How far does boss loyalty go?

If you were literally putting out a fire, like an actual fire with flames, would you stop to do whatever silly task your boss wanted you to do, or would you ignore the boss to stop the flames?

Read how one Redditor recalls two crazy stories about a boss who refuses to be ignored — even when there’s a fire.

Ordered to print video

[A] few years ago, I worked as IT Consultant in Ministry of Justice (DOJ for USAers).

So, in my ******- up (excuse my French) country, you get a job for one position, and you find yourself working 4-5 positions simultaneously.

So, besides doing IT Consulting services for governmental archive projects as my primary task, I was also tasked with all kind of madness, from plugging in computers to outlets (yes, there are a lot of public servants that still can’t understand concept of electricity), to fixing printers to managing whole freakin network and servers…

And it ended up being that the OP acted as a personal assistant.

Besides all that, because I had [no] political presence in any type of form (I was just IT guy), and my contract being in grey zone (contract of temp jobs that was extended every couple of months), I became [the] errand boy for Secretary of Ministry /we will call her “JA”) ( if I didn’t comply, I would get terminated same [day]).

So, a lot of stupid things happened, but I will describe two situations where Malicious Compliance peaked.

So, JA is surgically removed from digital age, but she has an iPhone and knows how to use Viber (btw government in my country strictly forbids Apple products and/or chat applications to be used for internal purposes).

JA had a way about her, including constant communication.

So, she was sending me orders via Viber to my private phone all the time. [A] couple of times, she would send me some pictures to be printed in colour (I was only one in whole building who knew how to “operate” [the] color printer).

We came to first case of MC.

She sent me a [long video], about 2 minutes running at 24 frames per second, and ordered me to print it.

Yes, to print it.

The OP tried to reason with her, but to no avail.

I tried explaining, but to no avail, JA was like you have till end of shift or you are gone.

So, I complied. Made a script that extracted every single frame from video as separate image ( that was total of 2880 images) and sent it to [the] printer.

Of course, midway, toners got empty so I changed them with [the]  last ones we had (and next procurement is planed in like 6 months from that time).

Ohh, but when the OP brought the pages over, she did not take this well.

It finished printing just before [the end of my] shift,  and I brought it to her.

I still can remember that dumb face telling me that I am idiot for wasting governmental property.

But, I had proof on Viber of order she gave me, so JA shut up quickly.

Second situation happened like this:

I was called in server room by intelligence personnel to check out what is happening because it smelled like copper was burning (worst thing that u can smell in server room).

And what did the worker find? Their worst nightmare.

So, I ran there, and I had sight for my eyes.

[The] server that we used for all communication between us and Ministry of Finance (Treasury) caught fire (no, we don’t have backup or redundancy).

So if it dies, we are in country-wide problem.

And what happened [is], I am in [the] middle of putting the fire [out] with [the] fire extinguisher when got a call from JA to help her out with something.

This is where things get REALLY crazy.

I tried again to explain [the] situation, but she wouldn’t listen and gave me same ultimatum as every time before.

So I [thought], I have two solutions, to not comply and get terminated (not get paid) or to comply, let server burn down (can’t get paid).

So I complied, went up, and can you guess what was task so urgent that needed me?

The answer will blow your mind.

You won’t believe it.

She didn’t know how to put [a] brush on a stick (you know those two part brushes that have little tongue you need to click in) that [she] brought for her secretary to do something in free time.

So I helped and gave my resignation immediately because in [the] meantime [the] server burned [down], and I [wouldn’t] get paid either way.

What does Reddit think of this oblivious boss? Was the OP right to leave the fire? Let’s read the comments below to get a better idea.

Redditors could picture the situation easily.

Others needed to know what happened next.

People also referenced the country in which this takes place.

And one person needed to backtrack, as they were stunned at the OP’s course of action.

That boss was really clueless.

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.