A brutal, traffic-snarled morning commute can really put a damper on a worker’s day…

And it’s even worse when you have to do it Monday through Friday.

So you can understand why someone would be incredibly frustrated if they were used to working from home and then were ordered to work back in an office every day.

Check out how the woman featured in this story reacted when her bosses told her that she’d no longer be working remotely.

Get started now!

Delicious double-whammy malicious compliance.

“My wife recently performed some tasty malicious compliance so I thought I’d combine it with her previous malicious compliance from 6 months previous.

My wife works in the finance department for a government contractor. They’re Hybrid but mostly all work from home due to limited office space, with the expectation 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 finalize the month-end…this is important for later.

Traffic is bad around these parts…

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.

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

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

Hmmm…

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

My wife responds with a breakdown of time within her paid 40x hour week and how the flexibility established and continued since Covid has benefited the Team, but as that flexibility is being reduced it has a natural effect on 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 Management don’t appreciate this reality but she has the emails of their insistence, can’t control traffic patterns and Management don’t want to schedule the meeting earlier.

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.

Gotta go!

Cut to last week, my wife has been exiting meetings on the dot at the hour; “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”.

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 5 months, so they’re down an additional person.

I am now thoroughly enjoying her work stories and think reading this sub to her over the years may have had a positive impact.”

Readers shared their thoughts.

This person weighed in.

Another individual spoke up.

This Reddit user shared their thoughts.

Another person had a lot to say.

And this reader weighed in.

Her bosses just don’t seem to get it, do they?

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.