Few people are as knee-deep in our work-related anxieties and sticky office politics as Alison Green, who has been fielding workplace questions for a decade now on her website Ask a Manager. In Direct Report, she spotlights themes from her inbox that help explain the modern workplace and how we could be navigating it better.
As long as we have employers, we’ll also have managers who issue nonsensical or inefficient edicts—even when their employees point out a smarter way to go. Sometimes that’s because managers are more focused on control or appearances than they are on actual results. Sometimes it’s because they’re not in touch with the day-to-day realities of the work. And sometimes they’re just bad managers.
Some employees, irritated with myopic or out-of-touch management, have learned to respond to these policies with “malicious compliance,” or scrupulously doing exactly what they’re being told to do, in a way that exposes the absurdity of the request. Often this makes the point effectively enough that their compliance becomes the very thing that leads to the directive being reversed. Some examples from my mail:
"I had a boss who needed to know via email every single time we stepped away from our computers (we were all fully remote). So I decided to comply 100 percent with her request. I told her when I’m using the restroom, that I had to put cream in my coffee, that I’m going to put on a sweater because I’m cold, I’m about to open my living room blinds, you get the point. Others did that too and after like two weeks, she said we no longer have to notify her unless it’s going to be over 15 minutes."
"I worked for a company that insisted we wear our teal-colored polo shirts at all times. They only did up to a size large. I am NOT a large. I am a short, hairy, fat, apple-shaped man. So I wore the one they got me. The stretchy fabric stretched and showed the spare tires, it didn’t cover the bottom of my belly, my man-boobs were prominent, and it even had chest hair poking through the fabric. Finishing work that very day, I was asked not to wear it and to wear my usual shirt."
"I worked for a fairly large regional bank that covered three states with nearly 9,000 employees. The CFO decided that everyone was wasting money on frivolous things like office supplies. He mandated that all requisitions for any supplies must come through him. ALL OF THEM. This of course held up the process so even getting a needed pen could take over a month. Some of the managers got together and quietly decided to do just that—send him a requisition/request for every single box of pens, box of paper, box of toilet paper, single toners, etc. One box/item at a time. It lasted two weeks."
Other times these acts of malicious compliance don’t get anything changed—but they sure do bring the employees engaging in it some private enjoyment:
"I’m a Type 1 diabetic, and I have an insulin pump. It beeps to alert me to issues, but different beeps mean different levels of urgency. After the first beep, I tend to pull my pump out of my pocket and silence it and/or immediately address the issue, depending on the level of urgency. My point is, it’s both lifesaving and as unobtrusive as possible.
My boss Dan knew about my insulin pump, but would often publicly chastise me for 'checking my phone' with a weird smirk. His remarks often drew more attention than me just trying to fix my pump.
We had a meeting once where Dan was extremely strict about no phones in the room, to show our VP how focused and productive we were. Because it apparently understands comedic timing, my insulin pump starts beeping halfway through this meeting. Adhering to the no-phones rule, I shrug and keep talking through my slides.
Beep-beep-beep-beep. My co-workers are starting to get anxious, because they all know (thanks, Dan!) that I should probably be fixing that. BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. I finish my presentation. Any questions? Two different co-workers ask me to sit down or if they can get me anything to drink. Someone asks if I need an ambulance.
I’m totally fine—I know my urgent beeps from the non-urgent ones!—but I’m enjoying watching Dan squirm when his boss freaks out that he has coached me to ignore medical emergencies in favor of arbitrarily phone-free meetings."
"I used to work for a major multinational company in a division which did engineering work for ships. Headquarters came out with a rule that we always had to book the cheapest possible flights if we had to travel for a job. Most of us booked sensible flights, ticked the “out of policy—business needs” box and carried on as normal.
One of the service technicians was booking flights for a job and found the cheapest option offered on the travel booking system was some crazy combination of five flights, via places like Istanbul and Amsterdam. He promptly booked the flights, spent three days in transit, and by the time he got to the dockyard the ship had sailed. He was very smug about it."
In the most satisfying examples of “malicious compliance,” employees’ strict adherence to the policy ends up backfiring on the employer, who then pays the price for their half-baked decree:
"My last boss told me I couldn’t work remotely for a few days while recovering from a complication of my disability. It’s an invisible disability and she was a jerk. She told HR that due to the nature of my job I couldn’t be out for consecutive days, which was patently untrue. When they denied my request and instead offered me one additional work-from-home day per month, I explained that this would be like telling someone who had a mobility issue that sure, they could work remotely for the next month—but only for half of each day. It needed to be consecutive days home for recovery, but I was still able to work. They said to just use up all my sick leave.
When I accepted another job offer, I didn’t immediately put in my notice. I had that sick leave available and, as luck would have it, the fussy nerve in my foot was ever so slightly acting up. So, what did I do? Explained to them that I was experiencing a mobility issue and wouldn’t be able to come into the office until it was better. And darn, I guess I won’t be able to work from home even though it’s crunch time, due to their policy. I enjoyed a week off, came back on a Tuesday, put in my notice, and left that Friday."
"When traveling for work, I discovered that I couldn’t get reimbursed for customary tips on transportation (taxis, group airport shuttles). When I complained, it was just 'too bad.' Only a few dollars here and there, but I was peeved. Why should I be out money while on work travel?
I read the travel policies closely after this and realized I could get reimbursed for car rental and parking. Flying in for a client meeting less than two miles from the airport? Car rental. Spending a week downtown in an expensive city for which I didn’t particularly need a car? Car rental plus over $50/day in parking fees so the car could just sit there until I needed to drive back to the airport. Did this for all work travel for the remainder of my time there."
"I had an employee get sick and need to go to the ER. I took her, stayed with her, waited until she got checked in, swung by the drive-through for lunch, and came back to the office. My manager blasted me for taking so much time off of work (about two hours).
Until that happened, I’d been working an extra 20–30 hours a week. After this, I kept to my 9-to-5 schedule and stopped the additional work completely. But I sure was in the office 40 hours a week just like he asked."
While these examples are entertaining—and it’s easy to cheer for the employees finding a way to take back power in however small a way—there’s a lesson here for employers: Employees are often best positioned to see how a policy will play out on the ground, and wise managers will take their feedback seriously. That doesn’t mean that any and all pushback against a policy will be correct or must be accommodated, but if following a rule to the letter causes more issues than the problem it was meant to solve, there’s a problem with the rule. That is, unless you wanted 275 emails a day?
