Sometimes people think they can boss others around just because they have a little power. But when you give someone a set of rules and act like those rules don’t apply to you, things can backfire fast. That’s where malicious compliance comes in.
These stories are a great example of what can happen when someone finally gets held to the same standards they try to force on everyone else. If you’ve ever had to deal with a power-hungry coworker or manager, you’ll want to see how this one plays out.
1. Sorry, I Don’t Make The Rules, Karen
“So I work in college dorms in a sort of generic first response role – we do a bit of everything, mostly security, but also medical, fire, psych – it’s a weird and often quite tough job but quite rewarding.
These dorms are kinda like a gated community a couple of miles away from the main campus.
At the top of this village, there’s a hub where all the staff is based. It also serves as a venue for events and has some facilities for the students (catering, gym, etc) as well as a few meeting facilities in the staff area which any department in the college can book out if they so wish.
Between the staff parking spots and the back doors, there are also disabled parking spaces.
Now, one day I was coming in for my (10-hour) night shift and to my dismay, I found that all the staff parking spots were occupied, which basically never happens.
But I knew that the HR department had a big thing there that afternoon (in the meeting facilities I mentioned) so I figured out what was going on. And though it’s not technically against the parking policy (they are college staff after all), usually, staff who don’t actually work in the building are expected to park in the visitor parking bays, not the staff parking.
So I had a problem. It was 10 minutes till the start of my shift. I’m not allowed to use the student car parks. What about visitor parking? Well, that gets locked up overnight (until after my shift ends). If I parked there, then in the morning I’d have to go unlock the visitor parking, bring the key back, leave, and one of my day shift colleagues would have to go lock it back up.
My only other option was to park down the hill, but then by the time I got there and walked back up, I’d be late for my shift and miss the handover.
You see where this is going. I want to make it clear that I would never normally park in a disabled bay.
It’s generally a scummy thing to do. I’m disabled myself, but not in a way that entitles me to use disabled parking. However, there are a few things to note here:
Nobody ever uses those bays, unless we have a disabled person coming in for an event, because the back door is key card access only and there’s no bell, so it’s little use to students or members of the public unless they’ve made a prior arrangement to be let in.
There weren’t any events scheduled that night, and the chances of someone disabled randomly deciding they need to park at the back of the hub (which is near nothing else) unannounced is negligible, never mind three of them – remember there are three bays in total. Besides, in the middle of the night, they could just park next to it at the side of the road because there’s about as much traffic there at night as on Route 50.
So, I decided I’d park in one of the disabled bays – the one farthest from the door, next to the staff spaces. Due to the long and unsociable hours, I get to take breaks liberally as long as it doesn’t interfere with anything.
In the extremely unlikely event that more than 2 disabled people had called in to park and access the building, which I’d find out about during handover, I’d just take a break right after starting, drive my car away down the hill and walk back up.
I go in, get the handover, and as expected, no one is expected to come in. I was the supervisor for that shift (our shift patterns are rotating and the longest in service is the supervisor) so I set up my colleagues for the shift, log on, set up the cameras the way I want them, read my e-mails, turn on my radio, yadda yadda.
After a while I get one of the guys, Phil, to cover the cameras so I can go tell a resident he’s getting disciplined for vandalism.
I then have one of those golden sitcom moments where I open the office door right before someone was about to knock on it.
I recognize her immediately, she’s the Dean of Facilities – we’ll call her Karen.
Now, we’re not in the Facilities Section. We’re in the Auxiliary Services Section. So, this lady is not my boss in any capacity. She is, however, far higher up the food chain than me, so it’s this awkward situation where unless I have a great reason not to, I still have to bow down to her or I’ll get called into HR for insubordination, especially since the building we’re in is technically operated by the Facilities Section.
Some more context: Karen is one of the most hated figures among low-level staff in the entire college, your classic power trip jerk. You can practically see the satisfaction in her eyes whenever she talks down to anyone on a lower salary than her – which is all the time – and she’s pulled no end of downright evil stuff in her many years with the institution.
So a startled Karen practically pushes me back into the office. It turns out she was attending whatever event the HR department had on in the building that afternoon, and she was one of the people parked in the staff spaces out back.
Now, she doesn’t have an office in the building, so by convention, she should be parking in the visitor spaces (but again, that’s not technically in the policy).
Anyway, she saw my car parked in the disabled bay on her way back to her car – she knows who I am, we’ve had numerous (always unpleasant) interactions in the past, and she saw my name on the staff sticker in my windshield.
Karen: ‘Where do you get off thinking you can park in the disabled bay, OP?’
Me: ‘Well, nobody uses those.’
Karen: ‘Oh what, so you think you’re above the rules just because it’s you who enforces them?’
Me: ‘Look, it’s no big deal, I’ll go move the car.’
Karen: ‘Oh no, not on the college’s time you don’t.’
Me: ‘I’ll take it off my break.’
Karen: ‘Nope. Breaks are for relaxation. Moving your car is not relaxation.’
Me: ‘Well, then what do you want me to do?’
Karen: ‘I want you to issue yourself the standard $70 fine.’ (see what I mean about the power tripping?)
Me: ‘Are you serious?’
Karen: ‘Absolutely. You need to learn that you don’t make the rules.
You just enforce them.’
At this point, I stare at her in disbelief. Now, I have a short fuse at the best of times, and I really want to yell b****y murder at her, but I value my job, so I swallow my pride and go write myself a ticket.
More context there: We’re essentially subcontracted by the city to do the parking and traffic enforcement for all roads and parking on college land, so the authority behind these tickets is the city, not the college.
I know if I go talk to that vandal student now I’ll just let off steam at the kid unfairly when it already wasn’t gonna be a pleasant talking-to, and I know that sitting and staring at the cameras would just make me seethe, so I go restock the staff kitchen, then talk to the kid, and after that, I get back to the office.
Bear in mind that Phil, my buddy who I put on the cameras, witnessed the whole thing.
‘Is the jerk still here?’ I ask. ‘She’s just on her way out now,’ he says pointing at one of the cameras, followed by ‘Huh, that’s weird, she’s leaving through the front.’
Karen regularly comes here to use the gym at the end of the work day – it’s free for students and staff. That’s presumably what she was doing today, too, seeing as it’s now been a good 45 minutes since she humiliated me.
When she does that, she takes a cab home, because she lives at the opposite end of the city and traffic is a nightmare at this time in the evening, and we all know it’s a million times less awful being stuck in traffic if it isn’t you who’s driving.
She then takes a cab back the next morning to pick up her car and drive to the main campus.
It’s now that I make a wonderful realization (yeah, yeah, I’m a hypocrite, sue me): I pull up the parking policy, scroll through it, and there it is, in delicious bold lettering.
It is not permissible for members of staff to leave their cars parked in a staff parking area during non-working hours. It then lists a few exceptions (mainly breaks and stuff like that), none of which apply to Karen.
So I’m about to write a ticket when I have an even better idea.
You see, our cameras are pretty snazzy. About 6 years ago, all the cameras that monitor the roadways were updated to plate recognition cameras by the city, so now on top of 40 days of saved camera footage, we also have the plate log, which has (so far) been kept indefinitely, and can be used to figure out when a car entered the compound and when a car left, since we only have three entry/exit roads.
I explain my plan to Phil. He has absolutely no reservations about doing me a solid and spending time going back through the plate log system to see how many times Karen has left her car parked here overnight.
4 hours later, and he’s assembled all the dates.
Over the past 4 years and however many months, weeks, and days since the plate system came online, Karen has left her car overnight on a staggering 585 (yes, FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FIVE) separate occasions.
So I log into the city’s ‘Fine Portal’ software.
Yep, that’s actually what it’s called. (You can only write tickets for ongoing/momentane violations; if you spot something using auxiliary systems like cameras or what have you after the fact, you need to issue a fine by mail.) I put in her office address, and start entering all 585 dates, and times, and copy and paste the reference to the exact part of the parking policy as well as the city statute that gives this policy the force of law, for every single one.
The result is a thing of beauty, spanning 13 pages, and totaling $40,950. At this point, all the guys are back in the office so I call them around, knowing they’ll all enjoy this almost as much as me.
When I press ‘Log and print’, I’m hit with a warning I’ve never seen before: ‘The fine you are about to issue exceeds $10,000.
Are you sure you wish to proceed?’ Everyone is dumbstruck; I start laughing, then Phil, and then everyone else. It’s GLORIOUS. I print it, stuff it in a windowed, prepaid, city envelope, and put it in the external mail.
(The city doesn’t allow us to use the internal mail nor hand deliver fines, I guess it’s for paper trail reasons.)
The cherry on top is, I then get to also issue a ticket and put it under her windshield because of course she’s also there that night!
Of course, the next time I come in to work after she receives this, she’s waiting for me in the office.
Karen: ‘What the heck, OP? Do you really think this is gonna fly?’
Me (with puppy dog eyes): ‘What do you mean?’
Karen: ‘The ticket! The fines! Do you really think this will fly?’
Me: ‘Rules are rules, Karen.’
Karen: ‘You know as well as I do that that’s never actually been done here.’
Me: ‘Well, Karen… I don’t make the rules.
I just enforce them.’
(exit Karen, stage right)
Now there’s more to this, some good, some bad. I’ll start with the bad:
Karen ended up suing, I had to go to court on my day off, the silver lining was I was theoretically there representing the city and so I wasn’t being sued personally and had the city attorney.
The court ended up reducing the fine to $10,000 which was apparently the city’s maximum for post facto fines issued at one time (I guess that’s why the warning was there), but Karen had sued to get the fine dismissed entirely so it was still a victory, kinda.
She also tried to take it up with HR but the Dean of Auxiliary Services also hates her and he stuck up for me to HR so that went nowhere.
The best thing, though? This year, I was appointed to the Auxiliary Services Policy Review Board.
Last week, I managed to get the parking policy amended. It now says that if staff visit a building other than where their office is, unless they are teaching a class, they need to use visitor parking if there are fewer than 20 staff parking bays at the building and there are empty visitor bays.
So, starting in June, Karen won’t be allowed to park in the staff spots at all – and of course, all of us will be vigilantly enforcing that!”
2. Demand I Pay This Bill? Last I Checked, That’s Not My Driveway
“A few years ago, my ex and I rented a one-bedroom house on a dead-end street in the downtown area of the city I grew up in. We had three cats and I lived close enough to my job that I could walk to work every day.
The city had (and has) a poor reputation, particularly with regard to substance abuse, but none of that affected us.
The landlord who owned my home had for some reason actually built two homes on the same property – mine, a small one-bedroom home, sat maybe six feet from the street, and my back neighbor’s home, a two-bedroom, was kitty-cornered behind mine; there was a long shared driveway on the left side of my house that ended at her front door.
The number for the neighbor’s house was 11 1/2, and mine was 13.
From the beginning, we had issues with this neighbor whom I hereby dub JN for Jerk Neighbor – her entire life would make a great story. She would frequently invite herself over to our house for dinner or drinks, she would have people coming and going loudly at all hours of the night, and frequently had the police at her home to kick out various men.
By the time we moved out of that house, she had somehow caused an electrical fire in the house that had cost about $35k to repair.
Keep in mind that this house was maybe fifty feet away from mine, and neither home had particularly thick walls.
Mostly, we ignored JN. We didn’t spend time with her, we didn’t answer the door when she knocked, and we just left her alone – the most we interacted with her was when I would give her misdelivered mail.
We wanted nothing to do with her and the hurricane of chaos that was her life. Of course, JN didn’t like this – she wanted to be in control of everything on the whole street.
The driveway that led up to her front door was large enough to fit four cars – a fairly big deal in an area with mostly on-street parking.
But JN insisted to us when we first moved in that we were NOT allowed to park in this driveway – the driveway was only for her and her guests/children/man of the week. She said many times that she WOULD NOT allow anyone to block her car in at any time.
This driveway was directly on the side of my house: my desk was in our converted dining room and was right next to the driveway. Every morning there was a car parked directly next to these windows, and every morning that car started up (crazy loud, because it was a real piece of crap car) at about 6 am, right around the time I was sitting down at my desk with coffee.
Luckily, I’m a morning person: if I had been asleep during this time, I would’ve been mad.
I occasionally had family and friends come by and would warn them to not park in the driveway, but a few times they did.
My sister was moving at one point and needed to store some things in my basement, but the only entrance was outside at the back of the house – so she pulled up into the driveway and started unloading boxes.
JN flew out of her house and flipped out. But my sister has her own anger issues and handled the crazy situation all on her own. JN did this to two of my friends, my brother, and my mother on separate occasions – she started to flip out on my grandfather once until she saw my mother come up from the trunk of the car with his wheelchair.
JN went back into her own house this time.
My ex and I didn’t want to deal with her. We had our own problems and certainly didn’t want to get involved in hers. Sure, it means that we couldn’t use the side door of our house that let out onto this driveway unless we had two hours to get stuck talking to her, but we decided to just adapt.
We had some lawn on the other side of our house that was brown and overgrown with poison ivy – we cleaned it out, filled it with gravel, and made it our new parking spot. Voila! Crisis averted.
Then came winter.
A particularly bad winter. We had feet of snow piled up.
My ex had gone out and shoveled out our car and a path from our front door to the car. He was out there every hour, clearing off the path and the car and laying down rock salt.
My job was waiting until the last possible second to close, so I wasn’t sure if I would be heading to the office or not. My ex kindly made sure the car was available in case I needed it.
JN was MAD. We could hear her in the driveway yelling at the guy of the week to shovel. We could hear her saying all kinds of bad stuff about us. And we could hear when she broke her shovel, threw it into the yard, and stormed back into her house.
Later that day, a plowing company came. Two guys dug out the cars, let JN move them, and plowed their driveway. They even did their front steps. They were gone in less than an hour.
Then the landlord showed up.
The landlord never showed up at the property unless there was a big deal. My ex and I were in the kitchen at the time (which was also adjacent to the driveway) and could hear JN’s loud conversation about how expensive the plowing company was and how much snow there still was in the driveway – it was still snowing.
The landlord knocked on our side door.
I opened it with a big smile. ‘Hi Landlord, hi JN. How are you?’
JN shoves paper at me: it’s the invoice from the plowing company. ‘So I’m SURE you noticed that we had to have the driveway professionally plowed. I talked to Landlord, and you have to pay half of this bill.’
Me: Yeah, I’m not going to do that.
JN: It was expensive! And Landlord says that we can take part of it out of next month’s rent.
Me: That’s nice. But I’m not paying for that.
JN: You have to!
Me: Actually, I don’t. I didn’t know you were getting the plow guy, and I don’t use the driveway.
Landlord: If service is performed on the shared parts of the property, you should split the costs.
JN: See! You have to!
My eyes narrow as I turn back to look at her.
Me: You’ve made it very clear that it’s not my driveway. I’m not allowed to park in it. I had to make my own parking space.
You can pay for your own driveway.
JN was speechless. She had really thought I would’ve just done what she wanted.
Landlord: You made your own parking space?
Me: Yes. I’ve been told since I moved in that I’m not allowed to park in the driveway and I’m not allowed to block her car at any time.
She’s yelled at everyone who has come here to visit me that has parked in the driveway, even if they are just stopping by for a few minutes.
JN finally looks ready to re-enter the fight, but Landlord speaks first.
Landlord: Thank you, OP. Enjoy the rest of your night.
I smiled at them, closed my door, and locked it.
I could hear JN trying to argue with Landlord, and could even hear her walk up and down my steps wanting to knock on my door again.
But Landlord was firm: she had to pay for the bill herself.
And, after that, she had to let me park in the driveway too.”
3. Want To Illegally Park Here? Go Right Ahead
“As a male in my country (Austria), when you finish your compulsory education, you have to complete what is known as ‘Präsenzdienst’, which basically means either joining the army for six months or doing ‘Zivildienst’ (compulsory social service is the best translation I can come up with).
This social service might include working for the Red Cross, caring for the elderly or mentally disabled people, and basically doing something that benefits society. Having met some people who work in the army, I bravely decided to do the Zivildienst and was allocated to a hostel for foreign students.
It is important to note that Zivis (as people in these roles are called) don’t make a lot of money. Some of my friends earned about 330€ a month, I was relatively lucky making about 600€ per month, which in a country with such a high cost of living is laughable.
As a result, I wasn’t exactly motivated to go above and beyond the call of duty and was pretty miserable, working my butt off for 10 – 12 hours a day.
The hostel was located right next to a school that held this big event every year where they showed potential new students the grounds, and gave them a bit of a taste of life in their hostels.
This of course always attracted a lot of people with a lot of cars in a town that’s not exactly overflowing with parking spaces. The hostel had its own parking spaces, one for each room, with signs stating that the lot was private property and illegally parked cars would be towed without warning.
On the day of the event, we even put up an extra large sign, stating the same thing, so we did everything we could to stop people from making mistakes.
The day the event rolls around, I was told to make sure that no non-residents parked in our lot.
I was a bit annoyed by this, as that meant leaving the heated building to tell already irritated and, more often than not, entitled parents to learn how to read signs and please move their cars off of our lot.
To make sure they do, I was (legally) allowed to clamp any illegally parked car and have it towed. Most people cleared off and were apologetic, others tried to argue with my already annoyed self until I threatened them with the clamp.
Everything was going okay until a black S-class Mercedes (with plates from a town more than 500km away) made its way onto our lot and parked right in front of my office window. Out got Mr. M(ercedes), as well as his trophy wife and their two seriously obese sons.
I thought to myself ‘oh boy, this is gonna be fun’ and went outside to catch them before they left the property. The conversation went a little something like this:
Me: ‘Excuse me, you can’t park here, this is a private parking lot and I am going to have to ask you to park elsewhere.’
Mr. M: ‘What? And who are you to tell me what to do?!’
Me: ‘I’m just a Zivi, and I am not telling you what to do, I am asking you to obey the law.’
Mr. M: ‘Haha, a Zivi, what are you gonna do?
Run to someone who actually matters to see what he does? Get lost loser.’ (His boys and his wife started laughing at this point)
Me: ‘If you don’t move the car, I c-‘
Mr. M: ‘Shut up, nobody cares what you have to say.
Do whatever you want to you useless waste of money.’
Okay, tough guy, have it your way. They went off toward the school, I went inside and got the clamp, clamped his wheel, and had him towed. It is important to note that we were partners with a towing service that had their HQ about 100km away.
They came back about two hours later, just as I had handed over the keys to my colleague. I walked out to my own car and from a distance could see Mr. M’s eyes go wide, and his head turning red. He immediately ran up to me and started screaming at me about where his car had gone.
Mr. M: ‘Where is my car, you jerk?! I had parked it right here and now it’s gone, tell me what you have done with it you little jerk.’
Me: ‘Nice to see you again too, I had it towed, which I would have warned you about had you not been such a jerk.’
Mr. M: ‘What?! How dare you, you can’t just tow people’s cars like this. I will sue the everloving crap out of you!’
Me: ‘You’re right, I can’t just have people’s cars towed, but I have asked you to leave politely and there are signs at every entrance telling you what will happen if you park here as a non-resident.
What I did was perfectly within the law. Also: Weren’t you the one that told me to do what I wanted?’
Mr. M: ‘That doesn’t matter, where were we supposed to park?! How are we supposed to get home to Town XYZ?!’
Me: ‘Don’t know, don’t care. You can call our towing partners, their number is on the ‘No Parking’ signs. If that doesn’t satisfy you, you’re gonna have to find someone that actually matters.’
I then went home after asking him repeatedly to step away from me, having to threaten him with calling the police.
The next day, our towing partner called me to tell me about this absolute jerk with the Mercedes they had towed the day before. He had to pay about 300€ in towing fees, a 600€ fine for trespassing onto our property as well as a 300€ taxi fare.
I know this won’t have hurt him financially, but it was satisfying nonetheless.”
