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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and we're going to wrap up today's show, less than 15 minutes left, with your stories of engaging in malicious compliance. What is malicious compliance? The phrase comes from one of Reddit's most popular communities by that title, Malicious Compliance. It's a community where people typically anonymously share stories in which they've conformed to the letter, but not the spirit of a request. Put plainly, the stories typically consist of someone following an arbitrary rule from their employer or the government or whatever, in a way that exposes how dumb the rule is.

Listeners, do you have a malicious compliance story to tell? A malicious compliance, true confession, or maybe we should more accurately call it a point of pride. A time when you conform to the letter of a rule that you thought was really dumb from your employer, maybe your teacher, maybe even the government, but not the spirit of the request. I don't know if we're going to get any of these, but if you have ever engaged in what you recognize from that terminology as malicious compliance, call and tell us that story.

Otherwise, I'm going to have to talk to the end of the show, and I know you don't want that. 212-433-WNYC, if we have any malicious compliance stories out there. We think we might get a few, that's why we're even asking the question. 212-433-9692. Anyone been on that Reddit thread? Anyone ever contributed to that Reddit thread? Here's an example, as we're hoping the calls are going to come in, an amusing example from Reddit that some of you might relate to in our age of Zoom meetings.

User Happy Giraffe explained that she's a product manager who recently returned to work after maternity leave. Her job is hybrid. On days when she's in the office, she has to pump at regularly scheduled interviews during her workday. Usually, she continues working at her desk while pumping, but one day she had a Zoom meeting scheduled at the same time that she needed to pump. Naturally, she kept her camera off, seemed simple enough, and attended the meeting. At the top of the meeting though, the lead in the meeting made the following announcement.

I just want to remind everyone that our expectation is that you will have your cameras on, because this is not a virtual meeting it is a simulated in-person meeting. This user, Happy Giraffe, messaged them directly explaining her situation, but did not receive a direct reply. Instead the lead emphasized to the broader meeting that the expectation is that all cameras will be on. User Happy Giraffe turned her camera on, not exposing any skin, but the top of her breast pump was fully visible.

She proceeded to unmute so that the pump was audible and said, "Thank you for your patience. I was adjusting my breast pump." After this incident, cameras were no longer required during her company's Zoom meetings. There you go, malicious compliance. She followed the rule, but in a way that made the point that that rule is really dumb. It looks like we have some malicious compliance stories coming in, and we will take them on the air right after this.

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Brian Lehrer:: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. If I thought there might be a shortage of malicious compliance stories in the WNYC audience, boy, was I wrong. We'll start with one in text message, malicious compliance. "My late father once paid a dentist bill that he disagreed with by sending a box full of pennies." [chuckles] Another one in a text, "When I was a kid, my dad said that the car had a curfew of eleven o'clock. My siblings and I would return the car and then meet our friends down the block." Steve in Nyack, you're on WNYC. Hi, Steve.

Steve: Hi, there. In seventh grade, Mrs. Detorie sent me home to write 200 times "I will not misbehave". I wrote it neatly on the first line, and then 199 lines of quotation marks.

Brian Lehrer: Ditto marks.

Steve: Yes, ditto marks. She thought that was not very funny.

Brian Lehrer: That's right out of the simpsons, right? Writing I will not misbehave 200 times. Thank you very much.

Steve: Now I'm a psychologist and we call that passive aggressive these days.

Brian Lehrer: I guess so, Steve. Thank you very much. Ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, mega ditto Steve. Elena in Dunedin, Florida, you're on WNYC. Hi, Elena.

Elena: Hi, Brian. I was 16, we had just gotten rid of the dress code in school because we were freezing and girls were allowed to wear pants that winter. Fast forward it spring, it's summer. They took us outside for an English class. I was wearing shorts because we had gotten rid of the dress code with our student strikes. All of a sudden, the principal comes out, puts me in his car, drives me home to change into a skirt.

I lectured him the whole way on how school is just an everyday activity. If I wanted to dress up, it would be for the theater. There was no reason to have to put a skirt on. We got rid of the dress coat. I went into the house while he waited. I put on the shortest skirt I had ever owned that I made out of a curtain that was like three inches long. Came back in the car and he had to take it because it was a skirt.

Brian Lehrer: It was a skirt. Elena, thank you very much. Malicious compliance indeed. Dawn in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Dawn.

Dawn: Hi, Brian. My story's about my son whose school had a rule, boys could not grow their hair below their shoulders, but we are black and our hair does not grow down. It grows up, and so he grew his hair really tall.

Brian Lehrer: There you go. That's a good one. What could they say about it? Let's see. Clyde in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Clyde.

Clyde: [unintelligible 00:06:43]. In the '80s in France there was a law that said if you drive a motorcycle you had to wear a helmet, and the French word for wear meant they wore it on their wrist.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. You wore the helmet, but on your wrist. Chris in Brooklyn, I think maybe saw a malicious compliance episode. Chris, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Chris: Thank you, Brian. I was on the subway and there's a rule with the subway that all dogs have to be in carriers. I saw someone with a very large dog and they'd taken an IKEA bag and cut out four holes for its legs to go through. They held the handles and the dog could walk. Technically it was in a carrier, but it was still walking around on its own.

Brian Lehrer: Chris, thank you very much. So many of these are dress code stories. From the helmet to the short skirt to now even a dog dress code story from Chris in Brooklyn. Kathy in Queens, you're on WNRC. Hi, Kathy.

Kathy: Hi. Thank you, Brian. Mine has to do with education. I was in a GED program. I had a teacher that was absolutely not a good teacher. He wasn't teaching anything. I would just put my head down on my desk and sleep during the class. I had five really heavy books that I had to finish, workbooks for my GED. The teacher said, "I don't want to see you ever sleeping in this class until you finish all of those books." I went home that night and I finished all of the books, and I came back, I put the books on my desk.

I put my head down there and I went to sleep. He said, [onomatopoeia], got really angry. I went and I dropped all the books on his desk and I said, "It's done. They're done." Unfortunately, he became even more angry and took me to the authorities, but then the authorities at the school they couldn't do anything about it. I had followed what he had said and finished all of the work.

Brian Lehrer: If a kid keeps going to sleep in class, these days, I would hope, a teacher would say, "Is there a problem that you're not able to get a good night's sleep?" And take it in that direction. Kathy, that's a good story. Thank you very much. More coming in in text messages. "A senior partner at a law firm I was in recalled a closing on New York property where the buyer mistakenly made his checkout on a California bank.

To avoid the rule in the contract that he pay interest on the time it would take for the check on an out-of-state check to clear before air mail, they called a break for lunch and a bonus of associates were asked by the buyer's attorneys to fan out to several banks and translate the entire amount of the purchase price into coin rolls, which they brought into the closing in a wheelbarrow."

Wow. That's our second paying in coins to be snarky story. I guess it's going to be our last because we're out of time. Thank you for your stories of malicious compliance. That was fun. The Brian Lehrer show was produced today by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen edits our National Politics podcast. Our intern this term is Ethlyn Daniel-Scher. Megan Ryan is the head of live radio. We had Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz at the audio controls. Stay tuned for All Of It.

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