Night-Shift Employee Obediently Calls Every Ticket At Midnight, CEO Hates It, Manager Whispers ‘Well Played’

At 2 a.m., the CEO’s phone erupted with a chipper night-shift IT guy chirping, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” – the glorious fallout of the most legendary malicious compliance in Safeway history. A lone tech wizard, stuck on graveyard, got ordered to slam through hundreds of daytime tickets immediately.

He warned the stores were dark and execs were sleeping, the manager barked “do it anyway.” So he did exactly. Two hundred overnight calls and voicemails later, the furious CEO discovered what happens when you refuse to let the night crew actually work at night.

A night-shift IT employee exacted perfect revenge on a micromanaging boss by calling 200 tickets at midnight.

We’ve all had that one manager who treats “because I said so” like a personality trait. This Safeway story is the ultimate reminder that sometimes the fastest way to win an argument is to follow instructions so literally the building shakes.

From the manager’s side, he probably thought he was solving a metrics problem: tickets closed = happy bosses. From the employee’s side, he’d already explained why night-shift ticket clearing was pointless.

When logic fails, malicious compliance becomes performance art. The beauty here? The Redditor never raised his voice; he just dialed 200 numbers and let physics (and sleepy executives) do the rest.

This kind of quiet rebellion highlights a bigger issue in corporate America: micromanagement gone wild. Gallup reports that disengaged employees cost U.S. companies up to $550 billion a year in lost productivity, and bad managers are the #1 reason people quit.

As organizational psychologist Adam Grant told CNBC, “Acquiring knowledge is easy. Obtaining constructive criticism is hard. If you can’t handle the truth, people stop telling you the truth.”

In this case, the “creative way” was perfect. The manager’s eventual “Well played” shows rare self-awareness. Most bosses would have doubled down with write-ups.

As workplace culture expert Jennifer Aaker added, “Humour at work accelerates creativity, trust and motivation; it is a critical leadership skill.”

The real lesson? Clear communication beats passive-aggressive phone marathons every single time… but when someone corners you into a no-win situation and insists on playing dumb games, sometimes the only way to win is to grab the rulebook, follow it to the letter, and let the absurdity speak for itself.

A simple “here’s why this won’t work at midnight” should have ended the conversation. Instead, 200 ringing phones at 2 a.m. became the loudest, clearest memo anyone could have sent.

And honestly? That polite little voicemail: “Hi, this is IT returning your ticket, please call us back when convenient” is the cherry on top. It’s professional, it’s kind, and it’s devastating, because it never raises its voice while the entire executive floor is suddenly wide awake and wondering why common sense took a coffee break.

Sometimes the most powerful comeback isn’t a comeback at all. It’s just doing exactly what you were told, with a smile in your voice and zero apologies.

These are the responses from Reddit users:

OP updates the story in the comment section.

Some praise the manager for owning his mistake gracefully.

Some admire the malicious compliance as perfect revenge that hit upper management.

Some share similar experiences with rigid or clueless managers.

Some relate to night-shift or off-hours struggles with policies.

Others express skepticism that the manager reacted so calmly.

In the end, one “yup” and 200 midnight calls flipped the script on a stubborn manager and probably saved every future night-shifter from the same nonsense.

Do you think the Redditor played the ultimate power move, or should he have kept pushing back with words instead of phones? Would you have had the guts to hit “call” on the CEO’s private line? Drop your verdict below!