Don’t you just hate it when toxic bosses are being too toxic?

Like, come on, is a quick coffee and newspaper break in the morning not allowed anymore?

In this story, when the toxic boss called him out for reading his newspaper, things at work began falling apart.

Don’t worry, it’s still a happy ending. Read the full story below.

You can’t read your newspaper in work time.. My best ever ‘malicious compliance’

Years ago, I was the Systems Supervisor at a university-based group.

It was a joint group with the Administration Board, and budget was coming from University Libraries around England and Wales.

It was a cutting-edge network to each of the universities’ libraries that did their book dispensing and receipt, and also did the cataloguing, which is quite complex.

He explains how the system works.

The catalogue entry processing and various other batch processes ran automatically overnight, and the system had to be up and running for 8am when the libraries opened their doors.

Before that could happen, the printouts from the overnight runs needed to be taken off the printer, and the stack of line print paper logs had to be gone through to ensure no failures occurred.

Only then could the computer be rebooted into online mode for the libraries.

He comes in to work an hour early every day.

Checking the stack of line printed logs took about an hour.

So my practise was to arrive an hour early for work, go through the printouts, then I would restart the computer.

And while that process was going on, I would get a cup of coffee, sit down to read the news headlines, and drink my coffee, maybe a 10-minute break time.

Meet the naive boss.

Enter my boss, who, for a university-educated manager of a university group, had the personality of a mid-19th Century mill owner.

Rude, arrogant, and entitled were just a few words to describe him.

We had clashed a few times previous to this, but this was a real kicker.

The boss was disappointed seeing him taking a break in the morning.

He came in and saw me reading a newspaper and drinking coffee at 8:05am and, not letting me explain, he gave me a ‘good talking to’ and told me he didn’t expect to see me doing this again.

Next day, I came to work at 8am on the dot.

Then, got the printout pile, and started working through it.

Normal pace, no need to dawdle.

They then explain what’s happening.

The libraries were already getting frustrated before I even started the checking process.

But they didn’t call us, they called him at home.

He rushes in at 8:30, demanding to know why the computer wasn’t up and available for the libraries yet.

I told him, “Because the overnight logs need to be checked for failures first, and that takes almost an hour.”

He said, “We have been running on this machine for a year. Why has this not been a problem before?”

The conversation heats up.

I looked deadpan at him and replied, “Because until yesterday, I had been giving the group an unpaid hour of my time to enable the computer to be available to the libraries at 8am.”

“As my efforts were not only ignored, but treated with such anger yesterday, I have started working to rule on this now.”

“The computer will never be restarted to online mode until these printouts are checked, and that will not start till 8am.”

He said, “I can come in early myself and check them.”

I said, “Not if you don’t want a country-wide university workers strike, you won’t. Unions can be useful in some circumstances.”

His boss was fired and he got promoted.

Standoff for the next two days, followed by the deputy coming in to see me, and asking me to a meeting with a group-board member (an aged professor) who had come to get this fixed.

Boss went away. Deputy, a much better person, got promoted.

I got a promotion + pay raise and asked to change my start time to 7am.

Problem solved and everybody was happy, including the board who had had their own problems with the now ex-boss, and were pleased that I had given them chance to remove him.

Now, let’s find out how other Reddit users react to this.

A few reminders from this user.

For sure!

This comment suggests that a programmer might be able to help.

This one is pretty amused.

Finally, I’m sure we all know and love this feeling.

Dear ex-boss, you should have let him finish his coffee and newspaper.

Everyone would have been a lot better off in the end.

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.