In sports, there is one wonderful rule – do not touch what works so well. By the way, this also applies to many areas of human activity, including business. How many times have we witnessed how the excessive initiative of someone from company management to make things even better than they were ended up making everything worse?

There are also some situations when a boss believes that employees are not working effectively enough, and begins to take measures to fix it. Needless to say, it often turns against the company. But the heroes of this story were lucky – the new rules only backfired on the one who set them.

The original post, published in the Malicious Compliance community on Reddit, has already gained about 11.8K upvotes and over 600 comments. Apparently, readers have also come across similar decisions from bosses more than once.

More info: Reddit

The Original Poster is in a senior role at a service desk

Image source: Lewis Ogden (not the actual photo)

The author of the post is in a senior role at a service desk, helping solve technical system problems as per the tickets submitted by other employees. As in all similar structures, if a ticket comes in that has already been done or is a duplicate request, then it is simply canceled or archived.

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

The vice president of the company used to send a lot of tickets themselves

According to the Original Poster, a lot of tickets were sent by the company’s vice president, who believed that the world revolved around them, and if they sent a ticket, then after some time, they’d send more and more if they didn’t see that something had been done with the ticket.

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

The company introduced a new ticket policy which the employees didn’t take so well

After some time, according to the OP, the company introduced a new ticket policy so that before resolving any ticket, it would have to be actioned anyway. Most likely, the OP believes, the same VP was the author of the idea.

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

Later, the company switched to a new password policy (at least 18 characters, etc.). One of the requirements was also to change the password after a reset, and the previous password could not be used. Most users took this innovation normally, though the previous policy was simply no requirements… and then the VP went on vacation.

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

When the VP returned from their vacation, they forgot their password but started making new tickets as usual

After returning from vacation, the boss forgot their password, but the first thing they started doing, of course, was sending tickets. However, this time, the OP’s team members acted strictly according to the new instructions and reset the VP’s password after each new ticket.

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

Finally one of the managers received a wrathful email saying “Stop resetting my password!”

In about an hour, the password was reset eleven times. After that, one of the managers received an email from the VP with the subject: “STOP RESETTING MY PASSWORD!!!” The vice president wrote that they had run out of passwords after the twelfth change, and demanded that this be stopped.

In response, the OP wrote that the employees were acting in full accordance with the company’s new ticket policy – every ticket must be actioned, and after that, the password is mandatorily reset.

Image source: ultrasuperman1001

The new ticket policy was soon reviewed and canceled by the company’s management

Around an hour later, says the OP, their department received an email from the president saying that management had reviewed the ticket policy and decided it wasn’t the best use of employees’ time.

Is it necessary to say, continues the OP, that this policy was just stupid? By the way, by an interesting coincidence, after this incident, the vice president began to send fewer and fewer tickets.

Image source: Christopher Sessums (not the actual photo)

People in the comments mostly admired the situation a lot

Commenters, of course, admired the ingenious solution to the problem, although they noticed that the members of the support team were lucky that the management admitted their mistake and did not punish the entire department in the heat of the moment. According to some people in the comments, such cases, alas, are not uncommon.

The author of probably the most witty comment claims that people who believe that the whole world revolves around them should find jobs in the field of replacing light bulbs. So they just need to hold the bulb over their head – and everything else will happen automatically.

In the meantime, please feel free to write your comments or tell a similar story based on your personal experience, and we, in turn, promise that we will not reset your password after each comment!

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