Working abroad sounds romantic until your employer turns out to be a bureaucracy machine powered by double standards and bad communication. That’s what happened to one English teacher in Moscow, who shared his story on Reddit’s r/MaliciousCompliance.
After being denied vacation that another teacher easily got, he still played by the rules until management tried to twist those same rules against him. What followed was a masterclass in calm, calculated compliance.
He didn’t yell, didn’t quit, didn’t even break a policy. He just followed their rules to the letter. And every time they tried to punish him, those same rules snapped back like a boomerang.
A Moscow English teacher, denied vacation and ghosted at a cover class, weaponizes the school’s own rules twice
We’ve all had those moments when bureaucracy tries to outsmart common sense and fails spectacularly. For this English teacher in Moscow, following the rules to the letter became the perfect revenge against an administration that cared more about technicalities than people.
It started when the school denied a simple vacation request, only to assign the teacher extra work covering for someone whose leave had been approved.
Then came the fiasco of an empty classroom, students missing, administrators unreachable, and a policy stating that teachers must wait 30 minutes before leaving. He did exactly that, sent a polite text explaining the situation, and went home.
When accused later of misconduct, the admin smugly told him, “Texting is not an approved form of communication.” It was the kind of Kafkaesque logic only an overzealous bureaucracy could love.
As workplace expert Dr. Robert Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule, explains, “Organizations that weaponize rules over reason foster disengagement and quiet rebellion.”
Employees stop trying to fix problems; they start following the rulebook so rigidly that the absurdity exposes itself. And that’s exactly what happened here.
Months later, when the administration tried assigning a class without the required 72-hour notice, he declined. They tried docking his pay again but this time, he quoted the contract word for word.
When they later sent him a text assigning another class, he ignored it. Cue déjà vu: “Where are you?” they demanded. His reply? “Texting isn’t an approved form of communication.”
According to organizational psychologist Adam Grant, this kind of “strategic compliance” is a common response to unfair authority. “When systems are rigid, intelligent noncompliance becomes the only rational behavior,” he wrote in Harvard Business Review.
The teacher didn’t break the rules; he used them as a mirror, showing the system how ridiculous it had become.
In the end, no yelling, no drama, just precision, patience, and poetic irony. Sometimes the smartest way to win against bureaucracy is to let its own rules trip over themselves.
Here’s the feedback from the Reddit community:
These Redditors cheered the OP for their confidence and clever comeback, finding the story empowering, funny, and deeply satisfying to read
This group discussed how ridiculous and toxic workplaces can be when they invent arbitrary “approved communication” rules
These commenters shared their own frustrating experiences with exploitative or manipulative employers
This user injected humor and surprise
Was the 72-hour ghost too cold, or just compliance? Ever turn a rulebook into revenge? Grade your gripes below!
