Imagine working in construction on a huge hotel and casino. If you noticed a flaw with the blueprints, would you stick to the plan anyway, or would you notify the general contractor?

In this story, some construction workers are in this situation, and they decide to take the contractor seriously when he says not to do any extra work without approval.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Learned real quick about malicious compliance while doing high end construction

Years ago, I was doing construction for a casino, in the restaurant portion, while another company was working on the hotel.

The general contractor was notorious for being a jerk, and insisted no extra work was to be done without prior written authorization and approval by the owners and architect.

Basically follow the plans exactly.

They complied.

This happens time to time, and usually they find little mistakes and submit an update and approve the added expense.

Not this time.

10 floors were built exactly per plan. The top 2 were luxury suites. Marble floor to ceiling in the bathrooms. Really expensive stuff.

There was a big problem.

Towards the end of the job, they’re walking off the suites, probably 95% of everything is done. “Where’s the light switch in the bathroom?”

Head electrician just smiles “none in the plans sir, we followed the plans to the letter, just like you said. No lights, no switches.”

We could hear screaming several floors down.

They ended up having to rip out marble in every bathroom to run pipe for wire and all the lights and switched, but didn’t lift a finger until they were guaranteed in writing they would be paid for the extra work.

That’s funny! The part about hearing “screaming several floors down” makes it even funnier. But, obviously, it was not funny for the contractor. I hope he learned his lesson.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is a good question.

Another person has questions about the marble.

It is really funny!

Here’s a pun.

It’s easy to make light of this situation.

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.