Working in a call center can be challenging.

Aside from ridiculous KPIs to meet, there is almost always a boss who’s difficult to satisfy.

This Reddit user shares their story on how they maliciously complied with their former boss who was being unreasonable.

Check out their full story.

Maliciously complying at state Medicaid

So for around 18 months, I worked at my state Medicaid, doing at-home call center work.

Halfway through, I got promoted from the member side to the provider side, and I absolutely loved it. I loved my bosses and have 0 complaints about them.

Meet the former boss that they weren’t getting along with.

However, before my promotion, I had a boss that, let’s just say, I didn’t enjoy working for.

Here are some examples of the malicious compliance that I performed.

They wanted an average call time of less than 10 minutes. If you’re not doing a new application for a customer, that was usually far more than reasonable.

Here comes the first memo.

One month, my average call time was around 5:00.

I got a write up because, even though it was never stated, they wanted a minimum call time of 6:00.

So, I immediately started keeping a closer eye on my handle time, and when I was running short, I’d just start talking BS with the customer, asking how they’re doing, following up on their answers, etc.

A week or so later, I had a meeting with my boss who demanded to know why I was making these calls last longer than they need to be, and I told him.

I said if he removed my write-up, I’ll stop doing that.

He “couldn’t” so I “couldn’t” stop myself from BS-ing with the callers.

The boss told them to stick with the policies while handling an angry customer.

We needed permission from a supervisor to transfer a call, so there was a chat room where people would say they needed to transfer, and normally, it was pretty quick.

One day, a random team member who wasn’t a supervisor was giving everyone, including me, permission.

So I DM’d the boss and asked if it was okay to transfer on her say so, and he told me that that wasn’t any of my business, and to follow the policies.

So I left our angry customer on hold for 20 minutes until he DM’d me asking why.

He was obviously a very smart boss, and he then told me it was okay to transfer when that other random team member said so.

Reasoning with the boss seemed like not an option

In addition to average call time, we got tracked for how many calls during which we accessed our learning center and clicked on an article.

Now, if you had 20 people ask you the same question, eventually even the dumbest person can remember the answer.

So after a few months, I had a low % of calls, and when I explained this, I was told it didn’t matter, and to go to the articles.

However, I found out that each article would only count towards your total once per day.

They found a way to improve her score remarkably.

So, what I did was put like 50-75 articles in my favorites, and every day, I’d just start at the top article and click on a new one on each call, even if it had nothing to do with the call itself.

Suddenly, I was close to 100% and my genius boss couldn’t figure out how I did it.

Let’s see what the comments say.

This one’s short but straightforward.

A word to the bosses who focus too much on numbers.

Basically the definition of a toxic boss.

Looks like call centers have this reputation after all.

Glad they’re out of their supervision now!

Employees like this definitely deserve better.

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.