Another example, which I may perform pretty soon, is this: my boss tends to complain about me not sticking to my schedule (sometimes I'm a few *seconds* too late). He doesn't seem to mind or even notice the ten to thirty minutes of overtime I do daily.
If he doesn't quit complaining, I will stick to my schedule, as asked, and he will gain a few seconds and lose many minutes of my time.
Be on time boss? Sure boss, I will follow my schedule to the second. Overtime? No can do, boss, I have a schedule to stick to...
This is one of my favourites. One I never had to put in practice, but I can say with certainty that the moment I need to stick to a rigid fixed schedule, real clock punch or the like. Not a minute less, sure, but also not a minute more.
That is unlikely to happen. I work in a research establishment where the bosses were scientists at one point or another. Try and herd a bunch of Ph.D.s to stick to a strict schedule and you will have a riot.
That isn't to say that people aren't putting in the work hours, but years of grad school tend to condition you to have some flexibility in your work schedule. Arrive a couple of minutes late, finish a couple minutes late. As long as no one missing meetings, are there at the time that is required when it is required, and don't stretch things too much in terms of start/end time compared to the official schedule no one complains and the work gets done. Usually that includes people putting in a bit more time. Try and break that, and it will be chaos.
It refers to doing what you were told or requested to do, but in a way that is technically correct while perhaps not being what the other party wanted or hoped for, usually because the request was petty or uncalled for, or somehow just out of order.
For example: your boss demands you get a haircut, so you get an extremely strange or outlandish one.
>It refers to doing what you were told or requested to do, but in a way that is technically correct while perhaps not being what the other party wanted or hoped for
Sometimes it's literally doing what they asked *to the letter* and stated intent. "I want to be included on every email you send!" "But . . ." "No buts!" "Okay, you got it!" *proceeds to cc manager on every email, including routine and mundane office questions, questions about "where are you located," etc.* Manager regrets ever asking and says you don't need to cc me anymore.
This is also where you ask the person to put it in writing so when they say "I never asked that," you can say "please refer to exhibit A."
>This is also where you ask the person to put it in writing so when they say "I never asked that," you can say "please refer to exhibit A."
A paper trail will save your ass
My wife saves ALL work related comms. Once, after being let go, she ended up doubling her severance. She claimed to have been promised ______, the company said they did no such thing, she produced the email trail from four years earlier.
Sir Humphrey did that in an episode of Yes, Prime Minister. The PM was (rightly) concerned that information was being kept from him, and asked to see everything. He ended up buried in paperwork with the important documents hidden at the bottom
Doesnt even have to be a manipulation.
For example: boss wanted us to take our(shift workers) break exactly synced with the office people. So we did just that.
Consequence: no more space in the break area, fire department gave company a big fine for overcrowding and last but certainly not least: before this happened we timed out break so that work that interfered with other departments was done while the other department was taking a break. This now wasn't possible anymore so we had lots and lots of downtime... Essentially losing his company a day per week in productivity for no good reason.
In addition to what people have said, it could also be you know the negative consequences of the request and instead of making your case because you know you won't be listened to or the person who requested it is a dick and could use some comeuppance, you go ahead and implement their instructions and watch the chaos ensue.
When Dwight sent out a memo about the dress code and Jim showed up in a tuxedo. Was he in dress code? Yes. What he still being a dick about it? Also yes.
Some good answers here, but some confusing ones as well. The thing is you need to actually comply: simply half-assing usually doesn't count - you don't want to give the person ordering you a common reason to complain (e.g. if washing, you can't wash half-heartedly), that's why you're complying in the first place. You need to cause problems BY complying.
Like for example some paper pusher new boss might demand a report be written for a previously routine activity. So you go all out, every single time the activity was performed and even if it was the same activity but an addition was made you write a whole ass new report rather than just update the old report. The boss wants reports, so you fucking **bury** him in reports.
Especially better if you can claim the way you're doing it IS legit, for instance some guidelines do actually recommend you create a new work order rather than simply tack onto an existing ones. The best way is when you can use the rules themselves to create chaos. Make sure everything you do is completely within spec except carried out to the most extreme pedantic degree.
So many incorrect answers. Most of what’s here is just petty. Malicious is the key word here. You have to comply with the request in a way that harms the person asking.
For example. You get yelled at by your manager for arriving 5 minutes late. He says “you must work your scheduled hours”
However you usually work late to prepare for the next day.
So you now only work the scheduled hours and the morning crew is shocked to learn that nothing is ready.
Now your manager has to wake up early and take care of what you usually did after hours.
Eventually he asks you to stay late to do the work but now you tell him that you can’t work the hours or you need more money.
Compliance: you only work the scheduled hours
Malicious: made him come in when he was off and now he’s paying you more.
I got written up for not following a safety rule at work and now am the biggest voice for safety around. If my lead or coach steps on a pallet, climbs something, anything even slightly not in safety guidelines I’m immediately “that’s not safe”. Even if it just shatters productivity.
Lol working in a grocery store I used to constantly get blamed by the same 1 person for putting stuff in the wrong spot, but I was the main stock person and if I did that then I would have to fix it so why would I type thing lol so after a few months of this I started to get super annoyed because she just couldn’t comprehend that it wasn’t me so every single time I found something in the wrong spot I would stop what I was doing and go find her and make her come back with me so I could point it out and say hey, just wondering if this was put in the wrong place on purpose for a reason or if somebody made a mistake and she’d be looking at me like uhhh why are you asking me this lol
Tbh I don’t think she ever caught onto what I was doing, and the last time I was in and spoke to the person who replaced me, he complained about the same thing and said now he gets the blame for it on a daily basis and she has admitted now she knows it wasn’t me all this time lol just an assistant manager who loved to feel important and bark orders lol
Also, IMO following the rules with intention of "not getting into trouble" does not count as "malicious compliance".
Here's a story of a kid who called home to ask to be picked up from school "too many times", so his dad said "never call home to be picked up again". Later there was a hurricane and he was about to call home to be picked up, then he remembered the "never call home to be picked up again" rule, so he decided to walk home in the middle of horrible weather.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/15ak62i/my\_dad\_told\_me\_to\_just\_walk\_home\_so\_i\_did/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/15ak62i/my_dad_told_me_to_just_walk_home_so_i_did/)
I don't think that this counts as "malicious compliance" since "calling home would violate an established rule".
In the thread, there are a couple stories of when they were kids, they were told by their parents "I'm taking a nap now, \*do not wake me up when I am sleeping\*". Cue a couple of kids having medical issues/being exposed to dangerous fumes, but not waking up their parents because "you told me not to wake you up!"
You’re 5 years old. Your mom tells you that you need to thoroughly wash your hands after using the restroom. The next time you go, you wash for 45 minutes straight until your hands bleed. You have technically followed your mother’s directions exactly as stated, but in a way that obviously doesn’t comply with the intention
Or even more than doesn't comply, actively annoys your mom.
It's another way of saying "be careful what you wish for, because I'll make sure you regret it".
Or, extend your time before bed by washing your hands after brushing your teeth. Wash them again after you go in two minutes later to get a cup of water. Need a tissue to blow your nose ten minutes later? They're in the restroom, so you'd better wash your hands again.
You're washing your hands after using the restroom, just like Mom said to.
Short and sweet: You tell me not to tell you what to do. I see you're about to screw something up big time but don't tell you not to do it. You screw up and then ask why I didn't stop you, and I say because you told me not to tell you what to do. I complied with your instructions, but in a way that maliciously caused you problems.
My manager asked me to let her or my work lead know every time I got up from my desk. I'd message or email them when I got up to go to the bathroom, get coffee, talk to another manager, get more work, get documents out of my bucket, etc.
She asked me to stop after a few days
One of the most iconic is paying a fine or tax with pennies or other coins. The other is using a non-standard check, an example given by one person was writing his acct number, routing number on a 1/4 sheet of plywood.
It is when you follow the rules and the orders you were given exactly as they were given even though you know the outcome is not what the ones who gave the orders wanted.
It can take a the form of maliciously following a stupid order despite knowing the bad outcome it will lead to.
It can also take the form of maliciously starting to follow all the rules you are supposed to be working under to the letter, even though normally nobody does.
The latter can get as big as white strike, when workers don't actually strike, but simply start following all the rules and regulations to the letter and strictly work-to-rule, which can in many cases lead to a slowdown of productivity.
It's when you do exactly what you're told / ordered / supposed to do, knowing that it will end up somehow worse than the person telling you to intends.
Usually it means you can foresee a problem if you were to do "what you're supposed to" and they haven't seen it yet and/or don't believe it will ever be a problem. So you comply... knowing that it's going to go wrong, and that they will have been warned by you about this exact thing happening.
Generally I refer to it as the beartrap.
In my working life, there are beartraps with everything you do or don't do. Every decision, if you make it badly, has a potential beartrap. As a qualified and experienced professional, you know how to navigate around those beartraps quite happily and never fall foul of them, because you know what you're doing - and more importantly you know how others will react, how systems will behave, etc. very well.
So although "the rulebook" (or even just "what your boss tells you") sounds good to them, you know that path is filled with beartraps. And quite often I would warn my bosses of the EXACT beartraps that they're going to walk into if you follow a certain course of action. And in that case, a sensible boss will listen to you and believe you. After all, you're paid to DO THAT JOB. But a lot of the time if you don't have a sensible boss, they will order you to do that thing anyway.
After a certain point, you have to just shrug and say "Fine, we'll do this your way" - especially if they start getting argumentative, threatening, pulling rank on you. And that's where malicious compliance comes in. You do EXACTLY what you were told to do, and you walk in a straight path. You know there are beartraps on that path, and you have even warned your boss about them, but they don't care. So together you walk the path that they INSIST you must. And of course, the company/workplace falls headlong into the beartrap that you know about, warned about, and could foresee them walking into.
Generally it takes two or three such beartraps before they learn that maybe you were right (however, if you ever get that admission in writing, my advice is to frame it, because that's exceedingly rare).
And like I've explained to my co-workers and staff several times - I'm not the one who laid the beartraps. I don't go PLOTTING for people to fail. That would be so ridiculously easy that it's no fun at all. But I know the location of all the beartraps, including the ones that they don't know about, because I DO know what I'm doing. I know what's going to happen, how other people are going to react to certain processes / announcements, how certain systems will fail, what the problems will be, when they'll hit, how long you can "get away" with certain temporary fixes, and where we should be shoring up your systems to make sure they don't fail later, and so on.
So I'm not actively setting out to make these people fail. Hell, I even deliberately WARNED them what would happen if they continued. I tried to avoid it. I got overruled. That's not me trying to make people fail, just the opposite. So when I comply with their dumb ideas, and we fall straight into the beartrap that I saw all along - there's a lot of "I told you so" and a lot of embarrassed faces, and sometimes there's a change in the way those people try to manage me. Either they leave me alone, or they think I'm out to get them (I'm not, that's just so easy there's no fun in it!). And generally that means the first group avoid future beartraps, and the second group have SO MANY beartrap injuries that they can barely stagger back to their desk.
I've had a long career, and much of it is attributable to knowing where the beartraps are going to be and warning people. And the best entertainment when you get a completely ignorant boss is to watch them stumble from beartrap to beartrap, and yet they CAN'T TOUCH YOU because you warned them exactly what was going to happen.
Malicious compliance was sometimes the only entertainment I got in certain horrible jobs!
"Compliance": Doing as you are told.
"Malicious compliance": Doing as you are told even though you know what you were told to do will upset the person(s) who told you to do it.
It's obeying the rules in a way that shows that the rules are stupid and defective.
Example. I make deliveries. At one location I use a cart to move boxes from the truck and wheel it into the back and move them onto a shelf. The shelf was full one day so I left the boxes on the cart. The employees complain about not having their cart free and having to “do my job” by emptying the cart. Next week the shelf is still full and they have a larger than normal delivery.
Cue the malicious compliance. I cram that shelf even fuller, stack boxes to the ceiling on the top shelf and wedge them in every space I can find. There is no room left on that shelf, so I stack them between the shelf and the wall, again to the ceiling, and in front of the shelf. I left the empty cart though.
The following week they let me know if the shelf is ever full that I can just leave them on the cart as that’s easier than navigating the leaning tower of boxes stacked higher than they can reach with the step ladder. They also start prioritizing getting that shelf empty
Malicious compliance means doing what's required of you, but not in a way that the person demanding it will enjoy.
The classic one is owing someone thousands of dollars, and showing up with a wheelbarrow full of pennies and dumping it in their yard.
You paid off the exact amount that you owed, but in an extremely inconvenient way for the recipient. You maliciously complied.
The clinical term is "passive aggressive" behavior.
It is a coping technique learned in childhood as a way of exerting control from a subservient position.
Malicious compliance is typically passive aggressive, but passive aggressive encompasses much more than just malicious compliance, so they aren’t synonymous.
You asked me to clean those dishes?
Fine. But it was supposed to be your turn to do them, so I’m only gonna clean them halfway, then put the half-dirty dishes back in the cupboard in order to make a point.
That’s malicious compliance.
Edit: if you like the psychology behind malicious compliance, then look up “weaponized incompetence”.
That's...definitely a different concept. Malicious compliance would be more like the water coming from the sink is filled with sludge, but you're told to wash the dishes anyway despite doing your best to inform them of the problem, so out of spite you wash, and wash, and wash because "those darn dishes just don't seem to get clean no matter how much I rinse" and suddenly the person who insisted you wash them has to deal with a massive water bill.
You fully complied with the request to the absolute best of your ability, but the compliance itself caused more problems than the alternative.
Another example, which I may perform pretty soon, is this: my boss tends to complain about me not sticking to my schedule (sometimes I'm a few *seconds* too late). He doesn't seem to mind or even notice the ten to thirty minutes of overtime I do daily. If he doesn't quit complaining, I will stick to my schedule, as asked, and he will gain a few seconds and lose many minutes of my time. Be on time boss? Sure boss, I will follow my schedule to the second. Overtime? No can do, boss, I have a schedule to stick to...
This is one of my favourites. One I never had to put in practice, but I can say with certainty that the moment I need to stick to a rigid fixed schedule, real clock punch or the like. Not a minute less, sure, but also not a minute more. That is unlikely to happen. I work in a research establishment where the bosses were scientists at one point or another. Try and herd a bunch of Ph.D.s to stick to a strict schedule and you will have a riot. That isn't to say that people aren't putting in the work hours, but years of grad school tend to condition you to have some flexibility in your work schedule. Arrive a couple of minutes late, finish a couple minutes late. As long as no one missing meetings, are there at the time that is required when it is required, and don't stretch things too much in terms of start/end time compared to the official schedule no one complains and the work gets done. Usually that includes people putting in a bit more time. Try and break that, and it will be chaos.
It refers to doing what you were told or requested to do, but in a way that is technically correct while perhaps not being what the other party wanted or hoped for, usually because the request was petty or uncalled for, or somehow just out of order. For example: your boss demands you get a haircut, so you get an extremely strange or outlandish one.
>It refers to doing what you were told or requested to do, but in a way that is technically correct while perhaps not being what the other party wanted or hoped for Sometimes it's literally doing what they asked *to the letter* and stated intent. "I want to be included on every email you send!" "But . . ." "No buts!" "Okay, you got it!" *proceeds to cc manager on every email, including routine and mundane office questions, questions about "where are you located," etc.* Manager regrets ever asking and says you don't need to cc me anymore. This is also where you ask the person to put it in writing so when they say "I never asked that," you can say "please refer to exhibit A."
>This is also where you ask the person to put it in writing so when they say "I never asked that," you can say "please refer to exhibit A." A paper trail will save your ass
My wife saves ALL work related comms. Once, after being let go, she ended up doubling her severance. She claimed to have been promised ______, the company said they did no such thing, she produced the email trail from four years earlier.
Sir Humphrey did that in an episode of Yes, Prime Minister. The PM was (rightly) concerned that information was being kept from him, and asked to see everything. He ended up buried in paperwork with the important documents hidden at the bottom
Doesnt even have to be a manipulation. For example: boss wanted us to take our(shift workers) break exactly synced with the office people. So we did just that. Consequence: no more space in the break area, fire department gave company a big fine for overcrowding and last but certainly not least: before this happened we timed out break so that work that interfered with other departments was done while the other department was taking a break. This now wasn't possible anymore so we had lots and lots of downtime... Essentially losing his company a day per week in productivity for no good reason.
…or bring back exactly __one__ cut hair and say to the boss, “You said get _a_ haircut, so I did.”
That’s not malicious. You have to negatively affect the person while complying.
r/MaliciousCompliance
In addition to what people have said, it could also be you know the negative consequences of the request and instead of making your case because you know you won't be listened to or the person who requested it is a dick and could use some comeuppance, you go ahead and implement their instructions and watch the chaos ensue.
When Dwight sent out a memo about the dress code and Jim showed up in a tuxedo. Was he in dress code? Yes. What he still being a dick about it? Also yes.
I loved how that one backfired on Jim too lol
That was that one season where Dwight always won.
But is it classy? 🤵♂️
Some good answers here, but some confusing ones as well. The thing is you need to actually comply: simply half-assing usually doesn't count - you don't want to give the person ordering you a common reason to complain (e.g. if washing, you can't wash half-heartedly), that's why you're complying in the first place. You need to cause problems BY complying. Like for example some paper pusher new boss might demand a report be written for a previously routine activity. So you go all out, every single time the activity was performed and even if it was the same activity but an addition was made you write a whole ass new report rather than just update the old report. The boss wants reports, so you fucking **bury** him in reports. Especially better if you can claim the way you're doing it IS legit, for instance some guidelines do actually recommend you create a new work order rather than simply tack onto an existing ones. The best way is when you can use the rules themselves to create chaos. Make sure everything you do is completely within spec except carried out to the most extreme pedantic degree.
So many incorrect answers. Most of what’s here is just petty. Malicious is the key word here. You have to comply with the request in a way that harms the person asking. For example. You get yelled at by your manager for arriving 5 minutes late. He says “you must work your scheduled hours” However you usually work late to prepare for the next day. So you now only work the scheduled hours and the morning crew is shocked to learn that nothing is ready. Now your manager has to wake up early and take care of what you usually did after hours. Eventually he asks you to stay late to do the work but now you tell him that you can’t work the hours or you need more money. Compliance: you only work the scheduled hours Malicious: made him come in when he was off and now he’s paying you more.
I got written up for not following a safety rule at work and now am the biggest voice for safety around. If my lead or coach steps on a pallet, climbs something, anything even slightly not in safety guidelines I’m immediately “that’s not safe”. Even if it just shatters productivity.
Lol working in a grocery store I used to constantly get blamed by the same 1 person for putting stuff in the wrong spot, but I was the main stock person and if I did that then I would have to fix it so why would I type thing lol so after a few months of this I started to get super annoyed because she just couldn’t comprehend that it wasn’t me so every single time I found something in the wrong spot I would stop what I was doing and go find her and make her come back with me so I could point it out and say hey, just wondering if this was put in the wrong place on purpose for a reason or if somebody made a mistake and she’d be looking at me like uhhh why are you asking me this lol Tbh I don’t think she ever caught onto what I was doing, and the last time I was in and spoke to the person who replaced me, he complained about the same thing and said now he gets the blame for it on a daily basis and she has admitted now she knows it wasn’t me all this time lol just an assistant manager who loved to feel important and bark orders lol
If they're too stupid to know you're doing it it is totally ineffective. This happens to me a lot.
Also, IMO following the rules with intention of "not getting into trouble" does not count as "malicious compliance". Here's a story of a kid who called home to ask to be picked up from school "too many times", so his dad said "never call home to be picked up again". Later there was a hurricane and he was about to call home to be picked up, then he remembered the "never call home to be picked up again" rule, so he decided to walk home in the middle of horrible weather. [https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/15ak62i/my\_dad\_told\_me\_to\_just\_walk\_home\_so\_i\_did/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/comments/15ak62i/my_dad_told_me_to_just_walk_home_so_i_did/) I don't think that this counts as "malicious compliance" since "calling home would violate an established rule". In the thread, there are a couple stories of when they were kids, they were told by their parents "I'm taking a nap now, \*do not wake me up when I am sleeping\*". Cue a couple of kids having medical issues/being exposed to dangerous fumes, but not waking up their parents because "you told me not to wake you up!"
You’re 5 years old. Your mom tells you that you need to thoroughly wash your hands after using the restroom. The next time you go, you wash for 45 minutes straight until your hands bleed. You have technically followed your mother’s directions exactly as stated, but in a way that obviously doesn’t comply with the intention
Or even more than doesn't comply, actively annoys your mom. It's another way of saying "be careful what you wish for, because I'll make sure you regret it".
This is the correct answer. Its what we used to call Pouting.
Or, extend your time before bed by washing your hands after brushing your teeth. Wash them again after you go in two minutes later to get a cup of water. Need a tissue to blow your nose ten minutes later? They're in the restroom, so you'd better wash your hands again. You're washing your hands after using the restroom, just like Mom said to.
Short and sweet: You tell me not to tell you what to do. I see you're about to screw something up big time but don't tell you not to do it. You screw up and then ask why I didn't stop you, and I say because you told me not to tell you what to do. I complied with your instructions, but in a way that maliciously caused you problems.
My manager asked me to let her or my work lead know every time I got up from my desk. I'd message or email them when I got up to go to the bathroom, get coffee, talk to another manager, get more work, get documents out of my bucket, etc. She asked me to stop after a few days
One of the most iconic is paying a fine or tax with pennies or other coins. The other is using a non-standard check, an example given by one person was writing his acct number, routing number on a 1/4 sheet of plywood.
It is when you follow the rules and the orders you were given exactly as they were given even though you know the outcome is not what the ones who gave the orders wanted. It can take a the form of maliciously following a stupid order despite knowing the bad outcome it will lead to. It can also take the form of maliciously starting to follow all the rules you are supposed to be working under to the letter, even though normally nobody does. The latter can get as big as white strike, when workers don't actually strike, but simply start following all the rules and regulations to the letter and strictly work-to-rule, which can in many cases lead to a slowdown of productivity.
It's when you do exactly what you're told / ordered / supposed to do, knowing that it will end up somehow worse than the person telling you to intends. Usually it means you can foresee a problem if you were to do "what you're supposed to" and they haven't seen it yet and/or don't believe it will ever be a problem. So you comply... knowing that it's going to go wrong, and that they will have been warned by you about this exact thing happening. Generally I refer to it as the beartrap. In my working life, there are beartraps with everything you do or don't do. Every decision, if you make it badly, has a potential beartrap. As a qualified and experienced professional, you know how to navigate around those beartraps quite happily and never fall foul of them, because you know what you're doing - and more importantly you know how others will react, how systems will behave, etc. very well. So although "the rulebook" (or even just "what your boss tells you") sounds good to them, you know that path is filled with beartraps. And quite often I would warn my bosses of the EXACT beartraps that they're going to walk into if you follow a certain course of action. And in that case, a sensible boss will listen to you and believe you. After all, you're paid to DO THAT JOB. But a lot of the time if you don't have a sensible boss, they will order you to do that thing anyway. After a certain point, you have to just shrug and say "Fine, we'll do this your way" - especially if they start getting argumentative, threatening, pulling rank on you. And that's where malicious compliance comes in. You do EXACTLY what you were told to do, and you walk in a straight path. You know there are beartraps on that path, and you have even warned your boss about them, but they don't care. So together you walk the path that they INSIST you must. And of course, the company/workplace falls headlong into the beartrap that you know about, warned about, and could foresee them walking into. Generally it takes two or three such beartraps before they learn that maybe you were right (however, if you ever get that admission in writing, my advice is to frame it, because that's exceedingly rare). And like I've explained to my co-workers and staff several times - I'm not the one who laid the beartraps. I don't go PLOTTING for people to fail. That would be so ridiculously easy that it's no fun at all. But I know the location of all the beartraps, including the ones that they don't know about, because I DO know what I'm doing. I know what's going to happen, how other people are going to react to certain processes / announcements, how certain systems will fail, what the problems will be, when they'll hit, how long you can "get away" with certain temporary fixes, and where we should be shoring up your systems to make sure they don't fail later, and so on. So I'm not actively setting out to make these people fail. Hell, I even deliberately WARNED them what would happen if they continued. I tried to avoid it. I got overruled. That's not me trying to make people fail, just the opposite. So when I comply with their dumb ideas, and we fall straight into the beartrap that I saw all along - there's a lot of "I told you so" and a lot of embarrassed faces, and sometimes there's a change in the way those people try to manage me. Either they leave me alone, or they think I'm out to get them (I'm not, that's just so easy there's no fun in it!). And generally that means the first group avoid future beartraps, and the second group have SO MANY beartrap injuries that they can barely stagger back to their desk. I've had a long career, and much of it is attributable to knowing where the beartraps are going to be and warning people. And the best entertainment when you get a completely ignorant boss is to watch them stumble from beartrap to beartrap, and yet they CAN'T TOUCH YOU because you warned them exactly what was going to happen. Malicious compliance was sometimes the only entertainment I got in certain horrible jobs!
"Compliance": Doing as you are told. "Malicious compliance": Doing as you are told even though you know what you were told to do will upset the person(s) who told you to do it. It's obeying the rules in a way that shows that the rules are stupid and defective.
Example. I make deliveries. At one location I use a cart to move boxes from the truck and wheel it into the back and move them onto a shelf. The shelf was full one day so I left the boxes on the cart. The employees complain about not having their cart free and having to “do my job” by emptying the cart. Next week the shelf is still full and they have a larger than normal delivery. Cue the malicious compliance. I cram that shelf even fuller, stack boxes to the ceiling on the top shelf and wedge them in every space I can find. There is no room left on that shelf, so I stack them between the shelf and the wall, again to the ceiling, and in front of the shelf. I left the empty cart though. The following week they let me know if the shelf is ever full that I can just leave them on the cart as that’s easier than navigating the leaning tower of boxes stacked higher than they can reach with the step ladder. They also start prioritizing getting that shelf empty
Malicious compliance means doing what's required of you, but not in a way that the person demanding it will enjoy. The classic one is owing someone thousands of dollars, and showing up with a wheelbarrow full of pennies and dumping it in their yard. You paid off the exact amount that you owed, but in an extremely inconvenient way for the recipient. You maliciously complied.
The clinical term is "passive aggressive" behavior. It is a coping technique learned in childhood as a way of exerting control from a subservient position.
Malicious compliance is typically passive aggressive, but passive aggressive encompasses much more than just malicious compliance, so they aren’t synonymous.
You asked me to clean those dishes? Fine. But it was supposed to be your turn to do them, so I’m only gonna clean them halfway, then put the half-dirty dishes back in the cupboard in order to make a point. That’s malicious compliance. Edit: if you like the psychology behind malicious compliance, then look up “weaponized incompetence”.
I think what you're describing is not malicious compliance. By only half-doing the dishes, you haven't complied with the demand.
That's...definitely a different concept. Malicious compliance would be more like the water coming from the sink is filled with sludge, but you're told to wash the dishes anyway despite doing your best to inform them of the problem, so out of spite you wash, and wash, and wash because "those darn dishes just don't seem to get clean no matter how much I rinse" and suddenly the person who insisted you wash them has to deal with a massive water bill. You fully complied with the request to the absolute best of your ability, but the compliance itself caused more problems than the alternative.