If you remember the main storyline of the movie Captain America: Civil War, it was that the heroes could not agree on how reasonable it is to have superhero help in those moments when it is not actually asked for. Even if it can be provided.

Well, now we know for sure – the hero of our story today in that long-standing conflict between the Avengers would definitely be on Steve Rogers’ side. But since the user u/Larry_the_Squidd is unlikely to have a vibranium shield and any superpower, after a reprimand from a colleague, he resorted to a tried and tested trick – malicious compliance.

The author of the post once worked delivering company products to various outlets and workshops

Image credits: Lydia (not the actual photo)

To make things easier for other employees, the author sometimes just unloaded his car on his own, using a pallet truck

Image credits: Larry_the_Squidd

Image credits: Mike Mozart (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Larry_the_Squidd

However, a worker at one of the workshops once asked the author to stop doing so because he allegedly created a mess

Image credits: Zaskoda (not the actual photo)

Image credits: Larry_the_Squidd

No sooner said than done – the next time, that very employee had to unload the car on his own

Some time ago, the Original Poster (OP) was working on delivering his company’s products from one worksite to various outlets. The author of the post often arrived at the place before the employees came to work, so he tried to make things easier for them – he simply unloaded the goods that were intended for them, with the help of a pallet truck, leaving a detailed description of what was in which pallet.

In the OP’s own opinion, he was doing a good job, but not all of his colleagues shared this opinion. For example, an employee at one of the workshops, at which the author also left pallets with loads and descriptions several times, during the next visit cornered the OP and literally gave a ten-minute lecture about how many problems this author’s initiative actually caused for him.

So, from the words of the angry employee, it appeared that the original poster each time created a true mess in the workshop, putting everything in the wrong place, and the goods constantly fell from the pallets so he had to collect them on his own. This especially surprised our hero who, with the help of a pallet truck, unloaded the car as carefully as possible. However, if the employee of that workshop said that the OP could no longer do this, then he should listen to his opinion after all.

The OP’s moment of triumph came a week later, when he brought almost two tons of different goods to that workshop for various customers. The same employee, seeing how much he had to move alone and manually, now asked the author to help him unload the car. I’d say the OP’s answer is easy to guess now – he, possibly holding back a triumphant grin, said that he could not do this because firstly, he creates a mess, and secondly, the products can fall out of the pallets. So the employee had to do everything by himself…

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Image credits: U.S. Department of Agriculture (not the actual photo)

Well, if a person does not want our help, why should we insist? “Stop helping people who don’t deserve your help. It’s not always an easy thing to do. We were taught helping people is the right thing to do. You need to unlearn this popular belief,” Cammi Pham, a partner at ThinkRenegade, writes on her Medium blog. “When I offer someone my help, I actually want to help. But a lot of the time, people are not ready to accept my help. It is normal. Everything takes time to change and most people don’t want it.”

“You shouldn’t offer advice when people are not prepared to entertain it, or they could one day come back and blame you when it doesn’t work out for them,” Cammi Pham also claims, and many of the commenters on the original post agree with that. “One of the best things in life is to give ‘some’ people exactly what they ask for,” someone in the comments wrote. Some folks in the comments quite reasonably noted that the original poster should have just explained to this worker what he was doing and why. Perhaps this would solve a lot of problems in advance. However, it turned out to be very instructive anyway, commenters believe.

If you are interested in the topic of malicious compliance at work and in the office, we gladly invite you to read, for example, this post about a lab employee and a shift manager who required him to work overtime. Or, let’s say, this eye-opening tale about a boss who wanted employees to attend an offline training in the midst of a pandemic, despite all the quarantine restrictions… And also… well, we need to stop listing our own posts now and just give you the opportunity to comment on this story. After all, to paraphrase Captain America, “we can do this all day…”

People in the comments just admired this story, noting that the guy simply got what he asked for

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