Some bosses are only in charge because they like the power trip. Luckily, employees find tons of ways to maliciously comply to whatever ridiculous rules are put in place.

For this guy, his boss thought micro-managing him would be a good thing, but he turned it on him.

Let’s get into the story…

Fist pounder boss

I’m a retired former investigator and can now share some insane stories.

In my personal experience, 60% of the people were outstanding, 20% were pretty good, 15% were mediocre and 5% were downright awful.

Unfortunately, many of the awful ones got promoted. I’ve seen my share of fist pounders, chest thumpers and screamers.

You can’t reasonably confront or stand toe to toe with them or you will lose and there will be consequences… for you, so many of us learned the skill of malicious compliance.

He got pretty good at it…

We learned that if someone was going to pound their fist, make sure there is a thumb tack on the desk.

If they’re going to thump their chest, put a pen in their hand.

Years ago, I was in charge of a program which meant that I had the mind-numbing administrative task of handling the budget and purchasing supplies in addition to all of the other duties.

My then supervisor, Control Freak (CF) was a fist pounder, chest thumper and screamer. CF was known for working his people to death, demanding 14+ hour days and often seven day work weeks.

CF was just assigned to oversee my program and he summoned me into his office.

Cue the trickery…

CF pounded his fist and demanded that I go through him and have him approve every supply purchase I made.

So, the next day I emailed him, asking for an hour of his time to talk about pens.

On the day of the meeting, I began with, “CF, I need to buy pens for the program. How many pens should I buy?”

CF: “I dunno…50?”

Me: “Ok, 50, but what about the 0.5 or 0.75 point? How many of those? And what brands?”

CF: Impatient shrug. “How about half and half?”

Me: “But we don’t use much of the 0.75. It would be a waste.”

CF: “Ok, how about 70\30?”

Me: “Sounds good.”

CF: Sigh. “Fine, go do it.”

Me: “We’re not done. We still need to talk about brands and red pens. What about markers?”

He got what he wanted…

I chewed up an hour of his time talking about pens… red pens, blue pens, multi-color pens, ballpoint or gel, sharpies etc.

When done, I said I needed an hour of his time tomorrow to talk about paper.

He broke in three days and angrily told me to get what I needed and just send him the receipts.

Let’s see what the comments had to say…

This commenter thinks they should take it a step further.

Another Reddit user thinks this is a great strategy.

And another commenter has some more malicious compliance to deal up.

A lesson to this boss: Be careful what you ask for!

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.