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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/rissearcher on 2025-05-10 10:57:13+00:00.

This happened years ago when I worked in a distribution center.

It was one of those days where they were trying to cram 50 peoples work into 25 people, which is typical in these places. I was tired of it and had sick time so I went to my supervisor before lunch break and said “hey I’m gonna leave after lunch”. We usually told him when we’re were going to do this so that over our lunch, he has time to move people around and cover the empty work slot.

Well, I was on a shit list with a person in upper management and they wanted to use this to burn me. They called me into the office the next day.

“You told him you were going to leave well before you left? How did you know ahead of time you would be sick after lunch? Sick time is for being sick only, so if you use it without being sick, you are stealing company time.” And that’s what they wrote me up for.

“So if I would have lied and said I feel sick, I’m going home immediately, I wouldn’t be in trouble?” I asked, to which they actually replied “yes”.

Cue malicious compliance. I told everyone at work (150+ people) that if you notify that you are leaving ahead of time, you will get written up for time theft. No one ever did it again. From that point on, it was “I don’t feel good, I’m going home” from anyone who wanted to. Meaning their job position went unmanned for the 30 minutes it takes to restructure and reassign job tasks. Meaning every day, 2-3 times a day they would have to take someone from another job and put them in a backed up mess. Which led to more call offs.

It got so bad that the upper management started an intimidation campaign in which they would start saying things like “I’m starting to see a pattern” whenever people left early more than once in a year.

I now have a new job that is a million times better, but thought I’d share this here.