Some people have such bad tunnel vision that they can’t appreciate it when someone tries to help them out.

So what else can you do but maliciously comply and go along with the program?

Check out what this guy had to say about the frustrating work experience he had.

You don’t get paid these hours.

“I work for a plumbing/HVAC company as the only electrician.

They want to expand their business and want me to grow the electrical side of things. The previous electrician was very disorganized and the inventory reflected that.

There has been a lot of drama as of late and our shop time is now considered non billable… People abused it in the past (especially the last electrician) so now we don’t get paid any shop time.

This doesn’t sound good…

So here I am, hired on to take over the electrical and I inherited a mess, the inventory is out to lunch to name one of many things.

This is where my malicious compliance comes in.

The inventory was logged in under names that don’t properly reflect what they are, trade names are not listed so when I do a job, I have to go through the inventory with the accounts receivable and ensure the right part number is selected.

What a mess!

This is time consuming and non billable time because I’m not paid for shop time and I can’t bill a customer for the time for moral reasons.

With it being slow, we were told to do inventory and asked to do it for 10 dollars an hour (average) less than our journey man rate, (plumbers, HVAC, electrician) all took pay cuts to count inventory.

This is because the company has mismanaged their jobs and also don’t receive timely payments from customers… So funds are hard to come by (if I knew this was the case when I started 4 months ago, I would have said hell no to this job).

We signed a piece of paper saying that our wage would be lower during inventory count…and since I didn’t want to be that jerk that wouldn’t take a cut, I signed it.

It was time to get to work.

So off I go, gathering up the many goodie boxes of electrical and taking it to the electrical area to be counted.

I do a count of all the breakers we have and since the inventory is messed up, I figured I’ll fix the description for the breakers in the computer. For anyone that isn’t familiar with electrical, breakers do not have part numbers on them (supplier pns).

What you write on your job sheet is 2P20A, square d, push on; which is a 2 pole 20A breaker.

The inventory is so screwed up that even as an electrician it is hard to figure out what is what, never mind the accounts receivable trying to decipher trade terms and find the product under vague descriptions in the computer (for eg. there are 7 items in the program that all have the same description so without knowing part numbers…you are screwed).

So I created an Excel sheet of what the part numbers were and what they should be called in order to find them easily from the job sheet description. I handed this in for the accounting to update the software with and went on counting other things. So the next day as I came in, a secretary hired temporarily to adjust numbers and log inventory counts came up to me holding my Excel sheet.

What?!?!

Without asking me why I did what I did, she told me very rudely that I would not be paid for the time I wasted writing out new descriptions and to solely use the sheets provided for counting without anything supplemental.

So in other words, I’m told from a temp employee who knows nothing about electrical, is not my boss, that I would not be getting paid for time I spent trying to make life easier for everyone. I bit my tongue and went home to spend the day with the kids…screw inventory.

If this was the only thing I’ve had to encounter…sure, a few hours….who cares. But I have been consistently eating my time to make things work and this was the final straw.

I was mad.

I stewed over the weekend and came to the conclusion that I will comply. I’ll do exactly as the temp employee told me to do…count.

If that’s what they wanted…

Come Monday, that is exactly what I did…knowing full well that my count would be a huge waste of time because

A. They won’t know what the product is on the software.

And B. Even if they do, the first job done with a piece that doesn’t have a part number on it will screw accounts receivable up and I’ll have to go through and fix it then.

So screw it, they want a dummy count, I’ll give it to them and they can deal with the mess that will follow.”

Let’s see what folks had to say about this on Reddit.

This person shared their thoughts.

Another individual had a lot to say.

This person weighed in.

And another reader spoke up.

He tried to help them out, but they wouldn’t listen!

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.