Manager starts 'scheduling' work breaks to make life difficult for employees — watches it fall apart within days

Managers can sometimes create unnecessary friction when it comes to scheduling and meetings. Oftentimes, they resort to rules that disrupt an employee's workflow. From demanding fixed break times to extending meetings beyond their allotted slots, these rules can frustrate employees who value efficiency and balance. But what happens when such a rigid rule backfires through malicious compliance? On September 23, a Redditor shared a workplace story on r/MaliciousCompliance about how strictly adhering to a manager’s inflexible scheduling memo turned the tables in a way that exposed the rule’s flaws!

Reddit user u/Wakemeup3000 shared a story from their workplace when a new manager's arrival affected everybody's routine. The Reddit user who described working a job that required minimal interaction usually took their morning breaks at the end of the team's 15-minute huddle. Their routine was pretty smooth until the arrival of a new manager who wanted to keep track of every employee's schedule. Her memo, according to the Redditor, read, "Your breaks and lunch need to be scheduled the same every single day and taken on time."

The employee revealed that the manager would extend the huddle beyond the scheduled time; however, they decided to flip her rule against her. Whenever the meetings ran longer than 15 minutes, the Reddit user would leave the room. Although the manager initially suspected that the employee had gone to use the restroom, she later found them in the break room. After this continued for several days, the manager finally confronted the employee. The Reddit user replied that their break was scheduled and needs to be taken on time. The manager clarified that the rule allowed flexibility 'within reason,' but the Reddit user shot back by asking if the memo would be updated. They revealed that the memo was never updated, and they both continued with their routine, which went on for 6 months of her running the department until she was transferred.

Thankfully for the Reddit user, a new manager joined their team who turned huddles into team meeting bullet points, and all the employees went back to their original routine. In a study authored by Alexandra Luong & Steven G. Rogelberg in 2005, researchers found that longer and a greater number of meetings were significantly associated with higher fatigue and higher subjective workload. The study suggests that when people attend many meetings or spend substantial time in them, their ability to do other work is compromised.

Soon after the story was posted, many fellow Redditors rallied to support the Redditor's way of standing their ground and criticized the commonly seen work culture in the corporate environment. u/ActuallyYulliah commented, "Exactly. ‘Within reason’ always means: when convenient for the person who made the rule. Nope, malicious compliance is the only way to go."

u/LloydPenfold wrote, "I have said before, and I will doubtless say again (many times), as a former trade union convenor - working to rule is the best form of industrial action. They can't discipline you for it!" u/ggrieves wrote, "Definitely the right move. If you stayed and then took your break later at an unscheduled time, it would have been used against you."

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