Malicious Compliance

A few years ago I was working as an international buyer for a manufacturing company.

My boss was a difficult woman to work with as she would jump to insults and would make you feel small and insignificant, but the pay and the benefits were good compared to the rest of the market.

It was a large company that could forecast their orders with at least 3 months in advance. When the orders got processed, they were being sent out to the Production Planning Team and to the Buying Team. My job was to make sure the Production Dept was constantly supplied with the necessary materials so they could continue their work. My orders were stable with very few fluctuations in them so it was mostly the same order repeated to the supplier each month.

The conflict started when I noticed in our warehousing software goods from my suppliers appearing on overstock, a 8 months worth of overstock, millions of euros, which should’ve been impossible. I tried flagging it with my boss who concluded that it was my job to manually check the stock in the warehouse. I did, for 3 days, manually checked box by box. The pieces weren’t there. I tried flagging it with my boss again, trying to explain that it has to be a bug in the system. She called me a dumb cow who can’t count. She sent me again in the warehouse to manually count everything, but since I was a stupid cow who couldn’t count, I was given a helper. We each started to count from different sides of the warehouse, box by box. Checked the numbers after: our counts were off by one box. We both went to my manager to tell her that the materials weren’t in the warehouse and it was an error in the system.

She went mental, pulled me in a HR meeting, and started complaining about me. I signed my resignation, but they asked for a 2 weeks notice so I agreed.

First day:

My boss had me cancel all future orders from our suppliers and to cite us having an overstock as being the issue.

Made a stuffy manual for my replacement

Second day:

Called all carriers and told them to hold the goods they had in their warehouse due to be delivered for as many weeks as they can (and to invoice my company for warehousing), since with 8 months overstock they couldn’t possibly fit anything else in their warehouse, right?

Called all my internal contacts and told them what happened. Called the helper I received to count the materials and told him to have his count ready to be sent out to the Financial Director at a message notice.

Third day:

Got my replacement trained in everything. My stuffy manual had 250 pages. She was “trained” in most of it that one day and had the manual for the rest. My replacement got also warned by my colleagues regarding my manager’s tendencies to yell and insult. She was expected to start the next day and do everything on her own from start. She resigned at the end of the day.

Fourth day:

My manager got straddled with my responsibilities since my replacement bailed. I spent my time writing a nice report for the Financial Director.

At the end of the day my boss came over and told me since she has been doing all the work herself then she doesn’t want to see my face around the office anymore. I wished her well and on my way out sent out my report to the Financial Director and my colleague sent in his counting paperwork.

I wish I was a fly on the wall the following Monday when they realised they had zero material for the week to work with, or for the following week, or the one before. They also got high snow for a week or so and the trucks couldn’t reach them.

I got a phone call a few months later from a higher up manager to discuss with me the possibility to return to work for them. I asked them what happened and I found out my boss got sacked.

After I left, the following Monday Production flagged the lack of materials with my boss. She tried contacting the suppliers but she was told that the orders had been cancelled due to us having an overstock. She tried contacting the suppliers, and they told her they had no empty truck to deliver since all of our orders have been put on hold, so they got re-assigned. The factory was shut for a month due to weather events and lack of goods, they lost customers so the upper management decided to call in an investigation. My report, my colleague’s, the testimonials from colleagues and suppliers, together with my (erased by boss but recovered by sys admin) email proved there was a leadership issue within the team.