Imagine having a job where you draw the blueprints that a designer designs. If you knew the design had flaws that would cause the blueprints to get rejected immediately, would you create them anyway, or would you point out the problems?

In this story, one draftsman is in that exact situation. He tries to point out the problems, but the designer just gets mad at him.

Keep reading to see how the boss using this situation for the perfect malicious compliance.

Don’t want to listen to someone below your paygrade? Enjoy missing your promotion!

This took place about 30 years ago, but I was just reminded of it while talking with some of the other grey-hairs where I work.

Dramatis Personae:

HH = me

BTD = Big Time Designer

GGB = Good Guy Boss

It was an important job, but it wasn’t respected.

I started with my company over 30 years ago. My original position was as a draftsman. I hand drew maps, diagrams, and engineering documents that were turned into blueprints for production.

The general consensus was that draftsmen like me were lower than dirt. Most of us had vocational training but no college degrees.

Our usual work process was that a customer came to a designer and asked for something to be built. The designer consulted with an engineer and then sketched out the design and sent it to a draftsman to have a set of construction blueprints produced. T

he completed prints were then mailed off to the head office in a different city for review and approval. Any design that failed the approval process got mailed back to the designer for rework and the process started all over again.

OP sounds like a go getter.

Over the first few years on the job I continued my education. I took courses specific to our industry and took in-house classes to better master our company construction standards.

I steadily gained the trust and respect of the engineers and designers that I worked with.

That is, until the company hired “Big Time Designer”.

The new guy made a big mistake.

Mr. Big Time Designer was young, he was well educated, and he was well connected to upper management.

The first time one of his jobs hit my desk, I stopped and stared. There was a glaring flaw that violated industry and company standards.

Rather than spend time drawing up prints that would be automatically rejected, I took the job package back to him and pointed out what would need to be fixed for approval.

He angrily agreed and took back the job to fix the errors.

I thought everything was great.

It wasn’t.

Until I got the next job from Big Time.

This job was also going to immediately fail the approval process, so I headed back to his end of the building for a chat.

This time the Big Time Designer was not having it. “HH, you are a lowly draftsman. I am a designer. I don’t have to take instruction from you”, he shouted! “I want you to draw up exactly what I design and submit it that way. If I’m going to be corrected, it will be by someone above my paygrade and not below.”

The boss agrees to let the designer have his way, but he has to know it will fail.

Good Guy Boss (department head) heard the commotion from his office and came over to see what the yelling was about.

The Big Time Designer explained that I was trying to correct his work and not just drawing up his jobs as designed.

At this point I started to try to defend myself and explain that I was trying to save the work and time that a rejected design would cause, but the boss cut me off.

With an evil twinkle in his eye, Good Guy Boss said “HH you just do exactly as this designer requests. If he wants the head office to correct his work, then that is just fine.”

It seems that the designer made a lot of mistakes.

Cue the Malicious Compliance.

From that point on, I did exactly as directed. I sent off flawed designs for approval.

The process for each rejection took about 1 week round-trip.

Big Time Designer’s jobs began to fall farther and farther behind. Some of the jobs were rejected 3 or 4 times.

The head office was starting to get annoyed.

I started getting calls from the head office. ‘Hey, HH, why are you sending us junk?” they asked.

I explained the situation and the head office called Mr. Good Guy Boss.

He confirmed that BTD was running his own show and only wanted feedback from people up the food-chain and was rejecting input from lowly draftsmen regardless of their experience.

The cycle continued for about 3 months. Right up until time for annual performance reviews.

The boss was finally able to put the designer in his place.

Mr. Big Time was denied for promotion to senior designer.

Over the last quarter of the year his jobs had failed to meet customer and company deadlines. His file contained complaints from the head office for repeatedly submitting projects that did not only fail our own corporate standards, but didn’t meet industry standards either.

A few weeks after review time the department head (Good Guy Boss) paid a visit to my cubicle. He plopped an envelope on my drafting table with a thank you letter that was copied to my employee file. There was also a small cash bonus.

He had been looking for a way to nail Mr. Big Time and take him down a peg. The Big Time Designer had powerful friends and our Good Guy Boss was reluctant to try too hard to put him in his place. By obeying BTD’s wishes I had given the boss ammo needed to give him a legit bad review.

I love how the boss not only had the draftsman’s back but also used the designer’s own requests against him. That was perfect malicious compliance.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person would rather have a coworker point out a mistake than have the boss point it out.

The boss clearly knew this.

This person loved the way the story worked out.

The boss seems like a great guy.

Learn from your mistakes!

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.