Woman’s Malicious Compliance Against Boss Works So Well, Others Can’t Help But Join In

Some people are great at managing others, which tends to positively reflect in both the company’s results and employee morale. Others, though, can make them want to leave the place altogether.

This redditor shared how the situation in her workplace changed after the former type of boss was replaced by the latter. The new superior was seemingly troublesome for many reasons, but scheduling was one of the main ones, eventually leading to malicious compliance and a resistance.

Needless to say, an aggravating boss can encourage quite a few employees to look for the door; and apparently, they do. A survey from 2019 found that back then, as much as 14% of employed adults have left multiple companies because of their superiors and 43% of them have left one. Roughly one third of the survey respondents said they have at least considered such a scenario.

Even if they are not willing to quit because of a troublesome superior, the latter doesn’t make their lives any easier, that’s for sure. A decade-long study found that having a nightmare of a boss can even lead to heart attacks and other cardiac conditions.

It’s no surprise that a troublesome boss—troublesome people in general—can negatively affect not only physical well-being, but mental health, too. For instance, working for a narcissistic manager can lead to scoring higher on the clinical measure of depression, based on a study of the employee-superior relationship. It can also diminish their level of job satisfaction and make them more prone to adverse behavior themselves, such as bullying.

The lead author of said study, Abigail Phillips, pointed out that “Bad bosses, those high in psychopathy and narcissism, have unhappy and dissatisfied employees who seek to ‘get their own back' on the company,” which was likely what the OP was doing by starting a resistance.

But what qualities exactly make a terrible boss? That’s a question that’s difficult to answer, as there can be quite a few of them and it depends on what aggravates each employee the most. However, some traits seem to be worse than others for many of them.

Glassdoor delved deeper into what makes a lousy boss and found that the average rating employees give their senior management is three out of five, while they give their companies a score of 3.3. This shows that employed adults feel less fond of their superiors than they do of their workplaces, and that is reportedly because of how disrespectful, negative, lazy, and self-centered people in the managerial positions often are.

Other things people dislike about their employers include micromanaging, disorganization, and impatience, LinkedIn reports, the latter of which is something the OP’s boss was seemingly known for, too. Unsurprisingly, instead of earning them the title of the world’s best boss, barking orders at the redditor and her co-workers the moment they entered the building got them malicious compliance and a resistance instead.