Imagine working at a job where you used to have casual Friday every week, but then your boss decides that you need to wear business attire every day including Fridays.

Would you comply, or would you find a creative way to get her to change her mind?

In today’s story, one employee finds themselves in this situation and has an idea about how to comply while also annoying the boss.

It gets even better when more employees join in!

Let’s read the whole story.

You want us to dress in business attire when all other departments get to wear blue jeans? You got it!

This happened many years ago.

I worked for a top US banking institution.

In our building, all of the other departments were allowed to wear blue jeans on Fridays.

My manager decided that our department had to wear business attire on Fridays.

Wearing business attire doesn’t seems necessary.

To be clear, we had no customer facing presence. Also, our department processes check deposits from ATMs, and they came in mesh bags from the armored couriers.

They were usually quite filthy and were frequently wet in bad weather.

So when our manager told us that we couldn’t wear blue jeans on Fridays like every other department the entire team was upset.

Here is where we cue the malicious compliance.

This employee had an idea.

The next Friday, I went to my closet and found the most mismatched outfit I could put together, sticking completely to business attire.

We are talking pastel floral print shirt with pants with bold colored stripes.

I put it on and proudly walked into the office.

My manager just happened to be on vacation that week, so nothing was said about my ridiculously mismatched outfit.

The next week was even better!

Fast forward to the next Friday I, once again, chose the most hideous combination of an outfit that I could put together.

Once again, I walked into the office with my head held high, confident in my business attire.

Imagine my surprise when I walked in and EVERYONE on my team had on hideous combinations of clothing.

As you can imagine, my boss walks in and sees everyone in their various hideous outfits.

The look on her face was priceless!

The boss tried to reprimand them, but they were too smart.

All 15 of us in hideous outfits, but all meeting the business attire dress code.

She pulled us all into a meeting and told us that our attire was entirely inappropriate for a business environment and that she would have to write each and every one of us up.

I asked her to pull out the company handbook and read the definition of what it said as business attire.

She read it and it stated something like clean and pressed business attire consisting of slacks, skirts or dresses and clean pressed shirts or blouses.

It went on to say something like no blue jeans, t-shirts, ripped or clothes with holes, no sleeveless shirts and no athletic or gym shoes.

The boss didn’t back down.

I asked her where in the guidelines does it say anything about whether the outfits “matched” or not.

She couldn’t find anything and said she would have to contact HR to discuss with them what her options were to write us up.

Needless to say, none of us were ever written up. She did however say we still needed to dress in business attire.

Other employees caught on.

Word quickly spread to other departments about her forcing us to wear business attire.

The next week two departments around us decided that they would also dress up in hideously matched clothing.

The managers of those departments quickly got in touch with our manager and put pressure on her as they didn’t like how their employees were dressing.

Our manager called us into a meeting and told us we could wear blue jeans on Fridays going forward.

Malicious compliance wins!

I would’ve loved to see a picture of them wearing their ridiculously mismatched outfits. This story proves that there’s definitely power in numbers!

Let’s see what Reddit thought.

This person would report the manager to HR.

Another person thinks a strict dress code is unnecessary.

This person also rebelled against a dress code policy change.

Jeans aren’t always more comfortable.

Business casual would be too dressy for this person.

How you do your job should be more important than what you wear.

Especially if you don’t meet customers.

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.