Human resources employees often mean well, but sometimes they don’t really listen to reason.

In today’s story, an employee shares that only managers where he works have parking spaces at their office.

That’s not the problem.

The problem is how human resources reacts when someone uses the parking spaces when the managers are on vacation.

Let’s read all the details.

Managers aren’t allowed to tell me to use their parking space when they’re off? Alright then.

So this happened a good 6 years ago now.

I was just starting my IT career so I was a basic level 1 desktop engineer for a large financial company.

My team consisted of me, a level 2 engineer and 3 managers – one for data, one for people and one overall manager.

He usually walked to work.

Parking in town was either expensive or impossible and while management and supervisors got parking spaces in the huge multi-story next to the office, other staff members didn’t get one and either had to pay the very expensive parking fees or park far away and walk.

Being on a low entry-level salary, I opted to walk the 30 minutes into town (and often got sick due to bad weather).

The level 2 guy lived a 5 minute walk from the office and didn’t own a car.

The HR manager was completely unreasonable.

When any of the managers were off, they offered their parking space to me so that I wouldn’t have to walk which was very nice of them and greatly appreciated as it was saving me money too.

One day, I got called into HR because somebody saw me coming out of the multi-story and got jealous and asked why I get a space and they don’t.

This HR manager was INCREDIBLY condescending and talked to me like I was a literal child with lines like “Back when I was your age, I thought the world owed me everything too” which is absolutely not my attitude but sure, go off on one like you know me.

She said it wasn’t fair on the level 2 guy because he might want the space too, she wouldn’t listen when I said he didn’t drive and even said to me he didn’t want it after I asked if he was okay with me using the space.

The data manager was the one with the malicious compliance idea.

At the end of the day I went into the management office and we were chatting about the day as we usually did and I told them about the HR meeting and said they weren’t allowed to let me use their space anymore.

The data manager then had a genius MC suggestion.

She was a very selfless soul who sacrificed much of her time to help other people and this situation rubbed her the wrong way and she wanted to do something out of spite.

She said that whenever any of them were on holiday, they’d just tell me that their parking space will be empty for the duration, NOT specifically that I can use it which is what we were told not to do from HR.

Time for another meeting with HR.

So the next time they were on holiday, I parked in their space and after a few days, somebody else got jealous and tattled to HR again.

I was dragged into a meeting and asked why I was still using their space.

I said that I just took a chance on an empty space I found in the multi-story (they were rented, not pay and display).

HR had no way to make it a problem.

She went and asked the data manager when she was back in if she said I could use the space, to which she said “No, I just said goodbye before I went on holiday for 2 weeks”.

HR then told her I was in her space in her absence and asked her if she wanted to raise a complaint against me.

She said “No thanks, I wasn’t using it anyway”.

Their hands were tied and there was nothing they could do to prevent me from using the spaces as they’re allocated privately to the individuals for use even outside of office hours and only reclaimed when they leave.

That’s a smart way to outsmart HR!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Seriously, HR must desperately need something to do.

This is a good tip.

Maybe the HR lady didn’t really care.

HR needs to look busy.

This reader thinks the company sounds very problematic.

There should really be parking spots for all the employees.

This is an utterly ridiculous waste of time.

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.