In the Reddit subreddit r/MaliciousCompliance, a user who goes by lil_tink_tink shared a story about requesting time off from work a year in advance to avoid working on a specific project. The project was something the employee dreaded every year, so this time, they wanted to make sure they could avoid it. The post received more than 20,000 upvotes and 380 comments.
OP worked at a local printing business that worked with a school’s choir program. Every year, the employee was responsible for a specific project for the school. However, the woman who submitted the files for printing never got them in on time. She would send them on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, leaving the employees to work over the holiday break.
The project had become increasingly draining over the years, so OP came up with a plan to get out of it for one year.
OP asked the owner of the company to release the client because the files were consistently submitted at an unreasonable time. The owner was reluctant, so the employee came up with another plan: They would request Thanksgiving week off a year in advance to avoid working on the project.
“Since this project isn’t that difficult, I figured I would let you know I’m taking this week off next year,” the employee recalled. “The owner’s face went pale. His gut response was, ‘Why would you screw me over like that?’”
The owner was clearly upset, and OP felt they had made their point. The boss took on the project himself, only to return after speaking with the woman and complain about how he had been treated. According to OP, the owner said he had never been treated so poorly in his life. OP then asked if they could finally fire the client so they would not have to deal with the project in the future. The owner agreed.
Reddit Users Found the Project Frustrating
Commenters weighed in on the situation, with several users sharing similar experiences with difficult projects and workplace management.
“Best thing you could’ve done. Make HIM deal with the problem so he can find out it’s not ‘just a small inconvenience.’ Also, if the school has a relationship with your company, the principal and superintendent might wanna know how a representative of their school treats people that is doing school business,” one user wrote.
“As someone who’s been working in the print industry for 25 years—Bravo! Well done,” another commented.
Someone else shared a similar story about a workplace problem that management did not address until they were forced to deal with it themselves.
“I asked for years for deadlines to be implemented for the team that I work with and management kept saying that it wasn’t necessary. A few years ago I got in a car accident a week before end of month and I missed 6 weeks of work. Five people had to come in to do my job, they weren’t doing it full time, it was five people pitching in. By the time I got back every limitation and deadline I had asked for had been enacted. Turns out that when management has to deal with the problem two months in a row they fix it,” the user wrote.
In OP’s case, it appears the owner’s firsthand experience with the project ultimately led to a change in how the company handled the client.
The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the events described in the Reddit post. The details of the workplace dispute and the owner’s interactions with the client are based solely on lil_tink_tink’s account.
