Generally, companies are free to require employees to dress in a particular way, including wearing a uniform, as long as those requirements aren’t discriminatory or illegal.

However, the assisted living facility in which Redditor Nellb13 was working a decade ago had kinda crossed that line.

Even though the policy was fair, the way in which management implemented it was not — both female and male employees had to buy their own work clothes, but double standards had the latter spending much more.

Until Nellb13 found a savage way to point out how ridiculous the situation was. Continue scrolling to read his now-viral post on the subreddit ‘Malicious Compliance’ to learn how he did it!

This assisted-living employee had gotten sick and tired of the double standards at the facility, requiring him to spend way too much on work clothes

Image credits: Tima Miroshnichenko (not the actual photo)

So he developed a smart and evocative plan for how to protest against this to management while also complying with them

Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)

Image credits: LinkedIn Sales Solutions (not the actual photo)

Image credits: nellb13

We got in touch with Nellb13 and he was kind enough to have a little chat with us. However, the Redditor reminded us to keep in mind that the nursing world and healthcare, in general, are much different than your average day-to-day corporate setting.

“In short, I liked the facility for the coworkers I was with,” Nellb13 told Bored Panda. “It was an Assisted Living for patients with dementia, which is a very hard group to work with, but can be very rewarding. I had amazing nurses and CNAs [certified nursing assistants] that made everyday challenges easier to deal with.”

He said that since the patients’ mentality could change very quickly, the caregivers needed to adapt and change to fit that, “and those people were great at that, plus they were always enjoyable to work with.”

Nellb13 said that during the period depicted in the post, the management at that facility was good. “My manager was recently promoted from CNA/Scheduler to that management position so she understood the issues we were having, but also since she was new she wanted to make sure we understood she was no longer a peer but a superior and had to enforce the rules. She was always willing to listen and if we needed help she would get down in the trenches with us if needed.”

The Redditor more or less liked other members of management and administration too, but unfortunately, “there’s a very high turnover rate in the nursing field for … management at these types of facilities. It can be a high-stress [environment] and since this was not a large facility most people in these jobs tend to use it as a stepping stone to higher positions, so they do not stay more than a year, which can cause issues.”

When we asked Nellb13 if his post is an illustration of broader gender equality problems in the industry, he agreed that it can be a complicated subject, just as with most other fields in the world. Luckily, things are moving forward.

The original poster (OP) provided more context as his story went viral

And people congratulated him on the way he handled his cards

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