Imagine volunteering at the same event every single year for multiple years, but then one year there’s a new person in charge of the volunteers. If this person refused to let you volunteer because you weren’t on some list you never needed to be on before, would you walk away or try to convince her to let you volunteer?

In this story, one college student is in this situation, and he decides to simply walk away and stop doing anything helpful.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

I’m not a volunteer? Okay.

In the 1990s I was a college student studying Botany.

A local botanical garden sponsored a plant sale every year, which brought in dozens of vendors of rare and native plants and probably upwards of a thousand plant fanatics.

People would drop thousands of dollars on plants at this sale.

He enjoyed volunteering at the sale.

The botanic garden had a volunteer policy that was basically “work for two hours helping at the sale and you get in a half hour before the general public.”

I seldom bought anything, but I knew and chatted with several of the vendors, and it was nice to peruse without the insane crush of people.

The mostly elderly volunteers did various tasks like man the cash registers and information booth, and the younger ones like me would set up tables or help people carry out their purchases.

He discovered a special talent.

One year I discovered that I was really fast at assembling boxes.

The botanic garden had boxes printed just for the sale, they were basically cardboard flats for carrying plants.

At some point I started coming two hours early just to put together boxes. I would do 20 while others were struggling to make one.

By the end of two hours, I would have a huge stack of boxes that would last through most of the sale.

A new employee had no idea who OP was.

The last year I volunteered, there was a new person in charge of the volunteers. When I showed up and started putting together boxes, she came up to me and said “what are you doing?”

“I’m putting together boxes.”

“You’re not on the list.”

“There’s a list? I’m just a volunteer.”

“Volunteers are required to work 8 hours in the garden every year, and I’ve never seen you before.”

He decided to comply.

This was news to me, having been doing the same thing for several years with no issues. Seemed suspicious considering most of the volunteers were in their 70s or 80s.

I had encountered this type of person before, so I knew better than to try to debate policy.

“Well, okay,” I said, dropping the box I was putting together and walking to the back of the line of people waiting to get in.

I had only been there long enough to put about a dozen boxes together.

Nobody else volunteered to assemble the rest of the boxes.

The stacks of unassembled boxes sat there and no one came to put them together.

After the tiny stack of boxes was gone, people had to put together their own boxes and they were mad.

The line went really slow as every person had to stop and make their own box. A minor inconvenience multiplied by a thousand people becomes a real problem.

I’m just sorry that the public had to bear the brunt of it.

I don’t think OP will be volunteering here anymore. I also doubt that the new person in charge realized there were any consequences to her actions since she didn’t have the experience to know that everything goes much faster when the boxes are assembled. It’s too bad when nobody learns a lesson from the malicious compliance.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Another volunteer shares their story.

One person suggests not helping anymore.

This would’ve been a good comeback!

It does seem pretty weird.

You’d think they’d be happy to have as many volunteers as possible!

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.