Wouldn’t you hate it if you had a customer service job that turned into a sales job?

The employee in this story sure did!

Thankfully, there wasn’t a quota involved for sales, just a requirement to make phone calls.

Otherwise, the malicious compliance this employee used wouldn’t have worked so perfectly.

Let’s see how the story unfolds.

You want me to make some cold calls? Sure I’ll call some people.

I have worked in customer service for 8 years, but my best malicious compliance stories come from my time as a retail banker.

I worked as a loan officer for the last half of my 5-year tenure in banking.

It was a fairly easy job as my bank was more concerned about good customer relationships than hard numbers, and then COVID hit and our deposits went down, which translates into less revenue.

The bank changed a policy.

For those curious many customers decided it was a good idea to withdraw cash since they believed that the banks would shut down because of the pandemic.

Because of a financially difficult 2020, management decided to make 2021 a bit more numbers-focused.

For me, that translated into cold calls.

Even though we had been relationship-based before, we did have to make sales, but never cold calls.

She did not want to make cold calls.

My method was to suggest products at the customer’s behest, but never just try to sell them something to make a quota.

When I found out that I would need to make cold sales calls I stalled as long as I could.

There really wasn’t any accountability for me making the calls outside of my manager asking if I had done them and filling out a spreadsheet with who I had called.

It was with these guidelines that I decided to maliciously comply.

This is a genius idea!

Management asked me to make calls, but they never said anything about having to actually talk with anyone.

So I found a free service called Slydial which will send you straight to someone’s voicemail when you call them.

I made as many phone calls as I needed to and they all went straight to voicemail.

I filled out the spreadsheet and could truthfully say that I had made the calls.

Nobody ever found out what she was doing.

The calls were never brought up as part of my review, and I never mentioned my compliance with anyone at the company.

Eventually, I left the job, in part due to the emphasis on sales.

I have a much better work-from-home job now.

That’s brilliant! Honestly, most cold calls would probably go straight to voicemail anyway though.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person hates getting cold calls from their bank.

Cold calling this person would really backfire!

Here are some honest thoughts about cold calling.

This person calls banks a “pyramid scheme.”

Nobody likes getting cold calls.

Or making them, if we’re being honest.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.