen several hours earlier. I’d be happy to stay later, but I’d be billing OT.
They’d say no, I’d go home. Went like that for the full month, and I loved being home at a reasonable time.
When I was teaching, my co worker was called into the principals office for not coming in the week previous to actual start date to get her classroom ready. It is ridiculous to see the extent of time and effort that teachers put into classrooms/ most coming out of their own $$$
one of my friends is a teacher. We had him over on a Sunday, he told us he had a meeting at 315 the next day, he is "off" at 320, and was going to walk out of the meeting at 320. I said no way he has the balls to do that. Next day, 321, i get a video of him walking out of the meeting, showing me the time on his watch. Ah, tenure...
Having a second job as a teacher sounds so depressing. Society really has failed you.
Also a teacher - we have early release Wednesdays for building staff meetings or PLCs. A couple of years ago admin was making a big deal about a “mandatory district-wide meeting” on a Wednesday (small town, 6 schools total) for at least a week in advance.
We all show up and… they’ve hired a (terrible) stand up comedian. As soon as their contract time ended, a surge of elementary teachers got up and left.
(Former) teacher here and yeah the bullshit admin timesucks get ridiculous and I quit playing as well. We had 45 minute weekly meetings that were ballooning to 4 hours of utterly irrelevant gossiping among staff who I had almost no professional relationship with and who didn't do or discuss anything relevant to my job.
Admin would not step in and actually moderate their own meetings. These morning "weekly catchups" were going until lunch, and then people were coming back after lunch to keep yapping for another hour. Once I was fully checked out of that job and getting chewed out was no longer a threat I just started setting full volume alarms on my phone for 1 hour, loudly gathering my shit up and walking out.
I used to be a company trainer. Well I was the H&S guy but did loads of training. In my early days I once over ran a one day session by 5 minutes (I was young and nice and didn't start until everyone arrived and got a drink. I let them be tardy after breaks and lunch, I was weak.) Anyhow I was 5 minutes late finishing and a woman then berated me for 10 minutes about needing to get a bus and collect her kids and how useless I was. I never forgot that lesson and I ALWAYS finished early. Incidentally my record was 4 hours early but it was a brand new 5 day course with an exam and I wasn't sure I could squeeze it into 4 days. Turns out I could and did from then on and still finished 5 minutes early.
Ahh, the military.
DoD civilian, but yeah…
I'm loving that contractor life atm, would hate to be a govvie rn
It’s not fun.
Get the guts. Be the change.
I once attended a meeting from the car (I wasn't driving) and my boss said that was unprofessional so I hung up. He then later wrote me up for hanging up on a meeting with an important client...it was important so I tried to be there even in my commute sheesh
I work in engineering, depending on the project up to half our meetings have someone in a car. I took a meeting in a train once...
Toodle-oo. Love it
I love that chick.
All of the Toodle-oo episodes she does are prime examples of malicious compliance. Love it.
she’smaking a point about the new rules
It’ll be interesting to see if management finally addresses the issue or just keeps ignoring it.
It's a legit strategy to avoid wage theft.
It's as if the company just expected everyone to do unpaid overtime so they can meet their unobtainable goals. Good for you for showing everyone that you are an employee and not a slave. No pay = no work.
We like to think of ourselves as more of a family than a company. We all need to put in that extra work, and make sacrifices, so that our stakeholders are happy.
Huh? You want to be paid for your efforts? You're not being much of a team player.
We like to think of ourselves as a family! Yeah you like to think of yourself as the dysfunctional kind as well.
Huh, I must have misplaced my invitation to the pool party/tennis date/Xmas party with my present under the tree that surely came from my "family" in that mansion owned by the people who are employing me and want me to feel like "family". Family shares the wealth, don't they? Sheesh, the gaslighting is epic.
Oh sorry. We're not that kind of family. We're the kind of family that profits off of your blood, sweat, tears, and mental well-being for the sake of "the stakeholders" and making our billionaire "family members" richer.
Yes yes I know you're struggling and want to be paid a living wage. But have you thought of the exec who needs a new superyacht? We all have to put in the effort.
In that family, the enployees have the status of Dobby at the Malfoys
How about you making MY stakeholders happy? My family and friends seeing their loved one instead of hearing they are still at work and not even getting paid to be kept away.
Where does it say unpaid overtime? I thought the flexibility on her side just meant agreeing to do overtime late and a few hours on the weekend, but still ofc getting overtime for it. That's already flexible enough.
They said OT has to be approved, they haven't approved it, and yet they have meetings that run over. What do you think they are expecting?
Core office hours are not supposed to be the whole day! Core office hours are supposed to be when early and late flex time people are all in the office.
If office hours are 8-4 and that fills her paid hours requirement why is there an end of day meeting outside of this hours? If this call everyday? Is she paid ot to attend?
If their end of month or isn't pre approved be sure not to do it!
A friend used to work for a big semiconductor company, and was told "Yes, we have flex time! You can come in any time before 8 and leave any time after 5!".
I like the joke about working hybrid...
"Of course we're hybrid! You can work from the office M-F and then from home on Sat/Sun!"
Right, in most software companies in Germany, core hours are 10-3.
Last year i was supposed to start at a new company (department got bought out). They had "Flex time", like I'm used to. They gloated about how their employees like taking longer lunches, like going to the gym or for a swim.
Their definition of flex time was having core hours of 8-12 and 2-4. No wonder they take long lunch breaks if that's the only way to reduce hours.
There were so many issues with that company that i went and asked for an offer from a competitor, where I'm at now.
"Manglement" is perfection. Your wife is awesome. Keep us posted!
I have to catch myself from using manglement in front of my management team at work. I said it once and, luckily, no one caught it.
"Listen, don't mention the war. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right."
"BASIL!"
Basil: "Well, you started it, didn't you?"
Germans: "NO WE DIDN'T!"
Basily: "Yes, you did! You invaded Poland..."
I just found my new favorite word in manglement
My husband created the verbs "managize" and "managizing" to describe what manglement does.
How about "mangleize"?
"Mangulate"?
I think "Mangle" is the word you're looking for. It's the base word, and 'nuff said.
Amazon is letting (encouraging??) manglement happen on an EPIC scale. Too many people with too many projects exist JUST to justify some ass kisser's promotion. We call spring 'project season' because most promotions happen after peak (Black Friday to Mid January-ish), and EVERY year, there's some new - USUALLY fucking STUPID - program being put into place. A LOT of the time, they spend a fuckton of money to implement changes that don't NEED to happen, and worse - don't work, and after less than 6 months, are scrapped. I remember watching a junker/scrapper/recycler come pick up something like 3-5 million dollars' worth of machines that were going to 'make things more efficient' at our warehouse, less than 3 months after they were installed. They don't care, AWS is like 97% of their income. Trillion dollar 'tech' company with SHITTY tech!
The worst thing is that they CONSTANTLY 'upgrade'(thereby effectively doing the exact OPPOSITE) shit that doesn't need to be fucked with, while NOT fixing the things that NEED fixing! I think it's because if they admit it needs fixing, someone higher up the ladder would have egg on their face, 'cause it was 'their' baby.
mangle (v): to cut or bruise with repeated blows or strokes, making a ragged or torn wound, or covering with wounds; to tear in cutting; to cut in a bungling manner; to lacerate; to mutilate.
mangler (n): an inept mangaer.
mangulate (v): the mangling a mangler does to everything he or she touches in an effort to impress others and keep their jobs.
This is why I love this sub. You get the real stories in the comments
imagine if they rewarded outcomes instead of policing every minute
Very common over on r/talesfromtechsupport
In old, traditional USENET forums like alt.sysadmin.recovery, "manglement" was the canonical way to say it.
Oh my gosh my first award!! Thank you!!
I love the line about reducing flexibility. It's so true, if the company cannot be flexible, neither can the workers. It goes both ways.
The end of day Teams Call that’s off the clock right? Wife was already driving home, so are her co workers also leaving then having to also attend this meeting? I ask cause if her work day is done and they still expect her in a meeting, she’s performing work off the clock which the labor board loves to hear. If she’s salary though then damn.
If she’s still on the clock for it, her commute should be considered office to office travel, on the clock.
I had a job, remote, that "since I was in the area" asked me to come in to the office to pick up the equipment instead of paying to ship it to my work space.
Since my work space was not their work space, I charged for the travel time. Got a response that commute wasn't approved paid time. I sent them the FLSA rules and let them know I wasn't charging for travel from where I live to where I work, but the travel from where I work to any other location is supposed to be paid time.
Ever since then, every in-office meeting has been 100% optional for me since they know I'll be billing an extra couple hours if they made it required attendance.
The day after my former employer "requested" me to deliver equipment to a job site in my brand-new car is the day I started riding my bicycle to work.
And she should be getting mileage pay for being on the road while working.
Indeed, sounds like someone doesn't understand stand what core hours means, which is weird when they are the ones who set up 'core hours'. If they expect people to attend end of day meeting, it should have been within core hours. Outside of core hours is flexible so people may or may not be available.
Core hours exist to be a frame work around some flexibility. 9-3, 10-2, etc. That lets people flex 6-2 or 7-3 or 10-6 as personal lives require. Setting 8-4 and calling them core hours is missing the point.
Oh yeah, that part about not filling an open position.
I retired from a job that I loved because of chronic understaffing. I had previously mentioned that issue in my responses to my two previous annual reviews
I let them know months ahead of time. I still miss the job, but not the feeling of never having a moment to work on those "other" items that kept showing up on my Goals and Objectives.
This is the type of MC why I joined this subreddit !
This is a good example of why businesses experience malicious compliance from employees. It sounds like the workload might be misappropriated if their end of month is so hectic that it requires overtime to finish. The cause, as always, in these cases is bad manglement. Although, I suppose bad manglement might be redundant.
It might also be someone higher up not stopping some process earlier.
It’s a given that IBM re-fabrication will have massive overtime at end of the quarter because sales will not stop generating orders until the last day. This means a 2-3 week period of 6 day weeks and often 9-10 hour days. This also happens in December because how dare Christmas and New Year prevents sales from doing their job so that the warehouse people can be home during holidays.
Edit: I was happy when my husband took the pay cut and changed jobs. So much better to not have to plan around essential worker hours.
They’re down an entire person…
Crunch time is a management failure.
Today in another episode of manglement regurgitating buzzwords without knowing the concept, we have Core Hours
8-16 is a full work day, not core hours
I do the same thing - I could stay late and finish tasks, etc etc but have to get any OT approved. I drop from or decline meetings regularly because my hours are 8-4pm. It's one of the reasons I took this role because I had enough of working 60 hours a week for no recognition or acceptable pay increase.
When management requires preapproval for OT, they think the employees are just going to work it anyway, unpaid.
I'm glad she's sticking to her guns. NO PAY, NO WORK. NO FLEXIBILITY FROM YOU, NONE FROM ME.
I trust you'll be sharing frequent updates
👀
The stupidity of some in management will never cease to amaze me. The Peter Principle is an immutable law!
Love how it was supposed to be satire but ended up being facts
No no, they’re supposed to work unpaid OT.
Jeez, you really can’t find team players anymore. So greedy.
Your sarcasm is noted.
Never work for free
Yep. I do the same. I drop from meetings when the scheduled end time has come. People love extending meetings but I don't work for free.
I like your wife.
I'm prepared to say I love her.
"Cue a management response of "Team Player blah blah""
"Team player" works both ways...workers and management both. Can't expect the worker to be team players if management won't play along.
The management is playing, but they are playing a different game.
I shall have another cup of coffee in your wife's honor.
Love it work to the Rules every single one.
As a fellow government contractor, I AM HALF IN LOVE WITH YOUR WIFE FOR THIS BECAUSE THE CONTRACT COMPANIES SUCK. Tell her kudos and if she ever wants to reach out & commiserate about stupid contract s%#, I’m here for it.
UpdateMe and everyone else who is following this thread.
Updateme!
I will message you next time u/TheDragonDoji posts in r/MaliciousCompliance.
Click this link to join 19 others and be messaged. The parent author can delete this post
Well done!
UpdateMe!
I hate that core hours crap. As long as there is coverage ot shouldn't matter. And even if we dont, it won't kill anyone in my line of work for them to wait til tomorrow for an answer
Manglement
Word of the millennium, I love it
My office has core hours. It's well known if you want full attendance you schedule your meeting inside the core hours. It's not a hard concept.
This is the way.
Well done but ensure she is actively looking for a new job because assuming it is the USA, her government dependent employer may be in a vulnerable position (thus reason they cut expenses by no-overtime rule), especially if they are no longer meeting contract obligations for reports at the end of each month (due to their incompetent regulations).
If they lose the contract or finances get tighter be aware your wife will be one of the first to be laid off.
The OP is in the UK (the word "realise" was a tell + their post history).
uirs manager approval
Good for your wife for setting and sticking to boundaries.
I'm impressed 😁💯
I love stories like these. Your wife is friggin' Awesome.
They want people to work for free.
Hi, I'm learning English and can you explain what does "x" mean in this context of numbers?
It’s unusual to use “x” for this but you read it without the x
Then why is it there? I know x is used as variable for arithmetic but this is not the case here?
Well it’s kinda like how on a computer “10 x 10” and 10 * 10” both mean 10 multiplied by 10 just like that you can write it with or without the “x” it just depends but usually it’s without the “x”
The pattern here is unpaid or, they know some people will come in early to avoid traffic and maybe stay late if they impose core hours.
They know if ot must be pre-approved many employees will still work extra to finish things up or "be a team player" it's important that everyone knows being a team player really means ensuring that your team mates don't get screwed and turning predatory policies against those enacting them.
Thanks for combining her previous MC from 6 months previous 🤦♂️
Updateme!
UPDATEME!
This is beautiful! chef’s kiss
Manglement, Muskified, DOGE, or DOGE’d. Most likely OP’s company is trying to follow the edicts of the client, the government. Government managers are just following or copying Elon Musk’s DOGE efficiency standards, and in a lot of cases have no choice on the edict. These DOGE edicts most likely affects multiple layers of workers like: government management, government staff, contractor management, contractor staff, subcontractors management, and subcontractor staff.
AI will replace many white collar positions in the next few years. Manglement (love that) will have much more leverage in these situations very soon. I say this as a white collar worker who sees the AI writing on the wall.
Good, let them engineer their own demise, and leave the human-focused companies to gather the business
I’d love to believe that, but the business can’t even figure out their own broken processes and timelines, every single day/week/month/quarter. Faxes, TPS reports, end of day calls, end of month scramble. What a bunch of BS.
Let them re-engineer their own prompts whenever new rules are issued by the corprats on high.
I stopped at the 2nd "manglement". .......... sigh
Office workers are just the worst most self entitled wankers in the world.
You do 10-20 hours of actual work a week, get paid more than trades do and complain when anything doesn’t go your way.
Get a job that matters.
Get bent. I worked labor jobs while going to school to get a nice office job so I didn't have to do labor work into my 50's.
Have a better take.
I've worked hourly in production, and I've worked salaried in offices.
Nothing beats an office job, especially if the salary is better than that of an hourly workweek.