Ah, gotta love malicious compliance.
@davidaugust I prefer "Adverserial Obedience" 😝
@davidaugust In my career as a Union staffer, I recall we called it "total compliance."
I can neither confirm nor deny any malice...
hehe Being on-call used to mean you got extra money whether you got called in or not ($x/week).
If you got called in, they paid you four hours at overtime rates (time and a half) even for a 5 minute fix.
@davidaugust lol I’ve been practicing this since HS. Got dinged for wearing a “Levi” skirt …went home and put on an almost perfect match of jeans & top to the councilman’s daughter who was working in the principles office when I was reprimanded. Came back and stood next to her all twinsy like and asked if this was an OK choice. LoL 😝
Or, just full compliance. 😉 pretty smart
@davidaugust I knew a guy who used to leave the company-provided phone in the office when he was leaving. If the employer wants you to be reachable in the after hours because of emergency, but doesn't want to make an exception and wants you in the office at 8 or 9 AM when there's no emergency, it is something to consider. They hire you to do your job and do it well, but they don't own you 🤷
One time-tested "unconventional strike" tactic is called "work to rule". It's where you do everything exactly by management's specifications. Workers stop doing all the work-arounds they use to actually get things done. This reliably causes productivity to go to hell.
@davidaugust Ha! It’s f*** you I will do what you told me 🤣
@davidaugust heroes walk among us
@davidaugust this is unacceptable and your life, happiness, prosperity and obvious skill level and proficiency suggest the company ruling is bullshit. In my view.
@davidaugust @datn We once totally complied with our safety officer who strolled into the warehouse, berated our foreman and said any forklift leaking oil had to be sent to the shop immediately. We had been sending them to the shop one at a time but after weeks away they weren’t being fully fixed, just returned leaking less. So we drove them until they leaked a lot. But we fully complied and within a week couldn’t offload trucks.
@davidaugust
We call it "working to rule" (ie contract). It's wonderful. 😊
@davidaugust yeah.
I explicitly demand to be allowed to work from home wherever technically possible.
Someone wanting a meeting is not a technical necessity.
Some shit needing manual intervention and it's not in a datacenter where one can do the hands-on is...
@davidaugust I told my old employer that I only work when my contract says so, and all other time I am not there. So if they for some reason claim crunch time, I end my day normal time, as it's not my problem for them not utilizing my paid time properly.
They did not fire me, I quit 5 years later for a better offer.
@davidaugust And people say the military has little to contribute to civilian life. 👏
@davidaugust @randomgeek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKLIivrA3g0 throw those sabots!
@davidaugust Hero.
@davidaugust Way to go!
@davidaugust There are some of us in IT and cyber security that love what we do and do not mind responding to critical alerts. However, this was a perfect response to the issue of working from home.
@davidaugust
What management meant was that working from home wasn't included in their weekly in-office requirement, and this employer has decided that forty hours must be done on-premises. I've talked with employers like that; one stated that for the first six months they expected 100% in-office work, and after six months would allow one day as WFH.
Like most employers, this employer probably still expects extra hours above and beyond the 40 hours in the office, sadly.
Justified or not, "VeryLargeMuffin" has likely dug their grave at their current employer, taking a huge gamble about their future at their current employer, because management almost always expects people to go above and beyond, and malicious compliance, while justified, will draw revenge, if not now, when raises and bonuses are determined.
@davidaugust
I don't get the part with "...tried to call me LAST NIGHT" and the impression, that answering would be normal ... normaly.
Oh wait.
USA, right?
@davidaugust Ha ha ha...talk about biting his boss's ass!
@davidaugust absolutely boggles my mind how many people will willingly have work accounts on their personal devices. No, people! No!
@davidaugust Before Covid, two of my employees who typically did necessary weekend OT were told that doing it from home wasn’t allowed even though I wrote a two-page explanation of why it made more sense. So much like this situation, they stopped. Stupid upper management decisions.
@davidaugust your posts are brilliant David. Thank you.
@davidaugust you earn a salary raise
@davidaugust It's not even malicious. You don't do work-related things out of work. Whether your work from home or not.
Be careful what you wish for seems like what someone could tell that company.
And: you asked for it, you've got it but you really didn't know what you were asking for, did you?
@davidaugust absolutely fair.
@davidaugust Ahhh, the beauty of unintended consequences...
@davidaugust I love that what you call "malicious compliance" we call "actually the law says that you have to provide me a company phone and you cannot call me outside company hours unless you are paying me for that" 😂
@davidaugust I agree this is "total compliance."
@davidaugust you hire a genie, you get a genie
@davidaugust his boss is sucha control freak 😂
@davidaugust YAAAY!
That damn IT department. It never does what I want, but only what I tell them to!
@davidaugust @hacks4pancakes Hell to the yeah on this! Not being allowed to work from home means we mustn’t work from home. I did exactly this same thing with apps and email on my phone when an SVP pulled this. We’re clearly in a different place these days. But treating employees that way is BS.
So I don’t consider following the rules malicious. It’s following their rules. If they don’t want their rules followed then they shouldn’t make them.
@davidaugust I have done this my whole working life. I never felt like I existed to be a cog in their machine, it was just a job I did my job very well but nothing more.
@davidaugust Nice. I don’t have Slack on my phone and am uncontactable after hours because my contract permits the company free access to passwords on accounts and devices I use for work in the event that they suspect IP leaks. They can give me a work phone or change the contract, if they care.
@davidaugust @jablair total hero.
@davidaugust I think my military career was a graduate level education in malicious compliance.
@davidaugust this sort of stuff is why I stay hourly
@davidaugust That's called the "work-to-rule" strike. You strike by following instructions exactly to the letter. It slows everything down and brings things to a crawl.
Striking is more than walk-outs.
Salary or hourly?
@davidaugust Great name for a punk band
@davidaugust Last night I read about House Republicans wanting to force federal employers back to the workplace while I was working a long running process after hours. 🤦♂️
This inspired me to write up one of my instances of malicious compliance that changed how a federal agency wrote their contracts.
https://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/blog/post/malicious_compliance_a_story/
@davidaugust Back when cell phones were the size and weight of a brick my employer called me in and handed me a cell phone. I asked if I could use it for personal calls they said work use only. I tossed it back on their desk and went back to work. They finally told me I could use it for personal use as well as work. It was a constant battle every time there was any management change this came up again my response was always the same.
@davidaugust absolute genius!👍🏻😆
@davidaugust I’ve always wondered why people are willing to break their backs and minds for companies while getting so little in return. Do you you get paid for overtime? Fine. You don’t? Work only when you get paid. Your work is what you sell to your employer. Why should it be for free?