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Some employees know how to follow workplace policies to the letter.

In this story, an employee was working in a chemistry lab with a strict list of posted documents.

He noticed that his colleagues would use Post-it notes for temperature conversion and leave them in front of the water bath.

Strictly complying with the “list of posted documents,”  he decided to add these Post-it notes to the official list.

He even made sure to label it in a way that would catch the attention of an internal auditor.

Check out the full details below. It’s a cute workplace story!

Malicious compliance in the chemistry lab.

I worked in a chemistry testing lab for a while.

For those of you who don’t know, it is pretty common to have a “list of posted documents.”

When a document, such as a procedure or work instruction, gets posted in the lab, it gets added to the list of posted documents.

That way, if a new version gets updated, it gets updated where it is posted in the lab.

Lab employees would use Post-it notes to take note of the hot water bath temperature.

Well, we had this really old hot water bath.

It was so ancient that the temperature dial didn’t even have the degrees each setting corresponded to.

It just had the numbers 1-10.

So every time somebody used it at a new setting, they would write on a Post-it note that was on the front of the water bath what temperature it got to.

This employee added the small notes as part of the posted documents.

I knew that our internal auditor was coming for an audit, and I also knew that this Post-it note was technically a posted document.

So I added it to the posted documents list. I also gave it a really long title because I thought that was funny.

Something like “Thermo brand hot water bath temperature dial conversion to degrees Celsius chart.”

When the auditor saw it, she said I was “being a smarty pants.” 🤭

Lol. Talk about strictly following the rules, huh?

Well, if a Post-it note technically qualified as a posted document, then OP was simply doing his job.

I think the ridiculously long title was genius, making it sound like a real, official document.

The auditor definitely noticed it! Let’s see how others reacted to this story.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

Here’s another honest opinion.

Indeed, right?

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who decides to mute her boss’s number after he insists on calling her at home after hours.

Short and straightforward.

Finally, this one makes a valid point.

Strictly following the rules can be fun when someone gets your humor.