Many toxic workplaces hire teenagers assuming they won’t know their rights, but this one hired the wrong teenager.

When a worker discovered his location was racking up safety violations, skipping mandated breaks, and covering up on-the-job injuries, he responded by becoming the most rule-compliant employee they’d ever had.

But the resignation letter he left behind made it clear he’d been keeping score the entire time.

Keep reading for the full story.

My first job was a lesson in work-to-rule: A Very Obedient Payback

I got hired on to my first job when I was 17. It was something of a fast food/coffee shop blend, and in my region, there are more of these chains than there are Starbucks chains.

After a 10 minute interview and some paperwork, I was hired on.

The workplace thought they could take advantage of this young worker, but little did they know, he had some high-up connections.

I would later find out that minors were the preferred hires at this location, since it was likely their first job, and they might in turn be unfamiliar with labour laws.

My mother makes a decent income going to work sites and dealing with on-site injuries, labour rights infractions, and so on. Her job is to make workplaces safer and spare them potential lawsuits.

Through the stories she shared and the online handbook I devoured about labour rights in my region, I had a decent picture of how ethical workplaces operate.

As it turns out, my new workplace was not-so-ethical.

He goes on to describe the many violations of this workplace.

Your breaks were considered more of a privilege than a right, and you could be pulled out of your break to help up front at any time, with no opportunity to make up that break time later.

I earned a great deal of scorn from my manager by asking for a 30 minute break on my 7 hour shift instead of a 15 minute one — here, you are legally entitled to 30 minutes for every 5 hours worked.

Then there was the matter of personal safety.

There were so many weird, corner-cutting things going on that could create a disaster scenario in terms of safety.

Climbing on whatever is available instead of using the ladder (the ladder was broken), poor food safety, and the occasional fire in the toaster oven, because new hires weren’t instructed on how to use it safely.

Not much instruction on how to use the corrosive cleaners, and if you had to clean the oven in the back kitchen, you were lucky if you received an unused mask or PPE that wasn’t damaged.

Burns, rashes, sprained ankles and cuts were not uncommon.

And soon, he found himself injured too.

I badly burned my arm with hot coffee and immediately went to treat it, then asked for the right forms to fill out to report on my injury.

I was scolded for leaving the front end, told there were no forms, and informed that no one reports on burns, anyway.

“If we reported every burn or slip and fall in a coffee shop, we’d never get through all the paperwork.”

The burn blistered with time and eventually required some prescription antibiotic cream from my physician.

None of his other coworkers seemed to want to fight back, so he knew he would need to go at it alone.

I was fed up, but intimidated at the thought of trying to formally report these people for safety and labour violations. Everyone else seemed to accept what was going on.

I was trying to save money to move out, and in my head, the odds of getting hired elsewhere seemed slim.

I decided to do something unconventional. I thought I was the first to come up with it at the time, but I would later find out that my plan was a classic worker’s protest tactic.

Why not fight the rule by exposing just how bad it actually is?

I was going to work-to-rule: follow every policy to the exact letter, which would inevitably slow things down and create obstacles to efficiency.

It started with the cappuccino machine and the iced drink machine. The cappuccino machine is to be cleaned once daily, and the iced drink machine is to be changed weekly.

These are both lengthy processes that leave the machines out of commission for awhile.

No one did it regularly, and we had an issue in the past where we got complaints about the taste of the iced drinks, only to pop the top off the machine and discover some kind of filmy, moldy growth on the surface.

Seemed like a good place to start.

So that’s exactly what he did.

I took great cares to drain them and give the detachable parts a long soak and a thorough scrub. This angered customers who wanted their drinks right away.

I’d been there for awhile at this point, and instructed anyone I trained not to hesitate to get the manager if their customer has an issue they can’t resolve.

He didn’t mind if customers were left waiting, as long as his many tasks got done.

And so it went that every shift involved me, cleaning some machine, and my manager, placating impatient customers.

We had this pre-prepared specialty tea that almost never got ordered, but nonetheless, it was policy to change the pot of tea every 30 minutes for freshness. No one did this, the tea would sit for hours.

I decided this tea needed special attention, and made sure I was changing it regularly.

The result was that we went through our stock faster than we ever had before, we frequently ran out, and the stock orders had to be changed to accommodate a greater supply of the tea.

I took cares to check our freshness dates on the prepackaged foods. If it was expired, it was trash.

This led to lots and lots and lots of waste!

This pained me, as I don’t like to waste food, but we had a strict policy on freshness of product. I tried to wiggle on this, only throwing it out if it was 3+ days over.

Nonetheless, the result was empty display cases, low stock, and a need to (again) adjust stock to accommodate for the food supply needs that come into play when policy is actually being followed.

I was assigned the sandwich and soup station, perhaps in an effort to keep me away from other things. However, it was wonderful new territory to work-to-rule.

He could od lots of damage here.

I changed gloves after every order, as the handbook indicated we should. I took cares to clean out all the receptacles before putting new toppings in them.

The handbook indicated we were supposed to cool vats of soup in ice baths to bring them to a safe temperature before storing them in the fridge. I made sure it was done, which was inconvenient to management when they could have had me working on something else before the shift was over.

The bosses had begun to take notice.

I kept abiding by the rules, rigidly and to their fullest extent. Management was incredibly ticked off and communicated as much when I wasn’t around.

However, I had turned 18 by this point. I could now legally work past a certain time, supervise the teenage employees and close the store.

Until they hired on someone else who could work the hours I was working, it was something of a pickle for them.

He made sure to not reveal his true intentions.

I also offered no hostility or indication I was being spiteful. If you were on the outside looking in, you might see me as an employee who did the jobs no one else wanted to do.

It wouldn’t have been easy to call me out to higher-ups.

His coworkers looked on, fascinated by his boldness.

My coworkers, despite the inconveniences-by-proxy they probably had to put up with, didn’t seem to mind. They were interested to see how it would play out, and told me as much.

I decided to quit after a conversation with the store owner herself.

She indicated that she wasn’t fond of, “Kids who think they know how to run a business she’s been running for years,” and had some other choice words for me.

That’s when he decided to bring this all to its grand finale.

I told her on the spot, “Oh, I understand completely. I’ll submit my written notice for you tomorrow.”

My resignation letter wasn’t just a resignation letter. The first few lines were as much.

What followed was a list of safety infractions and labour law violations with dates and examples attached.

It was incomplete since I only started recording these a few months in, yet it managed to be pretty extensive.

I said something along the lines of, “I trust you will address these problems in a timely manner.”

He made it quite clear the implications of this.

There was a quiet implication in some of my other language that the Better Business Bureau, health inspector and associated safety organizations in my region would be happy to help them out.

I gave two weeks’ notice in the interests of my coworkers, who would have had to take extra shifts if I left abruptly. I was scheduled for 5 of the 14 days.

Management wanted nothing to do with him.

They wanted me out, and they wanted me out as soon as they could get me out.

I didn’t return to this location for several months, even though I lived fairly close to it.

So when he finally went back, he realized that his malicious compliance actually brought about change!

I eventually got curious and went back to check things out. The place looked very different.

You walked in, and it just felt cleaner. The employees looked happier, though I didn’t see any familiar faces.

The location had come under new ownership and had been completely turned around.

I have no idea if I played a role in the store changing hands, or getting fixed up. I only know that for several months, I was a relentless pain in the butt for quietly, obediently following the rules, and I left a letter in my wake that created unease.

Now this is malicious compliance done right.

What did Reddit have to say?

This amazed reader has no notes.

He and his mother make a pretty excellent team.

When you hear a story of a bad manager, it makes you appreciate the good ones so much more.

Unfortunately there are many other workplaces that don’t take break time seriously either.

This workplace finally learned that you can’t cut corners without eventually getting caught.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a manager whose insistence on only upper-level staff handling urgent issues backfired spectacularly.