December 23, 2023 at 6:36 pm

Boss Docked Employee’s Paycheck For Grammar Mistakes, So They Turn The Tables And Hit Boss’s Paycheck Too

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Reddit/AITA/Unsplash/@convertkit

I have a feeling that this story is going to annoy you AND make you shake your head in disgust.

Because it’s pretty ridiculous!

And you’ll see what I mean after you dive in.

Check out what happened in this tale from Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page.

Knock money off my paycheck for grammar mistakes? Let me point out all the mistakes on my boss’s work.

“Years ago I took a job in another country for a very small company that taught English.

My responsibilities included reviewing and editing lesson plans created by non-native English speakers.

There was a bit of a language difference.

Many of the lessons taught EU English while I am accustomed to US English, my boss (and the only other native English speaker) was from the UK. Therefore there were certain nuances that I was unfamiliar with.

That being said, I was one of the better people on the team QAing (Quality Assurance) but I wasn’t perfect by any means.

There were often glaring mistakes I saw slip through on lessons not assigned to me to review but I never purposefully called people out for them.

It was kind of a bad company and bad lessons to begin with. But if there were glaring mistakes I would quietly fix them.

They noticed something wrong with their paycheck.

One pay period, months after I had been working there, I received a decrease in my pay along with a note explaining that the reasoning was because of X and X mistakes that had slipped through on my work.

I was mad as this was not a part of my contract but I couldn’t really contest it in this foreign country.

The note did however note that this decrease in pay for “mistakes” made on job duties was for all employees in my department. I knew that there were tons of mistakes on other lesson plans that weren’t mine.

So I pulled up the first one and began sending messages in the group chat of every mistake I could find.

And there were a lot.

Their boss then chimed in.

I did this rapid fire until my boss who was sitting across from me sent me a message that essentially said: “Don’t worry I can assure you I am being held to the same standards and expectations” before he got up and walked away in a huff.

It was time to have a laugh.

After he walked out of earshot my other coworker laughed and said he had messaged her and asked how I knew that particular lesson was one he had QA’d.

I told her I didn’t know I had just pulled up the first one I knew there were mistakes on.

I didn’t get anymore money taken out of my paychecks after that but I left the company shortly after.”

And here’s what people had to say.

This person said it best.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another reader said this manager was trying to pull a fast one.

Source: Reddit/AITA

One individual said this sounds illegal.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Another Reddit user talked about how it worked when they had a job like this.

Source: Reddit/AITA

There’s no way the boss was held to the same standard.

And you can take that to the bank!

Thought that was a crazy story? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were travelling for business.