Company rules often look plausible on paper, but quickly fall apart in real life.

So when a maintenance employee found his overtime hours constantly scrutinized by his power hungry boss, new rules left a wave of furious tenants locked out of their units.

Everything changed when the boss ended up locked out himself.

Keep reading for the full story.

Maliciously complied and locked my boss out of his own home!

I used to work as a property manager for a semi-large company in a small city. Among the usual duties of a PM, we were also responsible for after-hours maintenance calls.

At first, the company had pretty decent overtime hours.

Originally, we were paid for 3 hours of overtime to cover the phone calls we answered and paid an additional $80 for any callouts we had to attend ourselves.

The entire team rotated the phone between us, so we only had the emergency phone for one weekend every 2 months.

The phone was an after-hours maintenance line for over 800 properties, so you can imagine how busy it would get, but the extra pay helped soften the blow of losing your weekend.

But of course, the boss soon found a problem with this.

This was not a problem until our boss wanted to crack down on overtime hours, stating, “I very much doubt you are working 3 hours whilst you have the emergency phone.”

His new rule was for each staff member to document when and who called, and you would be paid an hour of regular time each call.

The boss’ solution was quite unpopular — both with the employees and with the building’s tenants.

But under no circumstances were you to attend any issues yourself. This included unlocking doors for tenants who were locked out of their property.

He enforced that the tenant must pay for a locksmith to attend and let themselves in.

This angered many of our clients and caused us to be constantly abused over the phone by our tenants, as they had to pay $300 for a locksmith.

This is where the malicious compliance began.

So the maintenance worker decided to do just as he was told.

We indeed documented all our calls, which, instead of paying each employee $100 for 3 hours, he ended up having to pay us $500 (or more) each weekend due to the amount of calls we would actually take.

But it doesn’t stop there.

What I should probably mention is that our company can provide accommodation for our higher staff at a fraction of the cost you would normally pay.

So one day the boss found himself in a pickle.

The manager in question was in such accommodation, and lo and behold, he managed to lock himself out of his apartment at 11 p.m. on a Friday night.

Manager: Hello OP. I have locked myself out of my apartment. You need to collect the spare keys and come unlock my door.

OP: I am very sorry, Manager, but I cannot do that.

Manager: Um, excuse me?? Why not?

The employee reminds the boss of his own short-sided rule.

OP: Unfortunately, you have instructed me not to attend to any callouts under any circumstance. I can, however, send you the number of our preferred locksmith to come let you in.

After a few choice words, the manager hung up and phoned a locksmith.

Let’s just say, after he had to fork out $300 for an after-hours locksmith, he changed our ability to attend callouts.

This boss finally got a taste of his own medicine!

What did Reddit think?

This user is surprised the boss didn’t take issue with the higher pay.

This reader thought the story was heading in a different direction.

There’s no sense in the boss playing clueless now!

When will bosses ever realize their employees just aren’t going to work for free?

The policy locked out tenants for weeks, so one night it finally locked out the guy who wrote it.

Amazing how quick a boss’ mind can change when it’s convenient for them.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.