The fastest way to undermine a bad policy is to make the person who invented it defend it out loud, repeatedly, to the people it affects most.

In this story, a café owner found that out the hard way when he introduced a 75-cent charge for tap water and expected his staff to handle the fallout.

But one employee had other ideas. Every customer question about the water charge became an opportunity to summon her boss from whatever he was doing and let him explain it himself.

Read on to see how the story plays out.

I made my boss take the fall for his idiotic system to customers.

I work at a café where the owner is obsessed with “maximizing profit.”

We already charged extra for oat milk, syrup, takeaway cups — basically everything except breathing near the espresso machine. Not too bad.

Still, this didn’t satiate the boss’ greed.

But one day he decided we were going to start charging for tap water. Not bottled water. Tap water.

Like, someone buys a sandwich and asks for a glass of water? Boom. 75 cents.

His staff gave him plenty of warning in advance, but of course, being the boss, he thought he knew better.

Everyone on staff thought it was stupid, but he acted like he’d invented modern economics.

He even printed little signs explaining how “cups, dishwashing, and labor have costs.”

The funniest part was that he and everyone knew customers would hate this. Which is fair. I would too if I was a customer.

Instead of fighting back, this café worker just decided to show her boss how silly this rule really was.

So I decided that every single time someone asked me for tap water, I’d smile and say something like “Oh, my boss actually handles all questions about the water policy. One second.”

And then I’d go get him. Every. Single. Time.

Didn’t matter if he was in the office, unloading stock, eating lunch, or pretending to do accounting on his laptop. If someone wanted free water, I summoned him like a cursed spirit.

The boss started out pretty confident, but once he faced the customer’s rage for himself, his attitude started to change.

At first he’d come out all confident with his rehearsed explanation: “Well, unfortunately there are operational costs associated with—”

And customers would immediately hit him with:

“You’re charging for TAP WATER?”

“Are you serious?”

“I just spent €14 here.”

“Every other café gives it for free.”

“Is this legal?” (I looked it up, it’s not, lol)

Meanwhile I’d just stand there pretending to wipe the counter while enjoying the show.

Finally, the boss couldn’t take the heat any longer.

This went on for like two weeks before he completely lost it.

One afternoon a few days ago he pulled me aside and went: “You need to stop bringing me out there for this.”

This café worker wasn’t about to let him get away with it, though.

I said, “But you made the rule.”

And he goes: “Yes, but it’s degrading having to explain it to customers all day.”

I genuinely had to look away so he wouldn’t see me smiling.

Still though, the boss seemed to get the message.

Like… my brother in Christ, if explaining your own policy humiliates you, maybe the policy is the problem.

Anyway, as for now, the tap water charge disappeared. No announcement. No apology.

The little signs just vanished overnight like they’d never existed.

Still one of the funniest acts of malicious compliance I’ve ever committed.

This employee is practically a hero!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a cashier who gave her phone number to be friendly to a guest, but immediately wished she could take it back.

What did Reddit make of this amusing story?

Clearly the boss is okay with his employees getting mistreated, but never him!

This story makes a very compelling argument for bosses having a little more customer-facing time.

Turns out, ticking customers off isn’t a good long-term business strategy.

It only took this boss two weeks to see the horrors customer service workers experience on a daily basis.

Somewhere between the fourth and fortieth time the boss had to come out and explain tap water pricing to a visibly annoyed customer, the pinwheels finally started turning in his greedy little head.

The clear winner of this story was the café worker for pulling off this brilliant act of malicious compliance. A policy this absurd (and illegal) should never be allowed to prevail.

Tap water is free in basically every café on earth for a reason.