Some bosses seem to care more about control than they do results.

So when a newly hired IT support tech solved a simple WiFi issue on his first day and got reprimanded by the boss for not asking permission first, he realized initiative wasn’t on the approved task list.

That’s when following instructions to the letter became his favorite troubleshooting tool.

Keep reading for the full story.

Only do as instructed? No problem Boss!

I started my first Help Desk IT job being the only other IT staff apart from the Network Director (my boss).

The first day on the job, Boss was on vacation for a week on a cruise.

I was left alone to take care of IT issues for a company with roughly 400 employees with five different locations (in different states).

Boss had told me to contact him on Skype if I had any issues.

The employee’s first day pretty much got off without a hitch and he was already proving a helpful asset to the team.

The first day, an accountant lost WiFi connection, so I did the Windows “troubleshoot problems,” and it fixed her issue in less than a minute.

A couple of hours passed, and Boss checked in and asked me how things were going.

I responded, “Great! An accountant had a WiFi issue, but I fixed it.”

Boss asked how I fixed it, and I told him.

But the boss had a pretty unexpected response.

He got upset because I should have asked him how to fix it or what I was going to do before attempting the fix.

Bear in mind, he was taking approximately an hour between responses when I had asked him questions earlier in the day.

Guess I should have had the accountant twiddle her fingers for an hour until he responded.

Malicious Compliance:

After that, the boss took a much more draconian approach to tracking work.

Boss came back from vacation and implemented a rule where I email a timesheet to him detailing what I did every 15 minutes while at work.

We were having a slow day, and obviously I hadn’t learned my lesson from the first incident.

So in an effort to make himself useful, the employee decided to start working on another task.

There was a stack of old desktops and monitors thrown down in a corner near my cubicle.

I thought to myself, let me take the initiative and get these stacked up neatly and notate their serial numbers for our inventory to try and impress Boss.

At the end of the day, I put that in my timesheet and emailed Boss.

But yet again, the boss wasn’t happy.

On my way home, Boss calls me.

“Blaze5G, what is this I see in your timesheet about sorting desktops and monitors?”

I told him it was a slow day, so I did it while I had free time.

Needless to say, he got extremely upset.

It seemed the boss needed an extreme amount of oversight in the employee’s day to day.

I got reamed out about how he told me already not to do anything unless he asked. I tried to make my case, but he wasn’t having it.

Boss told me I should only do what he tells me to do and nothing else.

The next day, still fuming about how unreasonable Boss was, I clocked in and told him I had arrived.

He said I should research Microsoft Teams (it was just released, and he wanted to roll it out to the entire company instead of them using Skype).

So this is exactly what the employee did.

“Aye, aye, captain!”

To Google I went and researched all there is to know about Microsoft Teams.

When Teams was just released, it didn’t have many features, so I had a full grasp of how it worked in 1.5 hours.

For the rest of the day, I didn’t hear a peep out of him.

Well, that must mean he wanted me to research Teams all day.

So he reported the task accordingly.

At the end of the day, I emailed my timesheet:

“8:45 – 5:45 Researched Microsoft Teams.”

Ring ring.

Who could be calling me right after work? Oh look, it’s Boss.

“Hey Boss, what’s going on?”

…silence…

Still the boss wasn’t happy, but the employee is quick to remind him he was only doing as he was told.

Then Boss says, “You mean to tell me you spent all day researching Teams?”

Blaze5G: “Oh yes, I did! As per our conversation yesterday, you told me to only do what you instruct me to do. That’s what I did, Boss.”

Boss: “I didn’t mean it literally! If you had nothing else to do, you should have asked!”

Blaze5G: “But Boss, I did have something to do. I had to research Teams like you instructed, and boy, did I research it!”

Boss: “You better make sure you know everything there is to know about Teams.”

Blaze5G: “I do, Boss. See you tomorrow!”

He must have been fuming because he has a short temper.

Honestly, this is what this boss deserves for micromanaging.

What did Reddit think?

If the boss needs to sign off on everything, then nothing will get done.

Tracking every single second of your day often ends up doing more harm than good.

People often quit bosses, not jobs.

Many bosses seem to not even know what they want.

Who knew perfect compliance could reveal just how dysfunctional this boss’ leadership style really was?

The boss wanted obedience, so that’s exactly what he got.

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.