Friday, May 8, 2020

Company Cuts Dad's Vacation Time, IT Revenge Ensues


This company thought they'd just cut dad's vacation time with no backlash. Well well, dad was having none of it. What followed was a smooth, calculated case of malicious compliance. Dad nailed it. 

1.

Text - No vacation? Malicious compliance with IT policy. My father had a job as a mainframe operator for a company that had contracts doing work for state governments, involving a lot of data processing. His job involved babysitting a group of servers and rebooting them when the monitoring software said they hung, occasional minor programming, and annually talking to the auditor the state whose contract he worked on sent in. The auditor loved him because he always ensured they had detailed recor

2.

Text - He had about 5 years to go to retirement. (In 2 years he would be eligible to retire, 5 until he maxed out his benefits.) They really desperately needed somebody to take the night shift, so he took it - he would be allowed to work from home full time, and he would be retiring soon anyway, and he would save a young married family person coworker from having to do it.

3.

Text - Every fall he and I have a week's vacation together in Disney World, because he owns a timeshare there. One year, almost 3 years into the 5, he showed up looking kinda steamed, so after we checked in I asked him to spill the beans. It seems that his company had decided to sell off the division, and they were purchased by an outsourcing company in India just the week before. The new company told him he'd have to attend some mandatory meetings during our vacation. When he explained that he

4.

Text - He and I already had a few thousand dollars sunk into the vacation, so he said "OK" and took it unpaid. When he got home, he immediately looked it up, and figured out that if he retired in a few months, instead of waiting 2 more years, he would get about $50 a month less money. He decided that the money was worth it to him, so he started the process.

5.

Text - The new employer instantly hired temps from India to work on the contract. My father pointed out to them that he was responsible for proving to the auditor that only US citizens in the US were working on the project, so the company flew them to the US. He pointed out to the employer that they still weren't US citizens, they shrugged, and he figured out that he would be retired before the auditor came around again so they could deal with losing the contract after he left. He printed copes

6.

Text - Meanwhile the new company announced that he had to have a cell phone. The old employer had skipped that because everybody knew that cell phones don't work at his house (no coverage from any carrier), but the new company had a hardon about it. He had to spend several hours doing paperwork about it, and then they sent him one. It didn't work, as expected. So they demanded he bring it into the office in person, which ate a couple days of his work time, because he had to get to a day schedule

7.

Text - coverage at the office. So lT took that one and they sent him another one. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then he had to get back onto a day schedule for them to send a technician around to determine where at his house there was acceptable signal so they could install a booster. This took several days of his work time, and of course, the tech was amazed that there wasn't any place at his house with any signal at all. They finally sent him a third phone, and he put it in a ziploc bag and put it as

8.

Text - Dad had a Windows XP laptop for work, and the current version was Windows 7. He's not an "I refuse to upgrade" person, the problem was that the company refused to pay for upgrades to the monitoring software for the mainframes and the version they had would only run on XP. The IT department for the new company really, really, really wanted everyone on 7 and off of XP. He and all his coworkers refused. However, since they all worked at the office, they'd come in one morning and find they ha

9.

Text - The time finally came for him to retire. IT had been nagging him several times a day to make an appointment with them on retiring day to give them his laptop and the unused cell phone, and he had to have a "good bye" meeting with his boss anyway so he was going in instead of mailing things. When the day rolled around, he went in, and IT met him first, and took the laptop to be wiped and disposed of. Then he met with his boss. They chatted for a while, and then it occurred to the boss that

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