I’m a nurse at a large hospital. The floor I worked on was selected to be the [contagious illness] unit during the first and second waves of the global health crisis.

More nurses than not were catching [illness], so when I got an inkling of being sick, I called out for a day and got tested. If I tested positive, then I would get two weeks off without penalty, but I tested negative, so I returned to work the next day. I got called into the office where my manager gave me a verbal warning because I had one too many sick days.

Me: “You realize we are in a [health crisis], right?”

Manager: “Yes, I know that, but we still have to stick to the original policy.”

When we clocked in, there was an electronic message that popped up on the time clock that read, “During the [health crisis], we need to self-monitor ourselves, and by clocking in, you are declaring that you are fit to work.” There was no adjustment to the policy even though we were an [illness] unit during a health crisis, so I would either have to lie about feeling sick when I clocked in or call out and get in trouble.

Here is where malicious compliance comes in. I had always picked up a lot of extra time in a sister department, not because I needed the extra money but because the hospital was always short-staffed. My manager didn’t like the fact that I picked up extra time in the other department. She wanted me to pick up extra time in our department.

Manager: “As punishment, you can not pick up extra time in [sister unit] for ninety days, the length of your disciplinary period. You should be responsible enough to pick up extra time in your own department.”

As I didn’t need the extra money, I didn’t pick up ANY extra time anywhere in that period. I got called almost every day to ask if I could come in because my department was short-staffed. One of the reasons they were short-staffed was that our sister unit was even more short-staffed and the nurses on my unit were getting pulled to go work there. If only more nurses picked up extra time on the other unit. Hmm…

At the end of the ninety days, I was told I could pick up extra time in the sister department again. At that point, I handed in my two weeks’ notice and told my manager that I had accepted a position at another hospital.

Manager: “Because of your years of service, you need to give four weeks’ notice.”

Me: “No, that’s just a courtesy. So I’ll extend the same courtesy I got when I needed to call out sick.”

About fifteen years ago, I worked in a large hospital for kids in the maintenance department. Our manager was a major b****. No one on our team liked her, and we outwardly showed no respect for her after her constant harassment of us in the two years she worked there.

She would call us on the maintenance radios and be rude or tell the guys they were being incompetent. It was beyond micromanagement but also rude on top of it. She expected the maintenance guys to come to do work at her house for free, or she would tell some of the hospital vendors she would guarantee the hospital contract if they did work at her house for cheap. She used to brag about this to me. [Manager] and I were the only women in our department of about twenty-five people.

I was a mouthy twenty-something-year-old and didn’t care for her attitude, and I would regularly say, “Yeah, sure, whatever,” when she asked me to do things. I would do what she asked because it was my job, but I would make a noncommittal remark like that.

One time, [Manager] asked me to come to her house and help her pull down dead trees in her backyard since she was having a pool installed. I said no, mainly cause I wouldn’t do it for someone I liked let alone her, and pretty soon after that, she started treating me even worse than she did before and trying to get me in trouble. For example, she CCed her buddy in Human Resources on emails to me asking for the status of projects that I was working on and wanted my replies in writing.

Fast forward six months. I was five months pregnant with my first baby, and I was chatting in the office with one of the maintenance guys. [Manager] asked me to do something — I don’t remember what.

Me: “Yeah. Whatever, sure. I’ll do that in a few minutes.”

And I turned back around to talk to my coworker. [Manager] was standing behind me, and I heard her whisper:

Manager: “I wish I could slap the s*** out of you.”

I could see that my coworker heard her say it, too, and I made no comment, but I was shocked. I acted like I didn’t hear her. She left the office a minute later to do something.

I got up and walked down the hall to the employee health department because my heart was racing, and I was fuming, pissed, and five months pregnant. The employee nurse had me lie down for a bit, took my vitals, and wrote up a formal report. An hour later, she sent me back to my desk as okay to continue working.

When I logged back in, I saw an email from [Manager], with Human Resources CC’d, asking where I had been for the last hour as she’d called the office phone a bunch of times and I had abandoned my desk.

I emailed her back.

Me: “I apologize for being away from my desk. When you said you ‘wished you could slap the s*** out of me,’ I was so upset that I had to be calmed down and have my and my baby’s vitals checked at Employee Health. They were concerned about my hostile working environment and wanted me to stay there for the full hour.”

I made sure I BCC’d her buddy in HR and ALL of HR, her boss, and his boss to make sure everyone saw it.

I was summoned to HR about thirty minutes later. I knew [Manager] hadn’t seen my reply yet; this was the early 2000s and her computer was down in the office near me. They had me go home for the day and put me on admin leave for three extra days.

I came back to the office to see that [Manager]’s desk had been emptied out, and we never saw her again.

Those guys in maintenance threw me the best baby shower ever three months later.

This story is part of our Even-More-Highest-Voted-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!

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It is a few days before March fourteenth.

Boss: “I need you to pull down all the ads we have for the pie-day promotion. This came from corporate.”

Me: “We’re not doing pie-day anymore?”

Boss: “No, customers didn’t understand what the π symbol meant in the π-day posters.”

Me: “I guess that’s not surprising.”

Boss: “It isn’t? Why not?”

Me: “Because this is the country where the third-pounder failed because the general population thought it was smaller than the quarter-pounder.”

My boss sadly conceded that I had a point.

I am the author of this story. This event occurred about fifteen months later.

Late on a Thursday afternoon, I was asked to help set up the conference room that was located diagonally across from the mailroom where I work. There was a “breakfast” meeting scheduled for the next day at 7:30 am. They wanted it set up with tables and chairs for thirty-eight people so they would have a place to sit and eat, along with a table in the back for the food and one in the front for the presenters.

The next morning, everyone arrived for the meeting. At 8:00 am, I noticed a Vice President arriving for the meeting along with a Human Resources representative — the same one to whom I had complained about my situation the previous year.

After barely even ten minutes, the doors opened and people began filtering out one or two at a time. I got this feeling of foreboding that something was up — you know, just that sense that something is wrong. Everyone coming out of the conference room had this gloomy, depressed expression on their face, and each one had a manilla folder in their hands.

Afterward, I spoke to several of the people that I knew particularly well, having worked with many of them for ten years or more. They had been told the previous afternoon to attend a 7:30 am breakfast meeting scheduled for the next day and to “be on time or a bit early” to allow for a prompt start. Many of them did arrive five to ten minutes early so they’d be done eating before the presentation began, which they were informed would start promptly at 8:00 am. By 8:00 am, everyone was finishing up with their breakfast when the Vice President came in with the HR representative and gave this brief presentation to the thirty-eight people who were called to this meeting.

Vice President: “Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming to this early breakfast meeting. Has everyone had a chance to enjoy their breakfast?”

The breakfast served was a full breakfast with scrambled eggs, French toast, bacon, sausage, coffee, and juice. The group responded with all sorts of positive comments and thanks.

Vice President: “Okay, very good. The reason you all were called to this meeting is that you’ve all been laid off, effective immediately. [HR Rep] here has your folders with your respective severance packages, so please line up, and [HR Rep] will explain everything to you.”

At that, he turned and left the room, displaying no more emotion than if he’d just gotten a haircut. He left the remainder of the task to [HR Rep] and three Benefits Administrators, who arrived shortly after the Vice President left. They all said that [HR Rep] seemed genuinely upset and felt bad about the rather callous way it had been handled.

The Vice President gave no explanations, no sympathies, no kind expressions, no “thank you for your many years of loyal service”, no “I’m sorry we had to do this due to…”, or anything. Just a short, cold, emotionless dismissal.

Related:
Not Taking Anyone’s S*** Today

I work as a QA (Quality Assurance) at a factory that processed potatoes. When something goes wrong in the factory that’s directly tied to quality, such as bad coloring or defects, I as a QA lead have to write a report. These reports are very detailed and extremely time-consuming. When something goes wrong that isn’t directly tied to quality but affects it, such as a machine breaking or foreign material getting in the machines, the lead in charge of the machines is supposed to write the report.

Somehow, all of the reports end up being written by me even though I have my own time-consuming job to do. I have been fighting to not do others’ reports for months, and my boss has told me to remind other leads when a report is needed.

One day, I’m doing my reports plus my data analysis duties, and I hear over the radio that a refrigerator unit has gone out and all the product is coming out as boiled mush instead of frozen, so I call refrigeration.

Me: “You need to do a report on this. I’ll send out an email counting how many pallets of product we lost.”

I send the email and continue on with my day.

Two weeks later, my boss calls me into her office.

Boss: “Why didn’t you write a report on the incident with [refrigerator unit]?”

Me: “You told me to remind the other leads to do it and not write their reports.”

Boss: “If you have time to send an email, you have time to write a report.”

Then, she makes me sign a write-up for failure to do my duties (which I do placidly because she has written up everyone else in my department and has been looking for something to write me up for, so I decide to let her have it and get it out of the way).

A couple of months later, the exact same thing happens. All I do is tell refrigeration over the radio to write a report. I do nothing else, knowing that refrigeration won’t write it. Because there is no report or helpful emails, the product is almost shipped out two months later, but it is caught by one of my QAs, who mentions the incident to [Boss].

[Boss] calls me to her office.

Boss: “This incident is going to cost the company millions in storage fees for the time it was already stored, disposal fees, lost product, and a fine from [Retail Chain] for not meeting our contract. Why didn’t you email me about this?”

Me: “I didn’t have the time, but I did tell refrigeration to write a report.”

She couldn’t write me up for it because I had emails from her telling me how to handle these situations.