We’ve all been in work situations where we’re given directives that we know are REALLY bad ideas…but we’re not in charge, so we have to go along with the program…and a lot of times, that’s what we like to call malicious compliance.

In this story, a worker followed orders that they knew were going to cause some issues, but they did it anyway.

Let’s take a look!

Wait? Now I’m Not Supposed to Think what the Customer Wants?

“I work at a Printing Hub as a Print and Copy expert, working with the machines to get them to print, setting up files, and quality checking things before they come out.

It is a pretty laid back job, and I really enjoy the technical side of it, not so much my coworkers however.

These folks can be difficult…

Don’t get me wrong however, I have no doubt they are good people, but I feel that they have settled into the job a little too much, and every little change gets them riled up.

And then there is my manager, Kay, who is a good person at heart, but recently stress has been causing her to take it out on the employees.

I stick with it because up until now she has been good, she at least deserves for me to stick through a stressful moment, especially coming into Holiday Season.

Anyways, the incident.

Three days ago I was working with the Big Color Machine Printer. A rather large job came in for 200 books.

This particular job was a rush order and needed to get out the same day, and the value of the job exceeded over $2,000. It was also a very important client I have worked with in the past so I wanted to be extra sure everything was ok.

There was an issue…

When I printed my proof and leafed through the booklet however, I noticed rectangular boxes where text should have been.

This is normally caused by our computers or printers missing the font that the customer had used, and I suspect they used a different font than they normally use for the Halloween Season. (Please, people. Provide your Print Studios with PDFs, not Word Documents).

So I called up the customer to figure out the font they needed.

No answer.

Well, darn.

The thing was this order needed to start printing immediately in order to reach the deadline, unless I dedicate using both Color Printers we have to print the order (which is actually not recommended as the color calibrations are different on both printers, for some reason).

They wanted to be extra careful…

I emailed the customer and put the order on hold, I knew the customer would want those fonts.

Later on, my Manager who we will call Kay asked me about why the order was still on hold, and I explained that the file was not correct. I even brought up the file and showed her. She agreed that the file was incorrect, however she insisted on printing the order anyway.

Kay: “The order is a rush job, and they absolutely need that order immediately.”

Me: “I understand that, but the file is wrong. If we produce the file and the customer rejects it, then we are out the money to produce the job.”

Kay: “SLA is more important than a quality job. We won’t get money if we fail to deliver on time.”

They tried to tell her…

Me Silently reminding myself that SLA includes quality: “Kay, I have dealt with this client before, I know they will reject this. I am fairly certain they would prefer waiting a day to get their stuff rather than receiving something they can’t use.

Kay: Just print the order anyways.

Me Dying inside: Yes Kay.

So, this is funny, because last week Kay got after me about the exact opposite situation. There was an order we couldn’t do correctly because our machines were dumping toner on the files.

I assured Kay that I was certain the customer wouldn’t mind the toner dump, but she said I wasn’t thinking of the customer. I was thinking of the customer, as I was the customer. See my previous post for more information on that.

Now, I am thinking about the customer, and being told to ignore that. Ok, sure.

If you say so!

So I printed the order, all $2,000 worth of it. It was a massive ordeal which I knew was all going into the trash, but I did what Kay asked. Before I left for the day, I checked our business Email and saw the client didn’t email us back. Also tried calling again, and no response.

I took one of the books with me and left for the day. Rather than go straight home I stopped at the business I knew would be selling or giving out what we were producing, since it was on the way, and showed the cashier.

The cashier was absolutely horrified, and immediately contacted the manager, who was out for the day. The employee thanked me for going out of my way to inform them, and gave me some store credit which I used on some paintbrushes for minis (don’t ask to see them, I just started).

Oh yeah, did I mention this place was one of the local gaming stores I started going to? I knew those booklets weren’t supposed to look like that.

Yikes…

The fallout didn’t happen until today, the order was completely thrown out, and we were forced to redo the entire thing at no charge. $2,000 down the drain.

Kay, for the first time I can recall, tried to throw me under the bus when the Head Office asked us what happened, but my coworkers supported me and I pointed out on the job ticket that I had actually failed the quality check. I had no idea how that order went to shipping.

I don’t know what has gotten into Kay lately, but she has been extremely off. Before people start offering advice on how to proceed and such, I have already started recording situations like this and other odd occurrences happening around the facility, and advising my coworkers to do the same.

Also updating my resume, just in case. I really would not rather leave this job, but better safe then sorry.”

Here’s what folks had to say on Reddit.

This person weighed in.

Another viewer shared their thoughts.

This individual asked a question.

Another Reddit user offered some advice.

And this reader spoke up.

Their boss looked like the bad guy in this malicious compliance story!

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