Is malicious compliance great, or what?

You better believe it is!

And the person who wrote this story on Reddit really nailed it!

Read on and see what happened…

Can’t leave before the end of my notice period? No problem!

“Last month, my manager drops a bombshell: the company has decided to scrap the big project that my team been working on for the past 2 years. We must wrap up everything and, starting from June, we will all be moved to different teams.

Now, I’m a data analyst, and the company doesn’t have any open projects that require a data analyst. So they looked at my profile, saw I had some basic knowledge of programming, and decided to move me to the dev team.

They didn’t have much of a choice…

Both me and the dev team think it’s an insane idea, because I will need lots of training before I become useful (and I don’t even want to be a full time dev!), but upper management hasn’t bothered to ask for our opinion before making all the arrangements.

I immediately start looking for a new job, and as luck would have it there is an extremely high request for data analysts in my area. Within a few weeks I have an offer in hand and I give my notice.

My contract (I’m in the EU) is very strict regarding notice periods: a resigning employee must give 2 months notice. This is entirely for the benefit of the company that will need to find a replacement. (The same applies when a company fires an employee, they must give the employee 2 months notice.)

However, it’s possible to shorten the notice period by mutual agreement, so when I sit down with my manager and HR I tell them I’d like to give only 2 weeks notice and leave at the end of May.

I tell them that I’ve already started wrapping up my activities before my move to the dev team, and I don’t have any ongoing projects that I need to transfer to my colleagues, so 2 weeks would be more than enough to finish documenting everything.

Hmmm…

They say absolutely no, I have to stay here for the entire 2 months period.

Which… is fine by me?

My new job doesn’t start until August and I don’t mind being paid in the meantime. The only reason I suggested shortening the notice period was because I thought I was doing the company a favour.

I thought I’d be stealing their paycheck if I stayed for 2 months even though I don’t have anything left to do. But since they pretty much told me I was being unprofessional, or that I was trying to cut and run…

If you say so!

Okay, I’ll take their money in exchange for sitting around doing nothing for a few more weeks.

You may think: bu they’re going to find some boring task for you! Well, they can certainly try, but the projects they’re working on are so different from what I do that I’m pretty much useless to them.

For example, someone will ask “can you do XYZ?” and I will honestly answer “I’ve no idea what a XYZ even is, but I will be happy to help if you teach me.”

Never mind…

At that point, they’ll say it would take too long and it’s not worth it to train me since I’m leaving soon.

So, my working days now go like this: I show up at 9 am sharp and go to my office, where I’m the only person since the others were moved to different teams. I have a leisurely second breakfast, check my email, then I send a message to our Teams group letting them know that I’m free and to ask me if they need help with anything.

Then I remote into my home PC and play until lunchtime. I have lunch, coffee, I chat with my coworkers (they’re quite nice, it’s too bad that upper management is crazy, I’m going to miss them).

In the afternoon I usually check Reddit, I chat with my friends if they’re online, play a bit more, and I’m out of the door at 5 pm.

By the way, they would like for me to vacate the office so they can use it as a meeting room, but they can’t until I leave. There are no empty desks anywhere, the dev team already hired someone else and has no space, so… tough luck…”

Check out what Reddit users had to say.

This person chimed in.

Another individual had a lot to say.

This Reddit user shared their thoughts.

Another person weighed in.

Pay me to do nothing?

No problem!

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