“We Miss Dave”: What Starts As Malicious Compliance Ends Up As A “Shrine” For An Ill Coworker That’s On Sick Leave

Recently, Redditor Dvillin shared a story on the Malicious Compliance community with an unusual twist.

Titled “We Missed Dave,” the story recounts an incident from a couple of years ago when Dvillin was working temp services as a PC technician.

“The first day I walked in, I noticed that one of the empty desks had a huge pile of broken laptops behind the chair,” the author wrote. The computers were flooding the desk day by day and Dvillin asked what was happening. “I was told that the desk belonged to ‘Dave,’ one of the shift supervisors.” Apparently, Dave put a rule in place that nobody was allowed to recycle a broken laptop other than himself.

Turns out, Dave got seriously ill and took a medical leave, but the computers kept on piling up. One day, Dave finally came back to find an Everest of PCs and a sweet message on its peak.

“When I was told the rule, I was cool with it,” Redditor Dvillin, who shared this story on the Malicious Compliance subreddit, told Bored Panda in an interview. He added that each of the places he has worked at had different rules.

“Dave getting sick happened before I got there. The reason I got contracted there was to take up the workload,” the author explained.

“I honestly thought it was kind of funny,” Dvillin said referring to the malicious compliance. “Especially since nobody asked the higher-ups to get permission to do it in his stead. It was what it was,” he explained.

We asked what was Dave’s reaction when he got back, and the author recounted: “His reaction was along the lines of ‘Ugh. You guys...’ Funny thing is, I think he was on the phone with his wife complaining about the pile when he got to the first sticky note.” Dvillin added that Dave’s whole tone changed after that.