There’s nothing quite like a workplace that creates its own problems and then gets shocked when those problems cause delays for the company.

Imagine if the people in charge ignored every warning about how their new rules would affect the flow of work, and then suddenly expected you to keep everything running smoothly without the flexibility that made it possible in the first place?

Would you push back? Or would you let them learn on their own?

In the following story, one man’s wife finds herself in this situation over and over again.

Here’s what’s going on.

Delicious double-whammy malicious compliance

My wife works in the finance department for a government contractor. They’re Hybrid, but mostly work from home due to limited office space, with the expectation that her Team is on site Mon/Tues.

In this role, she has a busy end-of-month every month, with the whole team working to post figures, and is often required to work late into the evening or a few hours on the weekend to finalise the month-end.

This is important for later.

Due to insane commuter traffic, she prefers to start at 7 and finish at 3 PM so that the commute is 30 minutes instead of AN HOUR or more, each way, just sitting in congested traffic.

Management decided to change work hours.

6x months or so ago, management issued an edict requiring “core hours” (8-4) when in the office AND more in-office days.

My wife emailed management, stating that requiring her to sit in traffic for an additional 4-5 hours a week would mean her evening & weekend flexibility would no longer be available.

Cue a management response of “Team Player blah blah.”

His wife tried to explain her predicament.

My wife responds with a breakdown of time within her paid 40-hour work week and how the flexibility established and continued since Covid has benefited the Team, but as that flexibility is being reduced, it naturally affects HER flexibility.

They insist.

So she leaves the office after “Core Hours,” gets stuck in traffic, and suddenly misses the end-of-day Teams Call.

Of course, Manglement doesn’t appreciate this reality, but she has the emails of their insistence, can’t control traffic patterns, and Manglement doesn’t want to schedule the meeting earlier.

Management finally changes its mind, but causes another problem.

If they want her on the call, either she reverts to her original schedule…or enters into Overtime to take it in the office. They suggest her previous schedule for the “foreseeable future” to aid…”Team Cohesion”.

Recently, her management decided that all overtime has to now be approved by a direct line manager.

Cut to last week, my wife has been exiting meetings on the dot at the hour, when her boss says, “Sorry, I’ve got a hard stop now due to no approved OT.”

BAM! drops from the meeting. She’s even starting to affect other Team members, with her and a colleague ceasing work on the dot due to “Not approved.”

Now, they’ve run into another issue.

Management is, of course, on the hook for incomplete end-of-month figures and starts enquiring; the Team replies with the OT edict…”All OT to require Manager approval.”

“It wasn’t pre-approved, so I stopped working to adhere to the new policy.”

My wife mentioned they haven’t responded to this yet, but it’s been weeks already.

All of this after Management still hasn’t backfilled an open department position for over five months, so they’re down an additional person.

Yikes! It doesn’t sound like this management team ever learns.

Let’s see how the readers over at Reddit relate to what happened.

According to this person, the company put the policy in place on purpose.

This reader is not a fan of core hours.

Here’s someone who thinks his wife should call the labor board.

It sure is.

She handles this well because others would quit after all these silly changes.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.