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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/clhharrison on 2024-11-09 05:34:32+00:00.
Story takes place in the Latter half of 2022 in the UK. Names and company changed/not mentioned due to NDA and overzealousness on behalf of company.
Part One: The Issue Begins.
I worked at a major tourist attraction during this time, and we got thousands of customers every day. Part of our attraction was outside, and we had expanded part of the outside to accommodate new parts for the attraction. In order to blend with the theme of the new section, a brand new brick pavement was installed in the area.
Upper Management had at the time a tendency to not think things 100% through, and this was no different. The big thing was that it was decided NOT to install an anti-slip surface on the brick pavement. Now we were in the middle of Summer, and it was a particularly dry Summer, but nonetheless when it isn’t dry we got a lot of rain and a lot of snow and frost. We need that anti-slip surface. We told Upper Management this, and as per usual, fell on deaf ears.
Winter comes far too soon, and with it all the rain that was meant for Summer and to make up for a dry Autumn. And the Winter of 2022 was bad for the UK. Temperatures fell to single digits, and then negative in the Celsius. With the cold came a permanent frost over the brick pavement, and the beginning of malicious compliance.
Part Two: The Compliance.
The first slips and falls heralded us to the idea. At the time the company required us to write in paper Accident and Incident Reports about everything if something bad happened. Now anyone whose worked in tourist attractions we’ve all seen kids fall from being too excited and we often do a polite to see if blood/gore/missing limbs are present, and if all is good we just ignore it. No one likes paperwork. Not to mention due to Upper Management’s distaste for us we had to take the long way to the offices where the paper was to fill it in, and get someone to cover us while we filled it in. Upper Management hated us being in their special offices and not out with the paying customers.
It is worth mentioning in their defence, our Lower Managers and Middle Managers were on our side, because even THEY knew what Upper Management was doing was utter nonsense. So they saw what we were doing and agreed with it. What happened was every, single, slip, that occurred outside on the impromptu ice rink that was the brick pavement we would report. That’s about 15-20 minutes of us, in the warmth, not freezing our butts off, writing about how someone had slipped in the exact same manner as the last 10 people, all in plain view of Upper Management. I liked to believe they began working from home more due to us being there in their office. I learned from one of our Lower Managers that is a dear friend that the stack of reports handed to Upper Management was measurable in inches. I do not regret saying I was one of the top 3 contributors to that pile.
Part Three: The Bare Minimum Response.
Upper Management finally began to make efforts to ‘fix’ the situation. They decided to just cordon off the vast majority of the brick pavement with temporary (ugly) barriers, and put down anti-slip mats to make a path for the parts of the attraction that they wanted visitors to walk in. They thought they had won. We knew better.
Anyone who has worked with tourists knows that tourists are a special breed of stupid. Told not to touch the very important items? They will touch. Told to keep their kids near and not let them wander off? I think the record for no lost kids was 4 hours. And so these barriers that everyone is required to respect? Well clearly it doesn’t apply to me! Each time we told people not to go underneath these barriers they looked like deer caught in the headlights. And the barriers were just low enough that kids would duck under and run straight onto the ice and onto their butts. Even more Accident and Incident Reports rocked up as a result, and all Upper Management would do is tell us low barely-above-minimum-wage earners to do a better job policing this part of the attraction.
Part Four: Wake Up Call.
Schoolkids! Oh how we loathed schools, mostly teenager ones. Little kids no more than 5-10? Oh they were delightful, we were happy with them. The main reason was because the teachers, who are still responsible for the kids no matter what, actually followed our guidelines! So naturally we liked the little ones, and were genuinely more concerned for them than normal.
We all then had our moment of fear when it was reported that a 7 year old boy had slipped and fallen on the ice, no doubt having been playing with classmates and unintentionally not seeing where he was going. That didn’t save his two front teeth chipping and a call for our on-site first aid team to come and help with the blood. Luckily he seemed alright beside the fact the tooth fairy was going to be paying double that night. But for us, Lower and Middle Management, it was the final straw. I wish I had taken a photo of that Accident and Incident Report for posterity, the number of people co-signing it.
Part Five: The Fallout.
Nobody wants a lawsuit and that kids parents had grounds to do so like nobodies business. The fact a child had been injured from negligence did not look good on Upper Managements part, and it wasn’t as if they could pretend nothing had happened. Everyone had been telling them about the risk, and when it got to the Big Wigs, I can only imagine what was said.
Miraculously and within 2 days of the kid’s teeth, they put an anti-slip surface on the brick pavement, at what was probably more of a cost than had they just done so in the Summer. The barriers were removed, and the number of paper Accident and Incident Reports dramatically decreased. They finally also got around to installing tablet devices with which we could fill in reports without needing to drop position. Our lives were made easier, they got an earful, and that kid probably has a fun story for when he’s older and has kids himself.
I’d like to say Upper Management learned their lesson and took our words on board for future endeavours, but that is like expecting the dog to not poop on the carpet after the first time you shove their nose into it. I no longer work there for other reasons, and many of the people who joined in the act of Malicious Compliance have since gone elsewhere. But for nearly 3 glorious months, you had never seen a department work together like ours in that way before or since.