Many workplaces often preach “efficiency” while punishing the people who actually think for themselves.

So when one factory worker was told to stop using common sense and “just follow the scanner,” he did exactly that, while managers watched their precious production line slowly grind to a halt.

Keep reading for the full story!

Follow the Scanner? OK boss

I used to work at a car manufacturer whose name rhymes with Wanda.

My job was to pick up “trains” of carts full of parts from the warehouse with a motorized cart puller, take them to sections of the assembly line, and take the empty carts back to the warehouse to be refilled.

There were about 20 of us doing this job, all on a different route.

But the employee soon noticed a pretty big problem on the production line.

The way the factory was set up created a narrow path that only a single train could fit through at a time.

This bottleneck was shared by three routes, which made it nearly impossible to complete Route X (the furthest) in a timely manner.

We had scanners that told us exactly which train of carts to pick up next, and which empty carts to collect.

As you may have gathered by now, Route X was not popular with us worker bees.

This caused quite a bit of problems for the people on the floor, so they innovated a solution.

If you followed the scanner, you would regularly fall behind while you waited for the bottleneck to clear.

The solution us worker bees came up with?

We combined a couple of small trains to reduce the number of trips we needed to make.

This saved us time and allowed us to keep up with the deliveries.

But when the boss found out, he ordered them to just do as they were told.

All was good until management clued in to what we were doing.

We were told that “The scanner tells you what to do. We don’t pay you to think. Follow the scanner.”

I happened to be assigned Route X right after we got chewed out, so I thought, okay, I’ll follow the darn scanner.

But workers quickly realized this would slow down the entire operation.

I watched as the amount of reserve parts at the line dwindled.

Did I care? Nope! I was following my scanner!

By the time management noticed, my route was down to fewer than five reserve parts at the line.

These are used at a rate of one per minute.

Did I care? Nope! I was still happily following my scanner!

Finally, the bosses were forced to get up and actually do something about it.

It took three managers helping out to get Route X back up to an acceptable state by the end of the shift.

When they asked me what went wrong, I said, “I don’t know, boss. I was just following my scanner!”

The company investigated the layout of their routes and did some reorganization to avoid the bottleneck.

It took a couple of months, but Route X was finally fixed!

Listening to your employees? What a concept!

What did Reddit think?

The manager who said this seriously lost the plot.

This malicious compliance actually ended up benefitting everyone!

This commenter seems encouraged by the fact the company actually fixed the problem instead of just ignoring it.

As far as this commenter is concerned, everything worked out the way it was supposed to.

There’s a special kind of chaos that happens when leadership confuses compliance with competence.

When employees stop thinking on the job, the boss finally has to start.

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.