Nothing fuels malicious compliance quite like being called lazy while drowning in work.

So when one overworked employee was accused of handling “only 7 emails a day” despite juggling calls, chats, and rogue inbox messages from 40 different client contacts, he was told to document literally everything he did.

That’s when the spreadsheet became a weapon of mass clarification.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one.

Manager wanted everything I do during a workday written down. Request granted

Working in an outsourcing company.

Before I joined, there were two people doing my job. Both left before I joined.

This left this employee with way more work than he could handle.

I was alone doing the job of two people.

Weekly reports were being sent to the client “head,” and the client would visit the job site once a year.

The clients could be quite demanding.

As a means of control and reporting, there was a general mailbox where the client should send all requests that needed to be addressed.

I had to deal with 30 to 40 different people from the client side, plus the client “head.”

They didn’t give a **** about the mailbox and would always email my inbox instead, almost always ignoring the general one.

Since I was alone doing the work of two people, I was almost always behind on the workload.

So as the work started to pile up, complaints started coming in.

I would get the idiots on the other side constantly complaining to the client “head.”

Who, in turn, would complain to my managers.

“How is it possible that OP can’t deal with 7 or 8 daily emails and be behind on his work?”

The weekly report stated I was only getting 7 or 8 emails from the client a day.

But this employee knew this wasn’t the full story.

It completely ignored the phone, personal inbox, and Skype chat, which were the ways people were contacting me every day.

So the client “head” complained to my managers and escalated me for being a lazy idiot who couldn’t even handle a handful of emails a day.

Managers set up a meeting to grill me.

The boss couldn’t seem to wrap his head around it.

“OP, you always look so busy, and you’re only getting a handful of emails a day and constantly behind on your work. How is this possible? The client isn’t happy, and you either improve dramatically or the client wants us to replace you.”

I explained that the general mailbox wasn’t the only thing I did.

I mentioned all the other ways through which client idiots were requesting things.

So it was time to start documenting.

So the solution to show the client “head” what was being done was that I needed to register on an Excel sheet everything—EVERYTHING—I did during the day.

I asked for clarification.

“You mean emails and calls, right?”

“No, no. EVERYTHING.”

And I had to email the Excel sheet at the end of the workday.

So here goes my malicious compliance.

I did exactly what I was told.

So as the employee got started, he spared no small detail.

I wrote down everything I did during the workday, even including bathroom, smoke, and coffee breaks.

Client writes on Skype, I write down the timestamp when the client asks for something and the timestamp of each and every reply.

His spreadsheet grew bigger and bigger.

All of this added up to an Excel sheet at around 500 lines every day, with my personal favorite line at the end: “Time wasted to fill in sheet, 1 hour.”

One manager laughed when he saw my full compliance.

The other one, not so much, but he knew he couldn’t do **** because I did what I was told.

Soon the clients chimed in and the boss finally came to his senses.

A few months later, when the client “head” visited, he told me he loved it.

I was told to stop doing it on the third day.

They were now aware of what I did during the day.

The client needed answers, so they sure got them!

What did Reddit think?

Many jobs are a lot more complicated than the bosses give them credit for.

Some managers can be quite ineffective at their jobs.

Next time, maybe there’s a simpler way to comply.

This commenter thinks many workplaces could benefit from more established processes.

By the end of the story, this employee finally stopped defending and just started documenting.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.