I doubt anyone has had the good luck to only work at places with great policies that always make sense. Policies are usually written by people who don’t do the work, after all.

OP and his coworkers drive medical transport vehicles, and so there are specific rules about how patients are to be transported and helped into their homes.

Worked for a Medical Transportation company that had a contract with Medicaid.

One of their many rules was that you could not provide any assistance to the patient INSIDE of their house.

This one woman, for instance, could be helped up 3 steps onto her main level or hauled up an outdoor staircase to the second floor.

One elderly lady had an old house with a very small foyer that you had to climb three steps to get to the main floor. The only other entrance was around back and up two and a half flights of rickety steps to an old deck that opened into a bedroom.

Upstairs. She’s in a wheelchair.

Common sense says take her in the front door, up three stairs and she’s home on the level she lives on.

Medicaid says take her up the outside stairs, dump her in the bedroom upstairs and let her worry about getting down to the living room level.

Policy said the latter option was the only one, because that’s where her bedroom is, but the employees refused and picked the former (using common sense).

We ignored their policy and took her in the front door anyway.

They got slapped on the wrist, and so decided to find a way to stay in compliance and do the right thing.

A random inspection by a random inspector showed that we were not in compliance.

We appealed, the inspector came out and saw the different options and decided that we had no case for appeal. Take her up the outside stairs.

Nope.

From then on, when the driver arrived at her house, he would get her out of the van in the sidewalk, and then get on the radio and tell the boss to shove his stupid job.

Now that he was no longer an employee, he was free to assist this lovely person into her front door and up the stairs.

Once finished, they would come back to the van, tell the boss they’d reconsidered, and ask for their job back.

Their boss goes along with it, too, so all is well.

Boss was ALWAYS understanding and took them back, but very carefully noted the 10 to 15 minute break in their employment, to show that the company remained in compliance.

Aftermath: We had contests to see who could have the most dramatic “I quit” scene.

Medicaid noted our activities, but couldn’t put a handle on how to stop it.

Malicious Compliance achieved!!

Is Reddit going to love these fun and games? I bet so!

The top comment says this is using malicious compliance for good.

And yes, some rules really are just stupid.

What happened to the spirit of the law?

Some inspectors feel like it’s their job to find at least one issue.

Of course, things are not always as simple as they seem.

I’m happy these people can get away with doing the right thing.

A different boss and the story would be different.