Some companies are so obsessed with control that they forget how basic logic works.

After one warehouse employee got written up for being honest about taking sick time, he decided to enact a petty rebellion that would bring workplace productivity to a screeching halt.

You’ll want to read on for this one.

Written up for being nice

This happened years ago when I worked in a distribution center.

It was one of those days where they were trying to cram fifty people’s work into twenty-five people, which is typical in these places.

I was tired of it and had sick time, so I went to my supervisor before lunch break and said, “Hey, I’m gonna leave after lunch.”

This employee thought this was the right thing to do, but it soon became clear that it wasn’t.

We usually told him when we were going to do this so that, over our lunch, he had time to move people around and cover the empty work slot.

Well, I was on a bad list with a person in upper management, and they wanted to use this to burn me.

They called me into the office the next day.

Consequences soon followed.

“You told him you were going to leave well before you left? How did you know ahead of time you would be sick after lunch? Sick time is for being sick only, so if you use it without being sick, you are stealing company time.”

And that’s what they wrote me up for.

“So if I would have lied and said, ‘I feel sick, I’m going home immediately,’ I wouldn’t be in trouble?” I asked.

To which they actually replied, “Yes.”

Cue malicious compliance.

So this employee decided to take this feedback to heart.

I told everyone at work (150+ people) that if you notify that you are leaving ahead of time, you will get written up for time theft.

No one ever did it again.

From that point on, it was, “I don’t feel good, I’m going home,” from anyone who wanted to.

Of course, this didn’t bode well for workplace productivity.

Meaning their job position went unmanned for the thirty minutes it takes to restructure and reassign job tasks.

Meaning every day, two to three times a day, they would have to take someone from another job and put them in a backed-up mess.

Which led to more call-offs.

It got so bad that upper management started an intimidation campaign, in which they would start saying things like, “I’m starting to see a pattern,” whenever people left early more than once in a year.

Blind control should never come before common sense.

What did Reddit think?

Management seems to be devoid of all empathy when it comes to their subordinates calling out.

Humans get sick, and that’s something managers just don’t seem to understand.

Maybe the “pattern” is a result of the manager’s own poor leadership style.

Something powerful happens when employees realize there are way more of them than there are of management.

Nothing hits better than a well-deserved dose of workplace karma.

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.