Woman Maliciously Complied With a Manager’s Ridiculous Request and It Backfired on Him

Don’t you just love it when something really stupid backfires on someone?

Of course you do! After all, you’re only human…

And here’s a good story from Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page that we think you’ll enjoy.

Take a look!

You want me to tuck my shirt in? Sure boss.

“Years ago I worked at a certain big box pet store with employees in blue shirts and poorly maintained fish tanks.

Back then employees were required to tuck their uniform shirts into their khakis, with an exemption for pregnant female employees (which I was at the time of this occurrence).

I worked the registers with my untucked shirt with no issues for months while I was preggo. When I was about 8 months pregnant and just a few weeks shy of going on maternity leave we got a new manager that was painfully clueless and stupid (isn’t that always the way?).

So one day, this manager calls myself and the other main cashier (who was ALSO just as preggo as I was) into the office (with another manager as a witness) to tell us that we are fine cashiers, but our uniforms are lacking. The other cashier and myself are just “????”, because we both had our khakis, uniform shirts and black sneakers.

Everything was neat and clean, so we both had no clue what he was talking about. I ask him what he is referring to, he replies that our shirts have to be tucked in. The other cashier and I have both been with the company for a while and we are both SUPER familiar with the uniform policy, so she and I both object and let him know that pregnant employees are exempt from the tucking policy.

He waves his hand at us and says that we are incorrect and that all employees must tuck their shirts. The other manager that is there acting as a witness chimes in that we are correct, but clueless manager cuts witness manager off and says he knows what the policy is and that previous management was just being lax (they weren’t, pregnant employees were actually exempt).

The other cashier and I shrug and leave the office to go tuck our shirts in. Clueless manager left for the day right after talking to us.

Here’s where the malicious compliance comes in:

We tucked our shirts in for sure, but if you aren’t familiar with pregnant fashion, you essentially have two options for pants. Option 1 is using a belly band on your existing pants or using pants with a belly band attached already.

A belly band is essentially a VERY wide elastic strap that goes around the baby bump to hold your pants up, which essentially puts the top edge of your pants at your ribs. Option 2 is to do the hair band trick, which is to take an elastic hair tie and loop it through the button hole of your pants and around the button of the pants.

This gives you a few extra inches of waist room in your pants to accommodate the baby bump (and also exposing your underwear/ lower abdomen since you cannot zip your fly). Both options look absolutely ridiculous and are meant to be concealed under a shirt, and they only get more ridiculous the more pregnant you are (which we were both HEAVILY pregnant by this time).

For those unfamiliar- by 8 months pregnant you are basically Violet from Willy Wonka with an internal Oompa Loompa kicking you in the bladder every 20 mins.

So we both emerge (waddle gloriously) from the back room where we tucked in our shirts looking absurd. I had my shirt tucked into my belly band just below my boobs, and the other cashier had hers tucked in to her hair band closed pants, below her belly and with her leopard print underwear exposed.

Clueless manager was already gone for the day so he was not present to see our magnificent uniform compliance. He wasn’t in for another two days, so he didn’t see our dutiful compliance, but all of our customers and coworkers sure did. Our regulars asked why we had our shirts tucked like that and of course we obliged them and explained that clueless manager insisted we tuck our shirts in to comply with the uniform policy.

For two full days (and part of that first shift after clueless manager left for the day), customer complaints to corporate about our treatment rolled in and coworkers called the employee hotline to report clueless manager. District manager is PI**ED about the whole thing (which we found out on day 3).

On day 3 (return of clueless manager), he enters the store, sees the other cashier and myself with our beautifully ridiculous uniforms and asks why we are dressed like that. ¯\(ツ)/¯ “You told us to tuck our shirts in”. He gets red in the face and bee lines to the office.

He calls us into the office IMMEDIATELY and starts going off on us for not taking the uniform policy seriously. Mid-tirade the district manager arrives, FURIOUS. She turned to us preggo eggos and nicely told us to untuck our shirts and head back out to the floor before turning to clueless manager and going ballistic on him for enforcing something that we preggos were exempt from.

Turns out clueless manager ruined district managers days off because of all the complaints that came in about the two pregnant employees forced by a male manager to show their underwear/pregnancy attire in public due to an absurd uniform policy.

The complaints weren’t just about the manager, they were about the company uniform policy as well (the customers didn’t know the real policy). AND the employee hotline complaints as well. ALL of these had to be handled by the district manger ASAP because the sheer number of complaints in such a short time meant that the regional manager was breathing down the district managers neck to resolve the issue.

District manager forced an apology to us out of clueless manager and treated us to lunch. We also got our stools to sit on at the registers back (clueless manager took our stools away because “if you can lean, you can clean”).

Clueless manager was sent to back HR training and fired shortly after for another similar violation (I was on maternity leave so I didn’t get to get to wish him farewell).”