Every person in power will always have an urge to show others the power they posses.

It’s true to offices bosses at least.

This guy’s boss wanted to stick to a strict timetable.

Clearly, no one wanted that and hence, malicious compliance.

Let’s check out what happened.

New power tripping boss

This happened several years ago.

At the time, I was working for a certain government organization that shall not be named.

Everything was comfortable at work..

I worked office hours which meant that our work hours was set. Our workday would start at 07h30 in the morning and then continue until 16h00 (4 pm) in the afternoon.

In between we were allowed a 15 min tea break from 10h00 to 10h15, Lunch from 12h30 to 13h00 (1 pm) and then a coffee break from 15h00 (3 pm) to 15h15.

Besides lunch none of us ever worried about the tea and coffee breaks. We would get up from our desks and make yourself a cup of tea or coffee and then drink that in between work.

During lunch our offices will be closed to the public, which was the norm, but some offices who did critical work would have at least one person there during lunch for emergencies.

Those offices would remain open, and the members would take lunch at different times to accommodate the public.

Home time was just as decent.

Although we were supposed to stay until 16h00 (4 pm) none of us ever did.

Most of us would go and sign off from 15h45 (3:45 pm), and then go home.

We figured that no one would mind since we never took our tea and coffee breaks.

And then the trouble..

Then we got a new boss… For the two few weeks nothing happened and then we were ordered to stay until 16h00. No more going home 15 mins early…

At first, we tried to fight it stating that we never took our breaks as we should but that was shot down very fast, so we decided that we were going to follow the rules no matter what.

At 10h00, all the offices would close for tea break; no exceptions!

He made it impossible!

The same would happen at lunch and again at 15h00 for coffee break.

At exactly 16h00 we would all close our offices and leave for home.

Anyone of the public still there? Sorry, come back tomorrow!

Anyone of the public there during our breaks? Sorry, we can only help after our break.

Obviously, there were consequences!

Needless to say; everything that was running lake a well lubricated clock very soon started to fall apart.

People started to complain and if there is one thing in the government that is not tolerated, it is complaints from the public!

Sabotage? No, we are only following the rules as we should.

The boss soon realized things won’t go his way.

I am not sure who got ripped a new one from upper management, but things very quickly returned to normal after a week of utter chaos and our new boss never dared to power trip again after that!

Geez! The boss got a taste of his own medicine.

It is likely he won’t mess things around anymore.

Let’s check out what folks on Reddit think about this story.

This person has a tip to share.

This person isn’t sure about the timing.

This person stands with the boss.

This person shares his tactics.

This person has an advice for the boss.

That’s how it’s done!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.