June 12, 2024 at 12:52 pm

A Do-Nothing Manager Demanded They Turn Off The Internet for All Employees, But Didn’t Expect How Things Would Go Sideways

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Reddit/Unsplash

Sure, boss!

Whatever you say, boss!

Hey, if the boss demands it, it must be done, right?

But it doesn’t always work out in their favor…

Take a look at this story and you’ll see what I’m talking about!

Boss wants me to cut internet to employees. I comply.

“When I was at the university, a friend landed a part time job doing networking for a really small company and asked me if I wanted in because he also had other customers and was worried he wouldn’t be able to handle them all.

Sure, why not?

It was easy money, 12 hours per month, to basically maintain the network infrastructure, upgrade firmware on routers, check logs, run antivirus software and install some stuff on computers, so I said yes.

The company used to fix and sell printers and printer related stuff.

It was run by two ladies that were friends, let’s call them May and June, but the CEO in functions was May’s husband, let’s call him CEO Peter, who was also June’s husband best friend.

The rest of the company were Accountant Peter, that shared the name with the CEO, some technicians that were never there and two hardworking sales representatives.

Basically, the accountant, technicians and sales reps were the only ones doing work there.

Even though May and June were also, technically, sales reps, they hardly ever made a call.

There wasn’t a whole lot of work going on here…

May spent all day browsing internet for things to buy (her thing was shoes), June spent all day chatting with another guy (not her husband) who also shared the name with the CEO, let’s call him ThirdPeter, and CEOPeter spent all day watching ****, yes, at work.

May appeared to have no problems with CEOPeter’s habits.

I spent most of the time there trying to clean CEOPeter’s computer from the myriad of viruses that he would install browsing sketchy sites.

Even when I complained a lot about it to him, he said that he didn’t know why there were so many viruses and kept doing it every single day.

The place was full of drama, and after a while, me and my friend would pretend to have work to do there and spent time there just for the LOLs.

One day, May approaches me furious, saying that she caught one of the sales reps browsing internet instead of doing calls, she wanted to disable internet for the reps.

I checked the logs, the rep browsed the specs of one of the machines she was selling, a newer model she wasn’t familiar with.

If you say so…

So, cue malicious compliance. I disabled internet for the whole company.

About 2 minutes later, May, June and CEOPeter came running to the server room, shouting about what the hell was happening to their internet.

Accountant and sales rep pretty much never realized something changed, because they were hard at work.

I told them that May made me do it. She said “but just to the reps!” and I told them some bull that I couldn’t block a specific IP because they were assigned dynamically, so they were about to change and blah blah blah…

CEO Peter was red as a tomato. He demanded to reinstate internet for everyone. I looked at June, she noted. I looked at May, she said “are you sure you can’t just for them?” I

said no. She exhaled. “OK, then, Internet is back up”.”

Check out what Reddit users had to say.

This reader shared their thoughts.

Source: Reddit/Malicious Compliance

Another individual spoke up.

Source: Reddit/Malicious Compliance

This Reddit user had a story to tell.

Source: Reddit/Malicious Compliance

This person talked about their manager…

Source: Reddit/Malicious Compliance

And one reader had a lot to say.

Source: Reddit/Malicious Compliance

It seemed like a good idea at the time…

Isn’t that always the way it goes?

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.