Power can be loud, but resistance doesn’t always have to be.

What would you do if you found yourself working under a government that wanted to rewrite the past, quietly, one directive at a time?

Would you toe the line and stay silent?

Or would you find a way to push back, even if it meant playing along just enough to show the world what was really happening?

In the following story, a group of public sector employees used the system’s own demands to make a statement louder than any protest.

Here’s how it all went down.

Public Sector Employee With Questionable Bosses

I apologize in advance for being vague— intentionally so. I do need to get this off my chest somehow.

But I also need to protect myself and my loved ones from any potential retaliation, even if that means leaving certain details out.

I do want to give hope to those opposing despotic structures in the private and public sectors, but that may require a slight reading between the lines.

Fresh out of college, I found employment in a field that broadly matched my field of study and interest.

I viewed it as a reasonable stepping stone to one or more of the career paths that actually suited me.

The pay wasn’t excellent, but the benefits were reasonable, and the structure was transparent.

Apparently, working for the government isn’t always cut and dry.

My employer was, in an ultimate sense, the national government of my country.

(I’ll spare details as to who it was in a more immediate sense.)

Though somewhat dismayed that my work was more clerical than what I actually wanted to be doing, I very much enjoyed the mutual respect and collaboration between coworkers and our immediate superiors.

Suffice to say, everyone in our little cul-de-sac was more progressive than the median citizen of [redacted], and far more than the governing party.

We got various signals that we were not long for this job (if you know, you know).

We got conflicting advice on how to respond to certain emails which (in varying degrees of explicitness) brought the Damocletian Sword of termination over our necks.

They tried to reason with the higher-ups.

I wasn’t willing to go out without some resistance.

My coworkers were way ahead of me.

(Some people are tragically forced to comply with authoritarianism; we were gifted with the opportunity and ability to, at the very least, not pre-comply with authoritarianism, or inasmuch as compliance was rendered, it was “malicious”, noting the real malice was from the people who caused the need for resistance.)

A series of capricious and mendacious directives came down all the way from the top to our humble little unit.

One had to do with the removal of references to certain ideas, institutions, movements, and persons, which the governing party has tried to scapegoat in recent years.

(You can see where I am going with this.)

Our immediate superior fired the first volley.

A request was made to authorize a change to a small section of a public-facing website in compliance with the directive in question.

Names, images, and details regarding certain popular figures were removed.

It didn’t matter if they agreed with it or not.

Our superior explained that no one had to do any of this if they didn’t want to, and that it was indeed disgusting.

But better for it to happen strategically if it is to happen anyway.

After some discussion, we all agreed (begrudgingly).

If you’re a bit confused, that’s fair.

It was a confusing time for all involved (and still is; if there is a divine force, I hope it is with those still stuck under those circumstances).

The base of the governing party, while not the most enlightened, still largely has a positive view of certain figures who said base thinks deservedly and at long last enmeshed themselves in the cultural milieu.

Think of Russian Nationalists who tout Puskin as proof that Russian Imperialism has never been, is not, and never will be racist, if racism even exists… I am not Russian, but hopefully the point was expressed quasi-coherently.

Eventually, they reveal the hypocrisy.

So our counterparts in Moscow would remove references to Pushkin first, drawing ire and questions from Putin’s base, leaving more complex and controversial figures last (the very people his base is riled up to fear and despise).

And so on we went, even as our team dwindled. As news stories broke out, we realized we weren’t alone as “maliciously” compliant public sector workers.

To some small degree, we helped expose who the authoritarians really are by jumping to what they, in the end, wanted to be done.

Oh, by the way!

The political appointees above us said nothing— the grapevine relayed that they even saw this as good, which woke more people up to how stupid and wicked they are.

Wow! All of that sounds like a mess.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit have to say about this story.

For anyone who’s confused, this seems to sum it up.

Here’s someone who’s confused.

Yet another person who doesn’t understand the story.

This would’ve been ideal.

Sounds like they got the job done.

Next time, we need more details so everyone can follow what’s going on.

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.