At times, what your boss wants can be completely unreasonable. Unfortunately, not all leaders are willing to listen to logic about what your workflow looks like. Sometimes, you have to show them what kind of havoc their new rules cause for them to realize that they’ve messed up. But we all enjoy a dash of malicious compliance, don’t we?
Redditor u/Vizslaman went viral after sharing a story from their old job, at a call center. Everything was going great until their busybody manager started chastising them for not taking their breaks as scheduled. Well, wanting to impress on them that their job didn’t allow for breaks like that, the OP decided to follow their boss’ order to the letter. Scroll down for the full story!
Micromanagers can cause a lot of unneeded tension in the workplace
Image credits: MART PRODUCTION (not the actual photo)
A former call center employee shared how they got their ‘busybody boss’ to realize their new rule about taking scheduled breaks was bogus
Image credits: Arlington Research (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Petr Macháček (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Vizslaman
The manager realized their mistake almost immediately
Image credits: Andrea Piacquadio (not the actual photo)
The OP explained to the r/MaliciousCompliance online community that they had to deal with higher-issue calls. As such, they needed to stay on the line for longer periods of time than their colleagues. So taking breaks exactly as scheduled didn’t make much sense.
And that’s something that redditor u/Vizslaman’s then-boss soon learned. The OP followed their manager’s order as specified. They ended up asking a customer if they could call back so they could take their break. The boss quickly realized what was happening and backtracked on the new rule. All of this could have been avoided if they didn’t criticize u/Vizslaman break ‘attendance.’
Try to get through to your boss as best as you can
Image credits: Burst (not the actual photo)
Like in all aspects of life, there’s no substitute for clear and open communication in the workplace. If your manager is even semi-reasonable, they’ll be likely to hear out your side of things. Schedule a face-to-face meeting with them and explain your position in a friendly but firm way.
Essentially, you want to be as diplomatic as you can while. In short, you want to steer away from accusing your boss of being incompetent or dumb. If you find that there’s too much tension building up, try to cut it by being more lighthearted.
Meanwhile, if you consider your boss’ side of things and suggest some potential solutions, you might just be able to find a compromise that works for both of you. And if not, you can always reach out to their boss, or human resources, or cue up a spot of malicious compliance to show you’re in the right. Words are wind, but action is worth its weight in gold.
Like many other workers, call center employees also suffer from burnout
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
Unfortunately, call center employees often deal with chronic stress. According to Zendesk Blog, unclear expectations and a lack of work-life balance are common causes of burnout in the workplace.
Some of the signs of burnout include fatigue, insomnia, irritability, anxiety, a loss of appetite, and even depression. Meanwhile, overworked employees obviously don’t enjoy their day-to-day roles anymore and have a more pessimistic outlook on the future. Some of them might isolate themselves from the rest of the team while others skip work entirely.
Exhausted people naturally work less efficiently and make more errors. The way forward is to address their workload and workflow. Start off by improving communication between management and everyone else. Clarify people’s roles as much as possible. Reduce workloads where they’re clearly forcing people to either work overtime or to live in constant, unmanageable stress.
Try to avoid micromanaging your team as well because it can breed frustration and make them lose focus of what they’re doing at the moment—instead, ask them how you can support them better. And who knows, your workers might not have to maliciously comply with your own rules to show you better alternatives.
The author of the viral post shared some more background info with their readers
Here’s how other people reacted to the story. Some of them had similar work tales to share
The post “There Is No Excuse”: Manager Demands Call Center Worker To Take Breaks According To The Schedule, Instantly Regrets It first appeared on Bored Panda.
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