Senator Robert Kennedy once said in a speech: “There is a Chinese curse that says ‘May you live in interesting times!'” I don’t know what the ancient Chinese would say about our era, but from a work and business point of view, one thing is certain – the time of “company cost optimization” is definitely an “interesting” time.

Because often the cuts in expenditure items do not really look like savings, but the question: “Which kidney is less important for you, left or right?” And often bosses make the wrong choice and then regret it deeply. The story from the user u/ZeniChan, which we will tell you today, is about such a choice.

The author of the post is an IT worker and one of their clients has various networks to work with

Image credits: San José Public Library (not the actual photo)

Recently the client got a 5% cut on the job and wanted the employees to agree to the same pay cut

Image credits: ZeniChan

Everyone refused so then the client introduced an iron-clad ‘prior authorization by the president’ policy for any overtime work

Image credits: tongeron91 (not the actual photo)

Image credits: ZeniChan

There was a router issue soon after so the whole data center was offline

Image credits: Andrea Piacquadio (not the actual photo)

Image credits: ZeniChan

The author flatly refused to go and fix the issue without prior authorization by the president, and the boss was inaccessible

Well, it’s time to meet the main character of this story, the Original Poster (OP), who works in IT, and for many years collaborated with one client looking after their various networks. As the OP themselves admits, normally it’s a 9-5 kind of job, but sometimes you have to urgently respond to various issues, and then, as you yourself understand, you need to work overtime. Until recently, this was not a problem either for the client or for the employees… But recently everything changed.

One fine day, the manager told the author of the post and their colleagues that the client had managed to bargain for a 5% cut on the job, and asked if the workers agreed to a similar cut in their pay. Of course, no one agreed, so in order not to lose netiher a client nor staff, the company introduced a new policy that any overtime work must henceforth be authorized by the president. Already at that moment, the OP had a premonition that this would not end well…

So, the OP and their colleagues received an email from the client stating that this rule was iron-clad and would have no exceptions. And that’s the rule the OP was referring to when a few days later the core router that connected all the different parts of the big data center failed at 9:00 p.m. The manager demanded that the author arrive at the data center and fix the router (not the most difficult job, according to the OP’s own words), but they reasonably remarked they would not budge without prior authorization by the company president. And since he had gone camping, he was, of course, completely inaccessible.

As a result, the data center stood ‘dead’ for the whole night, and only in the wee hours did the manager himself come and fix everything. The next day, the author of the post was summoned to the authorities, but all the reproaches of the higher-ups were, as if by a wave of the hand, stopped by the mere demonstration of that very email with the ‘no exceptions rule.’ As a result, the OP was told to return to work, on the same day the new policy was canceled, and even after some time the author of the post changed their job to another one – according to them, more comfortable and highly paid. However, this is, as they say in epic films, “a completely different story.”

Image credits: Anna Shvets (not the actual photo)

“Of course, it was not entirely far-sighted on the part of the client to introduce such a policy,” says Nick Pruchkovsky, a QA engineer at SeaRates.com, whom Bored Panda asked for a comment on this situation. “Expense optimization is great, but for some reason many bosses start doing it with the salaries of staff, their own or outsourced. And then similar stories happen. No, this is not karma, just any, even the most well-functioning system, will fail sooner or later – and it is better that at that moment there was an opportunity to fix everything on the spot.”

“Technically, the author of the original post did everything right – if there is a policy approved by the management, then you need to follow it. Of course, they could have done some act of goodwill, but in any case, this could be further interpreted not in their favor, because in fact a ‘no exceptions rule’ would be violated and a precedent set,” Nick summarizes.

By the way, the original poster themselves admitted in the comments that emergency situations, when something has to be urgently repaired during non-working hours, are the rule rather than the exception to the rule. “Last week I did three nights of 2-4 hours of OT,” the author of the post said. By the way, most commenters absolutely agree with the OP in terms of their act. “No exceptions” is like ‘zero tolerance’: it throws the common sense under the wheels of the bus of rules,” one of the folks in the comments wisely wrote.

Moreover, some commenters even admit that the OP did a good deed anyway, answering the manager’s call at 9 p.m. According to many people in the comments, after work is over, they prefer to turn off their work phone, but their personal phone number isn’t given to anyone. In any case, as many commenters believe, this tale is definitely ‘malicious compliance at its finest!’

If you are interested in the topic of malicious compliance at work, you can always read, for example, this post of ours about a lab employee who maliciously complied with the shift manager as she ordered him to keep working after hours. Or this prudent employee who literally saved themselves from legal trouble by demanding an email from the COO before starting to follow his orders (pure practical wisdom, to be honest!). And if one of you ever had such a case at work, please feel free to tell us your own story in the comments. After all, interesting times demand no less interesting tales.

Most people in the comments praised the author for their decision, admitting the whole story to be ‘malicious compliance at its finest’

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