Some kids are very obediant.

You tell them what to do and they just follow your instructions—no questions asked.

This guy shares a story about how he and his dad were installing fences on their property.

When his dad went back inside the house to take a phone call, he told him to “keep digging.”

This is exactly what he did! Find out all the details below.

“Keep digging until I get back”

Long ago, in a land a couple of hundred miles away, my father wanted to dress up the front corner of our property.

He wanted a section of decorative fence and a few rose bushes.

Being a tweenage boy and not having somewhere else to go, was drafted to help him one hot July Saturday afternoon.

This boy wasn’t really having fun digging the soil.

We brought the new fence posts to the corner of the lot, along with a shovel and a post hole digger.

We were set about the task.

It was a long and slow process, as the clay-heavy soil was fairly dry and hard-baked. And as such, each hole was taking the better part of 20 minutes to dig.

This definitely wasn’t on the list of things I wanted to spend my afternoon doing, but such is life.

His mom called out and said his dad had a phone call.

Right about the time we started on the final hole, Mom yelled to Dad from the house announcing that he had a phone call.

As these were the days before mobile phones, Dad headed off to the house.

He instructed me to “keep digging until I get back.”

He noticed that the soil wasn’t too difficult to dig.

Lucky for me, this hole went a bit different than the first four.

About the moment he got to the door of the house, I busted through the clay layer into much sandier soil, where I could get a couple inches of soil in one scoop rather than perhaps a quarter inch per scoop.

Easy peasy!

And he kept digging as instructed.

Now, I was a good kid.

I didn’t cause trouble of any significant variety.

I got good grades and I helped out around the house when I got caught unawares.

But seizing an opportunity for malicious compliance was definitely among my personal strengths.

So I kept digging. And digging.

Post-holer in, squeeze, post-holer out, dump, repeat.

He dug about five feet in depth.

Dad wasn’t on that phone call very long, but I had a good time.

And by the time I saw him at the door coming back, I was quite literally putting the post-holer all the way into the ground to the point where the tips of the handles were just below the surface of the ground and I couldn’t really dig because I couldn’t open up the handles to squeeze the digging end any longer.

So, if I had to guess, I’d say that hole was about five feet deep.

His dad finally went back.

Dad: “How’s it going?”

Me: “I think it’s deep enough now.”

Dad: “Let’s put the post in and check.”

Me: (Huge grin while he stoops over to pick up the post).

Dad proceeds to drop the post in the hole.

All the way in the hole.

His dad was speechless when he found out the hole was too deep.

See, these posts were maybe hip height when installed, probably about five feet long themselves.

So there’s Dad, momentarily struck speechless, amazement washing across his face.

He looks at me.

Me: “You told me to keep digging until you got back.” (shrugs)

Dad: “You little jerk!” (laughs)

They refilled the hole with soil.

Dad had to grab the post with his fingertips and pull it back out of hole.

And it wasn’t but a few seconds of work to refill the hole to the proper depth.

And to this day, he loves telling the story of his maliciously compliant son.

That was funny and cute. Let’s find out what others have to say about this on Reddit.

You go, Dad!

Good story, says this person.

People are loving the malicious compliance.

Here’s another fan.

And lastly, this person commends the dad.

This is the kind of wholesome malicious compliance we love to read.

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