Every office has that one person who treats remote work like a personal offense.

When his newer boss scolded him for using a pre-approved work from home day, he realized there was no winning with her.

So he chose to outsmart her with a little malicious compliance she never saw coming.

Read on for the full story!

Don’t want me to work from home once or twice a month? Watch me do so twice a week.

My part-time job (60%) was project-based, but after a few months I was able to add another part-time position (40%) within the same team but with a different boss.

This employee had formed an existing agreement about his work from home time.

She was a subordinate of my original boss, who I had an agreement with that I could work from home every Monday and Friday, something that was communicated throughout the department early.

But as I didn’t have much contact with the team, I still came in most of the Mondays and Fridays “for the team spirit.”

As life is life-ing, I had construction workers over and needed one of my in-office days to be WFH.

But before long, this new boss started to disapprove of this agreement.

Apparently, me spending the previous Monday afternoon—one of my WFH days—out of office (but still online and available) was such a thorn in my second boss’ side that she had to shoot me a message saying I should think well about my work ethics in the future.

But what this employee did next left the new boss wishing she’d never spoken up.

So I agreed and never switched a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday to a work-from-home day again.

But I also never came in on a Monday or Friday again.

As it stood, that was my scheduled WFH day anyways…

It’s always a great feeling when an employee outsmarts their boss.

Don’t managers know that it behooves them to foster good relationships with their direct reports?

It’s a well-known fact that companies don’t always think through every policy as much as they should.

This commenter doesn’t understand why work arrangements can’t be more flexible.

That day, this manager learned a very valuable lesson that micromanaging comes with a price.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.