If you’re a business owner, you probably know very well that the last thing you’d want to do—in order to ensure your business prospers and has you swimming in a gigantic vault of money—is to screw yourself over.

Well, easier said than done when malicious compliance comes into play, right? Because if someone has to maliciously comply with what you said, it’s certain you’re not really grasping the full extent of the situation.

And then regrets happen.

Just like they did with this cafe and shop that decided to get a new point-of-sale system installed, but ended up deciding against it afterwards and then bad things happened because nobody read the fine print.

More Info: Reddit

No business can operate without the main element there to help facilitate its operations—their ability to get loads of money, i.e. the cash register

Image Credits: Kandukuru Nagarjun

A Redditor by the nickname of u/nobjangler visited the Malicious Compliance community with a work-related story. You see, OP is a point-of-sale (or “those new-fangled cash registers”) equipment technician—the person who sets up all of the equipment on site and gets the necessary documentation properly sorted, among other things.

A key task of theirs to note is that if for whatever reason, the customer decides to cancel the service, the technician would also be the one coming in to retrieve all of the equipment. And an even more important thing to note—they are in no way obligated to make sure the previous setup, which was replaced by theirs, is restored. That’s a problem for the client to sort out.

So why go ballistic on the person who helps you set it up and then tell them to get rid of it? Because they might just do that. Maliciously

Image Credits: nobjangler

So, OP explains that they had this one customer, a “health food” cafe and store that had a demo of the equipment and wanted it. They were even “kind enough” to not open until noon so that the technician would have ample time to work on the whole thing. Great.

They come in, discuss everything, get the paperwork in order (the client doesn’t really consider the fine print, by the way) and get to work. OP installs the registers, credit card readers, sorts out the router situation, installs the wireless systems, runs the cables, among other things, and even goes the extra mile to reset the Nest cameras for no extra charge. Jobs done, everyone’s happy.

A point of sale technician was called in to set up a cash register system, fully equipped with the latest tech

Image Credits: nobjangler

Well, not 2 months later, the client is upset that something is not working the way they had hoped. OP noted that they were never promised that. So, the client just told them to come over and pack their things. Well, easier said than done.

First there was a load of back-and-forth on when to do it because the times the cafe demanded they come were either way before or way later than their work hours. This was because the client couldn’t afford to do that during work hours, but it would also mean they’d have to pay extra for OP’s work outside of work hours. Well, talking didn’t help, but the next bill came along and pushed things forward. The calls got way more heated, too.

But, the business owner had an issue with it and demanded the service be cancelled, which meant they’d pack their stuff and go

Image Credits: nobjangler

Finally, they agreed on a time, and the owner said they would be there. OP shows up, the owner isn’t there. Classic.

Well, OP is no monster, lets the employee there call the owner and get all of the confirmations to get the job going. Finally, they start unplugging, disassembling, uninstalling, the works. “Router, gone. Wireless network, gone. No more network means no more accessing cameras, phones are VOIP so they stopped working. Their old POS they reinstalled was all on wireless – oops, no more wireless.” All of it was gone in 5 minutes. They even plugged the old stuff back in and left—no customer was seen there during that period, so if anything, operations were not disturbed.

The fine print, however, stated that vendor was not responsible for fully reverting their systems, leaving them without a way to earn money

Image Credits: nobjangler

Image Credits: ESA Events

Except they were. Once OP left, the shop was pretty much down for a day and a half because they flat out refused to call their internet services provider to get the network reconfigured again. They thought OP was supposed to do it. What is worse, as their system was down now and they didn’t accept cash, the shop was going nowhere fast.

Folks loved the story, expressing just how satisfying it was in comment form and sharing their own stories and experiences

The client got so mad, they started threatening to take legal measures, but OP simply took a picture of the fine print they neglected to read, sent it to them and that was that. Silence.

OP later found out that apart from the cafe and shop having to revert back to an older system, meaning that their credit card fees were now back up, half of their staff also quit because of the owner’s attitude.

Simple, yet effective piece of malicious compliance that the community enjoyed thoroughly. Besides the praise, folks also shared similar stories and situations. OP even spent a good chunk of their time responding and reacting to people’s comments on the various topics, providing more insight into their work and how it all goes down most days. And sharing more stories, of course.

The post received 6,700 upvotes with a few awards. You can check it all out here, or read some of our other malicious compliance stories, like this one, or this one. But not without sharing your thoughts or stories of technological malicious compliance in the comment section below!

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