Some bosses love busywork, right? They feed on it.

This one preferred control in the same way.

One employee stretched a month of tasks across six.

Then came the translation request.

See why one sentence made him smile.

Soon after resigning, we talked about the details, and he wanted me to do a lot of stuff in the next six months.

I wasn’t motivated at all and expected a paid leave, like everybody else got.

He didn’t want to let me go early, and I should see it positively, and as a praise, he wanted to keep me until the last day.

So we sat down and discussed my future tasks.

As we agreed, I asked him what would happen when I finished everything.

He replied, “We will see…” I asked him to specify, and he did so: “We will see what else you can do.”

OK. I got it.

Fortunately, the tasks wouldn’t take that long.

I looked at the tasks and realized it would take me about a month.

So the next few weeks I made the bare minimum: Went to the gym in the morning (it opened at 8 am), after it to work, did my stuff, had lunch, and then went back home and spent the time with my kids in the open-air swimming pool (it was summer).

Although I finished my work, I gave him the results only in little pieces and held back the rest.

It was funny when he praised my work.

Did I notice his incompetence? Usually, I do a decent job, but with this work, I made the bare minimum.

My highlight came when I had to translate some regulations from English into our native language.

I asked him why he wouldn’t give this to our internal translation service. “This is a specific business language, and they don’t understand this.”

It all worked out perfectly for him.

Well, okay, then.

The intro started with, “This regulation is available only in English.”

Wonderful! I translated it just like this, as he ordered me to.

Later, I realized from other guys at the company I still had contact with that he had given out some of my work as his.

Jerk.

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But then, I did the minimum, had time to work out, spent time with my family, and did not care. And it makes me smile when I think about the translation, although it is not a big thing.

Wow! That’s a long notice period.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit relate to this situation.

According to this comment, he set himself up for problems.

Here’s someone who wouldn’t trust him to translate anything.

Harsh words, but that’s what it sounds like.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a restaurant employee who decided to put the staff over customers despite the official policy.

This part is very confusing.

He spent his notice period doing the bare minimum, pacing out completed work while enjoying more time with his family.

When his boss demanded a needless translation, he translated the line saying the regulation was only available in English exactly as ordered.

Sometimes malicious compliance only needs one perfectly translated sentence.