Military folks gotta follow the rules.

ALWAYS.

It’s part of the whole routine, ya know?

So can you really blame this Air Force clerk for just simply going along with what they were told, even if it could be considered “Malicious Compliance”?

Get the whole story below and see what you think.

Work within the timeframes, yes sir!

“Before 2009 I was an enlisted clerk in the Air Force. I was working in the unit’s orderly room/mail room (the main administrative area) as the only full time worker and the temporary supervisor.

I generally got along with everyone and if you were polite I would go above and beyond to help you.

An officer and NOT a gentleman arrived…

One day an officer (middle management in this part of the organization) got cranky at me because a document he wanted was “late”.

It was late getting to him because his boss took ages to sign it. It was well within the actual deadlines, but not within the timeframe these documents usually take.

He confronted me in the open planned office saying, “What the hell were you doing all this time. Obviously this is time sensitive. Are you really that bad at your job that you can’t get things done in their timeframes?”

I apologised, started to point out who the document was with, only to be cut off.

This guy was a real jerk.

“Just get things done on time. Don’t be so stupid, you bleeping bleep.”

(As an aside, I was only publicly out for about 6 months at that time and the bleeps were extremely prejudiced. I was still in the phase of trying to prove that I was a strong independent person who didn’t need no HR to fight my battles. If this happened today I would report him and watch him drown in HR.)

At this point the entire floor was rather quiet.

I apologised again and said “Don’t worry sir, it won’t happen again.”

You see, one thing he didn’t know is that I was usually getting everything done weeks, if not months faster than the actual deadlines.

Another thing he didn’t know is just how petty and malicious I can be, especially when insulted.

They decided to maliciously comply with him…

So I made sure that everything going to Squadron Leader Bleeping Bleep (as he will be called from here) was done exactly to the timeframes they need to be processed in.

What this effectively did was make sure that absolutely no paperwork made its way to his desk for the next few weeks.

He did come around every now and then to check in on some paperwork and I always said the same thing “I’m tracking the progress of that and it has X number of weeks left to be processed. As such it’s not a priority right now.”

(Another quick aside, my boss knew what happened and was fully onboard with what I was doing.)

People were starting to notice…

At one point when I was out on the mail run delivering paperwork to all his co-workers I overheard this snippet of a conversation.

Nice Officer “Man, your work has been rather quiet lately. What’s happening?”

Squadron Leader Bleeping Bleep “I don’t know, everytime I follow something up HE just says that it’s not a priority right now.”

Nice Officer “Wait, really? But OP gets things done instantly…Oh wait, you were talking to OP a couple of weeks ago?”

Squadron Leader Bleeping Bleep “Well…”

Nice Officer “Oh man, you done messed up.”

This guy had been put in his place.

Unfortunately I had to move on at this point so I couldn’t overhear any more. About a week after that Squadron Leader Bleeping Bleep came around to follow up on something else and I gave him the usual response.

He then did something I wasn’t expecting, he apologised to me! He said that he was sorry for how he treated me and had realised that he might have been out of line.

But there was more!

At this point I said “Apology accepted, but before you go.” And started pulling out paperwork from my tray handing it to him one at a time.

“This is all good to go, you just need to sign. This needs a decision and sent to either A or B, depending on the choice. This needs…” well you get the idea.

His eyes went wide upon seeing the stack of paperwork.

The last thing he didn’t realise about me, I take my job seriously. Just because he was being an a-hole didn’t mean I was gonna make the rest of the office suffer.

People were impressed by what happened.

I had several officers, higher up on the ladder than Squadron Leader Bleeping Bleep, come and congratulate me throughout the rest of the week for how I handled the situation.

Apparently everyone heard what he said and they were all willing to back me up with HR if I went that way.

They were even more willing to throw Squadron Leader Bleeping Bleep out of the metaphorical plane without a parachute when they realised what I was actually doing.

And this person benefited from this situation in a great way.

The fallout, if you can call it that, Squadron leader Bleeping Bleep treated me exceptional nicely after that (even though I wasn’t a fan of him for the rest of the time I knew him), as did all the officers in the office, including the new staff.

The incident did help my reputation for years afterwards and opened up a few doors which eventually led to me to meeting my husband, so I guess I came out the winner in the end.”

Let’s see how people reacted on Reddit.

This person LOVED this story.

Another individual made some great points.

Another individual said they’ve heard officers can be…difficult…

And one person said they handled this perfectly.

Bravo!

Hats off to a job well done.

Hip, hip, hooray!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.