Bosses who didn’t work their way up from the bottom have a tendency to not to know how things work.

What would you do if your boss encouraged you to begin taking shortcuts? Ones you knew wouldn’t work?

In this story, one guy shared his weaponization of compliance to prove why this is a bad idea.

Here’s what went down.

You Want Me to Follow the Test Script Exactly? Sure Thing.

So I work in game QA (Quality Assurance), which basically means I get paid to break games and then write a detailed essay about how and why it broke.

One day, our lead sends out a message:

“From now on, stick strictly to the test script. No deviations. No exploratory testing. Just follow the document as written.”

Seems contradictory to the whole QA mindset.

Now, this goes against the golden rule of QA exploratory testing is where you catch the truly nasty bugs.

But hey, they wanted strict compliance?

Fine. Let’s play that game.

Sounds like this guy gets it.

The next day, I’m testing a new patch for a third-person action game. The script says:

“Step 12: Jump on the platform and pick up the health pack.”

So I do exactly that.

Wonder how that played out.

I don’t move left or right, I don’t run into any nearby enemies, and I certainly don’t check what happens if I fall off the platform.

I just jump, grab, pass.

Later, a developer gets a bug report from another tester about a soft-lock (where the game becomes unplayable without restarting) if you pick up the health pack after aggroing a nearby enemy.

This game basically has its own language.

It turns out it’s a critical bug, one that happens to 1 in 5 players who aren’t robots following a script.

The dev asks why I didn’t catch it.

I just forward the manager’s message back: “No deviations. Just follow the document as written.”

Sure they probably loved that.

Next thing I know, we’re in a meeting, and suddenly the tone shifts to:

“Okay, from now on, feel free to do exploratory testing where appropriate.”

Uh-huh. That’s what I thought.

Not everyone has the patience for trial-and-error testing. Let’s see what the good people of Reddit had to say about this one.

Most commended the original poster’s commitment to their job.

And called out the company’s mistakes.

Others shared similar experiences.

One decried how common the flawed logic is.

One person even realized how the story applied in their own life.

If it ain’t broke, find a way to break it!

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.