Back in the early 2000s, my friend and I went to a bowling alley. As we went out to leave, he couldn’t get his car started.

Me: “Do you want me to look at it? I’ve been working on cars since I was fourteen.”

Friend: “No. I know as much about cars as you do, if not more.”

He ended up calling a tow truck. When it arrived, they asked me to steer as they pushed it out of the parking spot. I got in, put it in park, started the vehicle, and backed it out.

Me: *To the tow truck driver* “Do you want me to drive it onto the flatbed, or do you want to pull it up?”

Everyone, including the tow truck driver, burst out in laughter. My friend was LIVID.

Friend: “Why didn’t you tell me that was the problem?!”

Me: “You told me you were more experienced than me and didn’t need my help.”

He still had to pay the tow fee. But from then on, he never doubted my automotive knowledge.

It is back when digital SLR cameras are first becoming somewhat affordable to anyone who isn’t either wealthy or a professional photographer. I am in high school and have been a budding photographer for years already. I work in a small retail photo supply shop.

A customer who appears to be in his early sixties comes in one Saturday and spends over an hour demoing just about every camera we sell. I honestly look forward to these customers because it makes the time go faster, and I generally enjoy talking shop with people.

Eventually, he settles on one that we both think will suit his needs, and I ring him up.

A few nights later, he comes back. I’ve already been given a heads-up by the store’s owner that this guy has called ahead, and he is… not pleased.

Customer: *Accusatory* “You sold me a camera that’s either broken or simply not good enough! I was taking pictures of my grandkids, and it’s too slow! It takes the picture after the kid’s already done something, and every photo is blurry!”

I take him at his word (I have no reason not to) and examine the camera, changing some settings and snapping a few pictures as I go. I genuinely cannot find anything wrong with it at all.

Me: *As gently as I can* “Sir, it may be a combination of using the wrong settings on the camera for what you’re trying to photograph and maybe a bit of slow reflexes that will develop with practice.”

Keep in mind that I’m young and terrified of losing my job, so believe me when I say I’m as delicate as I can be with the whole situation.

Customer: “Okay, hotshot, let’s see you make it work. I’m going to wave my arms back and forth over my head, and I want you to take pictures when they’re straight up.”

He insisted this would prove that the camera was too slow and couldn’t take a sharp picture. He handed me the camera and started doing his best “wave your hands in the air like you just don’t care” right in the store.

Snap, snap, snap.

I handed the camera back and let him review the photos, each one showing the exact moment he wanted me to photograph, perfectly sharp and in focus.

He didn’t say another word. He huffed, hastily shoved everything back into his camera bag, and stormed off.

Thirty years ago, I got my first job working in a pub while at university. I had no previous experience, so to begin with, my skill at pouring pints was not great. I ended up with too much head on a pint, which meant I had to top up the pint, leading to wasted lager being spilled in the slops tray under the pump.

One night, my boss saw me pouring the slops tray down the drain.

Boss: “Don’t waste that lager. Put it in a glass and top it up the next time a customer wants a pint.”

There was no way I felt right doing that, and even eighteen-year-old me knew I could get into trouble either with the law, or worse, with the fishermen who drank in that pub.

So, long before I had even heard of malicious compliance, I actually did what my boss told me to — my boss who, all shift long, did sweet bugger all except sit at the bar and drink pint after pint of lager all night.

Guess what happened next time he told me to pour him a pint?

I got better at not wasting lager, and he saved the brewery money by drinking the slops tray.

I was passed over for a promotion because I was not qualified. Such is life; I wasn’t upset about it. I was upset when my boss started contacting me outside of work hours about things that the person who was promoted should have been handling. At first, I tried to be polite about it, but eventually, it got to the point where he would contact me multiple times a night for weeks on end.

I decided that if I was going to answer work questions, I was going to get paid for it. So, I counted up all the time we spent on the phone — not even including the dozens of nightly texts — and figured out that it was about six hours a week. I added this time to my time card. 

Boss: “What is this? Why are you charging extra time?”

Me: “We worked on [various things], remember? When you called me?”

Boss: “Yeah, but that’s not really working. That’s… Look, I can’t approve this. You weren’t really working.”

Me: “But I was. You called about work things, I did and said work things… I was working.”

Boss: “No, you work 8:00 to 5:00. That’s it.”

Me: “Okay.”

I wasn’t really upset about the six hours, but I did get what I wanted anyway. The next Monday, he called me around 7:30 pm, and I let it go to voicemail. He called again, another voicemail.

On Tuesday…

Boss: “Did you have a good night?”

Me: “I did. I watched [Movie] with my husband and—”

Boss: “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

Me: “I don’t work past 5:00. You said it yourself.”

Boss: “But I also said those calls weren’t really work.”

Me: “But they are. So, if you expect me to do anything work-related after 5:00 pm, I will be charging for it. Otherwise, I won’t answer.”

Boss: “Is this because you didn’t get the promotion?”

Me: “Well… I think a little, yeah. I wasn’t qualified for the job, but you’re calling me to do it anyway.”

Boss: “If you want to be considered for upper positions, you need to prove that you have the dedication to do it.”

Me: “If you want me to do the work of the upper positions, you need to pay me appropriately.”

He dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

I only stayed there for a few more months before moving to a competitor company that hired me in a higher position.

This happened when I was sixteen in the 1980s. In those days, there were adverts in the press for a record club where you could get some albums (actual physical albums) for free by signing up. You were sent three a month after that, which you had to pay for by a money order within thirty days or get charged interest.

I used it for a few months, and it was okay, but then there were fewer and fewer good choices, and I wanted to cancel the subscription. Each month when I got the albums, I could return them in prepaid plastic envelopes, but for the first few months, I kept the albums, so I had a load of spare prepaid envelopes. When the quality of albums went down, I just sent them back, but this was becoming a nuisance since it was getting close to when I was due to go to college and move away from home.

I contacted the company to cancel the subscription, but that’s when they nuked me by saying that I’d agreed to a thirty-six-month rolling contract from each agreed purchase. Waiting three years to get rid of this was not an option because I’d need to return every month to my parents’ house to return the albums.

I told them I was moving away, but they were not interested, thinking they had me — and they did. They told me to send anything back I did not need each month and pay for what I kept, and they start the end of my contract from when I stopped buying albums. I made it clear that I had stopped.

Cue the malicious compliance. I thought about all the things I did not need that I could send them apart from the garbage albums I was being sent each month. My dad did building work on the side of his main job, so we had hardcore and cement in abundance at the back of the house. I got one of the first plastic prepaid envelopes and filled it with hardcore and wet cement waiting to set. It was almost too heavy for me to carry to the post office, but I got it there. The company had to pay by weight for whatever was in the envelope, so it would have cost a lot.

I phoned them two weeks after that. I mentioned that I had quite a few envelopes, and they wisely decided to cancel my account immediately. If it looks too good to be true, then it is; I learned that at seventeen.