Malicious Compliance: The Best Way To Deal With A Toxic Boss

When you have a bad boss keeping you down, your best way to fight back might be to try “malicious compliance,” according to a growing online movement of disgruntled workers.

For them, a maliciously compliant act is a creative form of resistance against their boss’ marching orders. You might fulfill what you’re asked in order to stay employed, but your actions will not be exactly what the person wanted.

Servers say they do it to fight back against entitled customers. If a rude customer asks for extra butter, they’ll bring back a ridiculous amount of butter to the table, for example.

According to the subreddit that documents acts of malicious compliance, it involves any act when people are “conforming to the letter, but not the spirit, of a request.” Popular examples include: If a boss asks you to dress better without specifying what that means, you wear a suit. Or if a boss orders you to be the only team to work in the office on Fourth of July, you expense a barbecue feast costing thousands of dollars.

But if you decide to try this yourself, proceed with caution. Career and legal experts say this can help you survive under a bad boss –– or it can spectacularly backfire.

Micromanagers can often be insecure, rigid bosses who need constant unwarranted check-ins for reassurance that you’re working.

“Malicious compliance can work well against an insecure manager,” said Ryan Stygar, an employment attorney and author of the upcoming book, Get It in Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Your Rights at Work.

In this case, your malicious compliance is going above and beyond to comply with a micromanager’s demands. If they want a list of your daily tasks, you send long, bulleted emails.

“When you follow their instructions exactly, it exposes how inefficient those instructions really are,” he said. “For example, if they want to approve every email, their inbox quickly becomes a mess. I compare this [as] holding up a mirror to the micromanager. Once they see how burdensome the micromanagement has become, they typically back off.”

It helps to confirm that this is what they wanted. You might reply to a micromanager with, “Thank you for your instructions today. This confirms I will submit every client-facing email to you for approval before sending,” Stygar said. This response works because it “creates a paper trail,” he said. “It also locks in their expectations…It prevents them from ‘moving the goalposts’ and claiming you did not comply with their orders.”

“Now there is no confusion. If work slows down, you have proof showing why its not really your fault. With a reasonable manager, this may get them to back down,” Stygar said. “With a toxic one, it may not. But it will make it much harder for them to twist the facts either way.”

And if timing matters, mention that you sent their request by noon, per their last email, in your malicious compliance. “Now any delay is clearly tied to the process the micromanager imposed on you — not your performance,” Stygar said.

And this kind of strategic resistance might not be so malicious after all. If you do go above and beyond for a micromanager it might actually be “exuberant compliance,” said Mary Abbajay, president of leadership development consultancy Careerstone Group and author of Managing Up: How to Move Up, Win at Work, and Succeed with Any Type of Boss. “Exuberant compliance is when you’re giving them what they want and it’s not reflecting on your work,” she said.

Bad bosses can be difficult, but a toxic boss is a dismissive, demeaning boss that is trying to ruin your mental health.

A toxic micromanager, for example, is “trying to control you,” Stygar said. “They’re probably hoping you make a mistake so they can enjoy the power trip of jumping all over you.”

Typically, in these cases, malicious compliance is when you know what you’re doing will lead to a less efficient, more chaotic outcome for your team, but your preferred alternatives got rejected by your boss. If your horrible boss has a new workflow that is doomed to fail, you follow it because you had no choice, for example.

In these cases, your malicious compliance might actually be “protective compliance,” Abbajay said. “All you can do is survive a toxic boss. And if…giving them what they want is going to protect you until you can get yourself out of there, then I’m all for it.”

Ideally, you only do this kind of protective compliance while you actively job hunt for a better opportunity, because if you keep doing this, “you are never going to actually thrive, and you’re never going to get to find out your full potential,” Abbajay said.

People who need to resort to malicious compliance to push back against their boss’ orders are not happy employees. They’re often scared, overworked employees who are just trying to get through each day. But don’t let your negative emotions seep into your malicious compliance. Stygar said that “malicious compliance works best as a defensive measure, not a revenge tactic.”

In his view, the “deadly sins” of malicious compliance are if you’re sarcastic in your response, if you purposefully slow work down, and if you try to embarrass or mock your boss.

“A toxic manager is often looking for ‘insubordination,’” Stygar said. “If you give them that opportunity, even by accident, they will take it.”

Instead, the safer but tedious approach is to maintain a neutral tone and document what nonsense your boss is asking you to do in case you need to prove yourself later.

“Keep copies of these exchanges for yourself. Build a record that shows exactly what they told you to do and how you followed it,” Stygar said.

And don’t do malicious compliance that makes it seem like you’re not good at your job.

“If your malicious compliance is delivering substandard work, then that actually isn’t going to reflect very well on you, because it’s still your work and your name is attached to it,” Abbajay said.