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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Ancient_Educator_76 on 2025-08-13 18:36:26+00:00.

Hello all. I work as both a teacher and at your Arizona Hometown Grocer. After I finish teaching 4th graders I go work in the Deli department. There are tons of things to do: sweep and mop, take in the teas, the soups, tear down the hot case (which has about twenty items that get tossed out and have dishes needing to be done). I’ve developed a system where I work on the dishes as I go, and there is a bell to ring if someone needs customer service.

Some customer didn’t like this daunting task of having to ring a bell to get my attention, so a new policy has been adopted by the store management team: No doing dishes until the department is closed!

This is a problem.

The deli department “doesnt have the hours” to pay us past our scheduled time, and on top of this, any time we work past our scheduled time in the departments counts as overtime. Double Whammy for them. I didn’t believe this was the case, but either way, this was a logistical impossibility. I knew that I couldn’t do the dishes after the department closes without, you know, going past closing time.

Enter MC.

I pace back and forth through the front of the deli, watching for customers as I clean the slicers and counter tops, the only things I could do for cleaning because they were within eyesight of customers.

I have about six customers from 4-7, walking past a 4x3x3 sink full of dishes piled past the top and spilling over. I keep thinking how dumb this is that I can’t do the dishes right now, but resign myself to keep to my MC plans of only working on customer service until 7pm.

I keep tearing down stations and the dishes keep getting higher and piled more messily.

Ahh finally 7pm

I start doing dishes and I finish about 2.5 hours later.

I do this two more times during the week, and get pulled into the office, with the deli manager and assistant manager both there.

Assistant Manager says: “It appears that there’s a bit of a problem here, because you shouldn’t be taking 3 hours to do the dishes”

then deli manager chimes in

" “Yeah why don’t you do the dishes during in between customers??”

I slowly look over to a very sheepish looking assistant manager who looks at me like they want me to shut pu.

I said that “management said I can’t do dishes until the department closes”

This started an argument back and forth between Silvia (my deli managedr) and the assistant manager that turned so angry that I got uncomfortable

“This overtime hours isn’t coming out of my department!!! Fix it!!”

the assistant manager yelled back at her "Look you’re overstepping here. We’ll take it out of mine this time… just OP, make sure you do dishes in between customers. "

I got close to 9 hours overtime that week. Maybe I’ll get some new shoes :)