Even the best-laid plans for workplace improvement can unravel when an inefficient employee is afoot.

When bad employee decides he’s “too busy” to take advantage of a free opportunity that would help his boss, his excuses cost more than just wasted time.

Read on for this tale of malicious compliance from Down Under!

Too busy to attend the training course? Good luck finding your own.

I am the Quality Assurance Manager and Workplace Health & Safety Officer on a large farm down here in Australia.

Part of my role includes making sure people are trained for their respective roles, jobs, and tasks, as well as arranging formal, accredited training.

Luckily for the manager, a pretty sweet opportunity opened up that would save them a lot of time and money.

As part of the ongoing drought, the government was nice enough to arrange a one-off opportunity for all us farmers in our corner of the country to take advantage of.

They provided a bunch of different training courses to be held here in our little farming town that could be attended by anyone who could prove they worked for a drought-affected farm, all completely free.

Once I found out about this, I jumped onto it and signed a heap of our employees, as well as myself, up for various courses.

It was a win on all fronts, as far as the boss was concerned.

The boss was ecstatic, as this was saving him tens of thousands of dollars in training, travel, and accommodation costs.

Plus, it came at a really great time as the training for several of our employees was set to expire soon and needed to be refreshed anyway.

One of these people was John (fake name).

John was one of their “problem employees”.

John is a serial whiner and a know-it-all.

He’s the type of guy to complain about hot weather while wearing jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and a thick vest.

Or complain about how he has no time in the day but spend literally over an hour leaning against his car chatting to a workmate and then another hour betting on horses on his phone.

He also loves to enlighten people with all his supposed knowledge of farming and agriculture, including my boss and his father, who are third- and fourth-generation farmers.

They have decades of experience and expertise and have been in the business since their teen years.

Plus, his worst habit of all is that he refuses to speak on his phone into the microphone and instead uses the loudspeaker. His ringtone is the most annoying and stupid jingle you can imagine.

He has zero phone etiquette, and it drives everyone mad.

John definitely needed to take an updating training course, but he was full of excuses.

John needs several qualifications to fulfill his role.

One of these is the qualification to safely handle, use, and dispose of chemicals for use in agriculture — herbicides, pesticides, etc.

His certificate had already expired, but our season hasn’t fully begun yet, so it hasn’t been a problem.

He was signed up to attend this free course, but he came to me on the Friday afternoon before the course, which was set to begin the following Monday, and we had the following conversation (not verbatim, just the gist of it):

John: “I can’t go on Monday as I’m too busy here.”

Me: “Is that so?”

John: “Yeah, there’s just too much going on here that needs my attention. I’m going to have to do a different one.”

Me: “There are no different ones. Not free ones anyway, plus I don’t think you’ll find one that’s…”

The manager tries to explain the benefits of this particular training.

I tried to say that he wouldn’t find one that’s both in our town and that can be done before our season begins.

John: “Yeah, that just doesn’t matter. I’ve heard there are ones that only go for one day. This one goes for two days, which is just ridiculous. I can’t take two days off.”

Me: “Maybe you should talk to [boss] about this. The course is on Monday, you’ve known about it for ages. You couldn’t have figured it out sooner?”

John: “Mate, I’ve just been too busy.”

The manager can’t help but notice the irony of it all.

All I’m thinking at this point is that this conversation has taken less than 60 seconds, but apparently, he’s too busy to spend one whole minute telling me he’s too busy.

Me: “Well, you better go and talk to [boss] about it. Not much I can do about it now.”

John: Random apathetic grunt

In all of his huffing and puffing, John had missed some important details that would surely come back to bite him.

He left at this point before I had the chance to correct him and say that the two-day course is for people whose training has expired (like him), and the one-day course is for people just doing a refresher.

Fast forward to Monday, and the boss calls me.

John’s boss isn’t too pleased with him.

Long story short, John didn’t tell him anything about it until just then. Boss was not happy with him.

His exact words were, “I’m bloody filthy with him and told him as such too.”

But his main reason for calling was to ask more about the course and the other options available to John.

The manager is eager to explain just how bad John has messed up.

Having already done all my research months ago in the initial planning stage, I told him that the only other available courses before our expected season kick-off date are a good 5-hour drive away and they cost around $3,000, not including travel expenses.

The boss is ready to punish John by any means possible.

Boss: “Yeah, I thought as much. Well, that will learn him. I told him that his options now are to either go and pay for the training himself and claim it on his tax or skip it and cop a pay cut seeing as he can no longer do any chemical handling.”

Me: Internally laughing my butt off… “I see. Fair enough.”

Boss: “Stupid jerk isn’t even doing anything that important. That’s why I swung past his area today. I thought he wasn’t going to be there, so I figured I better check on things. He was off doing some stuff in the shed while everyone else was out in the paddock. They didn’t even need him!”

Me: “Yeah, right. So shall I put some of these options for him in an email to him or something?”

Boss: “Yeah, mate, go ahead and do that. Save the busy man some time and do his research for him.”

Me: “Haha, no worries.”

The manager is feeling pretty dang vindicated, but John, however…

So not only did he get himself in some deep trouble, but now he’s out of pocket a crapload.

Plus, I got to be the one to let him know exactly how much by in a nice little email where I also let him know that he does need to attend a two-day course.

Silly jerk.

Skipping the course may have saved him two days, but it cost him thousands in the long run.

What did Reddit think?

John clearly doesn’t understand the value of a training you don’t have to break the bank for.

Maybe it’s about time they show John the door?

Maybe John had a valid-ish reason for not wanting to do the training? This commenter thinks it’s possible.

In colorful language, this user makes it clear what they think of John’s intellect.

It turns out, playing the know-it-all doesn’t pan out as well as just doing what you’re told.

It pays to follow directions!

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.