If you’re a business owner and you don’t want to take certain jobs, you don’t have to…

But you also don’t have to act like a jerk about it!

Check out what happened in this story from Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page when a worker got a directive from a contractor…and they went along with what he had to say.

Start now!

Don’t send you any small contracts? Got it.

“This was several years ago when I was working as an Installs Coordinator for a department store.

If you wanted work done, anything from installing a toilet to building a garage, you’d come to me. I’d give you a quick estimate and if you were on board after that, send a contractor out to your site to do exact measurements, if needed.

Then I would work out your exact material and labour costs from there, quote you out, and keep in loop with the contractor, mostly so I could help work out anything that might delay the work.

There are rules about this stuff.

Contractors are paid a set rate, usually per unit, foot, or square foot. They also get a flat $50 for the initial site visit whether or not the customer goes through with the project.

I occasionally got calls from frustrated tradesmen who felt these 50 dollar visits were a waste of their time, but since those visits typically took under an hour including travel and I was making three dollars over minimum wage, I couldn’t drum up a whole lot of sympathy for these complaints.

Most of our contractors came in two categories: Bigger companies that generally had a liaison who wanted to keep their business partners happy, and individual tradesmen or father/son businesses where the person I spoke to on the phone would be the one doing the work.

I was fortunate enough to be trained by my predecessor who remained at the store but had stepped down to take a less stressful position, so I could go to him for advice and more importantly, he helped me quickly build a rapport with the people I worked with.

This would become important because I had wide discretion in how I divided up the jobs but many of our partners were fairly specialized or simply preferred certain kinds of work, a fact that our systems weren’t set up to accommodate.

Officially I was meant to rotate through lists. I used this plumber last time so use that one this time, etc. There was no metric in place to track that I was doing that however, nor any interest in enforcing it.

They wanted to help out the contractors.

As a result, I could send more work to people I knew were in a bad financial spot, skip somebody who I knew was planning a vacation or had a sick worker, etc.

Maybe a couple months into the job, I got a phone call from a bigger construction company on my list, turning down a site measure I had sent him to fence a yard.

I pulled his file up on screen for the call, as I was wont to do, and realized that he had kicked back the last three jobs I’d sent to him.

He demanded I “stop sending me these chicken **** little jobs. I’m not interested in anything under a hundred grand.”

Sure, whatever you say.

His file listed him for fences, decks, garages, etc but there was nothing in his contract about a minimum job size, and I’d have been surprised if there was. So I just told him sure and ended the phone call, then put a note on his file not to use the company.

The price of lumber doubled that summer, and the combination of four refused site measures in a row along with not doing any work for us in over a certain number of months automatically ended his preferred contractor status with us, meaning he was paying more for materials.

He paid close enough attention to his business to stop work he didn’t like from coming in, but never noticed that his materials costs went through the roof overnight. I know the company had a rough couple of years after that.

As far as I know they’re still in business, but I hope that dude has mellowed out a little in how he talks to the people who help put work across his desk.

We were never a big slice of his income, but I like to hope my “small” malicious compliance helped put just a little more of a squeeze on him.”

Reddit users spoke up.

This person had a lot to say.

Another individual shared their thoughts.

This Reddit user spoke up.

Another reader weighed in.

And this Reddit user had a lot to say.

Just following orders, boss!

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.