Web Video / Malicious Compliance

A youtube channel dedicated to reading the r/maliciouscompliance subreddit, which is all about complying to the letter of an order or request while ignoring the spirit.

Associated tropes.

• Be Careful What You Wish For: Plenty of times, the story antagonist gives OP a half-baked, ill-considered order only to regret it when OP complies, or complies on OP's behalf.
  • One story features a pair of receptionists at a hotel dealing with an irate man who, without notifying the hotel beforehand, had added extra people to his party, and arrived, when the hotel was already completely sold out. The man, red in the face, kept yelling, screaming, and making threats, ignoring any and every attempt by the hotel staff to meet his needs and accommodate him, eventually screaming "don't you idiots understand? Give me another room with two double beds, nothing else!" At this point, the hotel staff have an epiphany, bump OP and his party out of their two double-bed room to the royal suite, with four king beds, and give him full access to all the VIP services, including room-service, free of charge as an apology for the inconvenience. The red-faced man is jaw agape in Stunned Silence as OP is getting checked in and then angrily demands why he's not getting that package, and is rebuffed by the hotel staff that he insisted on "two double beds, nothing else."
• Bothering by the Book: The entire point of the channel is dedicated to stories where this happens. The OP is told to do something by a customer, boss, teacher, cop, lawyer, HOA board, or any other sort of governing authority to which OP must answer. But whatever the OP is asked to do, it's either done as literally as possible, or to the exact point the request was made and no further. This always ends with the target of OP's wrath getting in some kind of trouble when they either didn't think through the implications of what they were asking for or end up getting just enough metaphorical rope to hang themselves with. A common thread is the OP being told to do something by their boss, OP advising the boss against the action, the boss insisting on the action anyway, and OP doing the action while letting the logical conclusion of the action play itself out so that their boss ends up in hot water.
• Drunk with Power: Occasionally, the story's antagonist gives terrible orders just because they can, and is a real asshole in the first place, never expecting anyone to call their bluff. OP usually responds "okay, boss, but you're not going to like what happens next."
• Everything Is Racist: On one story, the antagonist [Girl] tried to claim that she was denied the manager position because she's the only female applicant. The reason she's the only female applicant is that the employee population was 95% male, because most women didn't want to apply for the post. In fact when [Girl] was going through the trial screening, as one of several candidates, she thought she was a shoe-in precisely because she's female.
• Evil Is Petty: [Girl], as listed in the story above, retaliated to not getting the manager position she was expecting by framing the shift supervisor [Jim] for sexual harassment, got the EEOC involved, and then conspired with the new shift supervisor [Trisha] to harass the rest of the current staff to the point that they quit to replace them with Trisha's old buddies who were so corrupt, incompetent, and lazy that they lost themselves their previous contract, nearly destroying the company they work for. In retaliation, one of the oldest and most ... unstable of the old blood went full-tilt Knight Templar cracking down on fraudulent parking decals until Trisha's own misdeeds came to light, and now the company had more than sufficient grounds to tell the EEOC, "hey, she's getting fired because she's a horrible employee, not because she's female" so they could finally let her go. It apparently took years to clean up the drama afterwards.
• Exact Words: The entire point of the series. OP is doing exactly what they're told to do, even when they know how it's going to go badly.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Which even gets a lampshade.
  • One story involves an oil rig with very strict and unforgiving safety regulations that OP, a regional supervisor, has to comply with. Along comes an inspector from the oversight committee, but not just any inspector, one of the top CEO's. The guy shows up with one but not both of the safety certifications he would need to enter the site and OP turns him away. He states "Hoist by my own petard!" and leaves. Next day, OP is given a glowing review from his boss, and the inspector!
• Ignored Expert: In many, many stories, OP warns the antagonist that complying with orders is going to go badly, and why, and is summarily brushed off, despite OP being an expert in the field. OP is then threatened with serious punishment for insolence if they don't comply. Cue Malicious Compliance.
• Jury Duty: OP was called for jury duty, but their Jerkass boss ordered "do whatever it takes" to get out of it or else OP would be fired for not coming to work. When OP informs the judge using the boss' Exact Words, the judge is furious, has the boss brought in to explain himself, then warns he'll be held in contempt if OP gets fired or mistreated at work, and to top it off, makes the man apologize to OP in court.
• Just Following Orders: How OP usually gets out of trouble for causing damage by complying with ridiculous orders. The antagonist had the authority to give the order, the order was legal, and the antagonist was warned of the consequences but insisted that OP follow orders anyway, so OP is clearly not at fault.
• No OSHA Compliance: Two stories, back to back, feature OP as a line-order cook and the stories are nightmare inducing for anyone who has ever worked for food-service.
  • In the first story, OP is ordered to change the grease in a fryer when it's still too hot to handle, with a machine that is very, very old and cranky, just before lunch rush. The servers are informed that there will be no fried dishes as the fryers are undergoing cleaning, which requires at least four hours to be done safely, and should have been done the night before. Asshat manager had to go table to table and tell all the guests that no fried foods are available, and deal with the enraged customers and the fall-out, as it's rather easy for the staff to forget when a "86 fryer" announcement is made, OP even admits being guilty himself.
  • The second story, again featuring OP, appropriately labeled "How Malicious Compliance Saved My Life," shows how since OP wasn't getting his legally mandated breaks, wasn't allowed to eat anything apart from what random bits of food he managed to swipe from the restaurant, and was working sweat-shop level shifts, a minimum of 80 hours a week, had compromised his immune system and caused a routine nasal infection to metastasize and spread to his lungs. If Asshat manager didn't give him an Impossible Task and stated "complete it or leave and never return" with OP and his wife adhering to the last part, i.e. quitting the job on the spot, chances are good OP would have died. In fact, when he wound up in the ER, a few days after quitting, the doctors told OP that he should already be dead. OP still has problems with asthma as his lungs never recovered.
  • A third story with a different OP has a subversion. OP would complain to Dispatch whenever he spotted a delivery vehicle that wasn't DOT compliant, even replacing head or tail-light bulbs at his own expense. OP was written up for it, with Dispatch and the local supervisor pointing out that drivers are strictly forbidden from making repairs on the company vehicles. To Kick the Dog a bit more, Dispatch would retaliate by putting OP in the most unsafe vehicle he could find and then send him to do the deliveries. The malicious compliance comes when OP's vehicle, sent out with dangerously underinflated and thread-bare tires, suffers a blow-out on the interstate. OP manages to limp the van to the parking lot of a restaurant and then calls Dispatch to come out and make the necessary repairs, since OP is forbidden, and spends the next 4 hours on the clock, enjoying a nice steak dinner, waiting for the vehicle to become operational enough to drive back to the lot where he could clock out. OP then contacts OSHA, which proceeds to swarm on the distribution center like a school of ravenous piranha, slapping the delivery company with crippling fines, mandating that all the company vehicles are brought up to DOT standards, or be scrapped, Dispatch gets fired, and all the inept managers who let the situation get that bad suffer some serious off-screen consequences.
  • Double subverted in a fourth story featuring an airport maintenance crew. Upper management got the "brilliant" idea to have the deicing crew do random chores in between planes. Complaints went to the union and the union reps filed formal protests, but like all agencies, had to jump through all the proper hoops and exhaust all available appeals and proper channels before the workers strike, or face serious consequences. OP was pulled fresh off a deicing run in sub-freezing temperatures and shoved into a package handling area kept at near 40 degrees centigrade and not even permitted time to change out of most of his winter clothing, and when signs of dehydration and heat-stroke started to set in, wasn't even allowed to take a break for a glass or water, just ordered by Asshat Manager to "move faster, you have less than 5 minutes to finish, no breaks!" Surprise, surprise, OP collapsed with heat-stroke. Severe consequences would be putting it mildly.
• Rules Lawyer: Since the story antagonist is usually a douche-canoe, asshat, or other kind of vicious jerk who just loves to stew in their self-perceived superiority over OP, OP keeps a paper trail to show that they were in fact complying with orders, site regulations, and the law. OP gets off free and clear while the antagonist suffers all the consequences for the shit-storm that comes from having their orders obeyed.
• Smug Snake: One story features a douche-canoe manager (DC) telling OP to dispose of all the stained pillows at a hotel less than a week before the grand opening, rather than go with the hotel director's (DH) order to take the pillows to be bleached, after a CEO did an inspection and found one pillow stained during his night stay in the royal suite. A search found 15,000 pillows were similarly stained, but DC just wanted them all thrown away, no exceptions, and told OP, both by word and in writing "you're just an over-paid janitor, leave the thinking to those with a college degree!" When the hotel had to open with less than 500 pillows available, DC and OP were called to DH's office, with DC looking smug, expecting OP to be heavily reprimanded, but OP was prepared and showed up with printed screen-shots of the e-mail exchange. DC left the office a half-hour later with the worst "puppy just peed the carpet and got a rolled-up newspaper to the face punishment" look OP has ever seen.