Power struggles can lead to a miserable work environment for employees. However, there’s only so much nonsense that one can take. And when Reddit user GingerlyForged worked in a shop, one of his managers exhausted the man’s patience pretty much as soon as she joined the team.

In a post on the subreddit ‘Malicious Compliance,’ a community dedicated to sharing stories of people pushing back against unreasonable rules and requests, he recalled how the “miserable” lady manager attempted to make a name for herself by enforcing a strict dress code.

However, the man found a loophole in the policy and decided to have some fun at the annoying superior’s expense. Continue scrolling to read his own account of how he did it.

This guy got sick and tired of his power-hungry manager using the dress code to “flex her authority”

Image credits: Definitely-not-John (not the actual photo)

So he started toying with her ridiculous rules, bending them to the point of hurt feelings and staff meetings

Image credits: Felicity Tai (not the actual photo)

Credits: GingerlyForged

We got in contact with GingerlyForged and he was kind enough to tell us more about his time at the company. “[I started working there because] I was new to the area and I knew the job was stable and had good benefits,” he told Bored Panda. “Plus, it was really close to home. I really enjoyed most of the job, helping people brings me joy!”

Generally, he had good relations with his coworkers, and the discontent with the manager was pretty universal. “My colleagues were all awesome, most of them butted heads with this particular manager as she transferred in and didn’t bother to build rapport before trying to crack down.”

Which is why they praised his malicious compliance too. “They loved it and many of them asked me to keep wearing [the yoga pants] long after she left, to which I occasionally obliged.”

GingerlyForged believes that people should try to use their latent privileges to help others instead of picking enemies.

“Just because an issue doesn’t affect you doesn’t mean you can’t participate in fighting it,” he added.

The intentions of the manager may have been alright. After all, there is a connection between how retail employee looks and the way that clients view them. (Researchers from Mississippi State University and the University of Alabama, for example, found that people are almost twice as likely to interact with a formally dressed employee (a hair salon worker wearing a white lab coat) as one who was informally dressed (white polo) because they see formally dressed employees as having more expertise than their casually dressed peers.)

But even then, she should’ve gone about it in a different way.

When a manager constantly forces authority over subordinates, A-players tend to shut down (and look for the exit), while B-players tend to acquiesce, hide out, and fail to grow. As a result, the potential of the entire team is lost.

People had a lot of reactions to the story, and the original poster (OP) happily shared more information on the whole ordeal

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Some even recalled their own similar experiences

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