Sometimes, employees work better than managers and directors.

This work-from-home employee wasn’t granted remote access to the company’s system.

So, when hundreds of file requests came flooding in, his operations director was left with no other choice but to give in.

Read on to find out the full story.

Was told it was not a business necessity and that I was wasting resources. Did exactly as they told me to. Chaos ensues.

As with a lot of people during these times, I have been working from home.

I also recently purchased a new home and the internet where I work is not as reliable as my previous place (rural satellite internet vs. city cable).

This mainly comes into play because I also started a new role at the start of the year supporting our company’s Amazon sales team.

I was a sales person for a few years, but have an analytical background and have worked in marketing, so I was a good fit for this role.

It was also a new role that my boss specifically requested the budgeting and payroll for, in order to have me take the role as I also pride myself on being a problem solver.

If there is an issue, it bugs the heck out of me and I will do my best to get it resolved. If it keeps coming up, I try to figure out why and work to improve the workflow to make it better.

For a growing company, I was what my boss needed. Sales experience, marketing experience, data and analytical background.

I was pretty much a one-stop shop for a 2nd-in-charge to help alleviate all the work he has been having to handle almost single handedly as we have grown and Amazon has become our biggest customer.

This employee had been hard at work to resolve all issues with clients.

This all comes into play as recently, Amazon has been having to get updated safety and compliance documentation for EVERYTHING on their site.

In any given year prior to this, we would get maybe 20-40 requests in a year. We submitted everything for new products as they were set up, but haven’t had to actively maintain the documents.

Once they were submitted, we were good.

Well, this year due to some lawsuits, Amazon is requiring updated forms for EVERYTHING. Okay. We were originally given 3 months to have 600+ items done.

Okay. Big job, boss handed it to me, I worked with our compliance manager, managed to hit the deadline. Job done.

No! They wanted updated forms for discontinued products. Okay. They have no inventory and we don’t either, but whatever. Three weeks for this deadline, managed to make it. Ok, done.

No! Some of the documents were outdated (of course, we last produced these over a decade ago) and they wanted updated forms. No products to test, told them so. Okay, done.

No! Their upper management spoke to our upper management and we found out we were specifically a point of issue for them.

We are not the biggest company in our field by a long shot, so the fact that upper management at Amazon noticed us is a deal.

Okay, 3 days to hit the next deadline. Nearly killed myself, but made it. Done.

No….That brings us to now.

The company brings in new people for director and managerial roles.

With all this, you may be thinking that the malicious compliance was against Amazon, but it wasn’t. They are just trying to cover themselves, so I get it.

It bites as I have other projects during this time of the year, but whatever. No, the malicious compliance comes into play with a new co-worker of ours.

As we have grown, we have been getting more experienced people into director and VP roles who come from outside our company. Cool, we are attracting highly qualified people who know their stuff. Great.

Also of note, our company compliance manager just turned in his notice as he sort of grew into his role, but it was never his intention to do this for a decade plus.

Good guy, genuinely like him. It was clear that he was getting overwhelmed and as time went on, the organization system he was using for files in our shared databases was getting outdated.

I have had to get to the point that I had to go find the files/answers I needed without asking him as he was taking longer and longer to respond since other companies were needing these types of files/answers besides just Amazon.

Okay, I am a problem solver, I can do this.

He often access company files outside the building.

The rural internet thing comes into play as the deadlines got shorter. Currently, we are not allowed into our building without giving our health compliance people a 24-hour notice.

Some of these requests I don’t know what I need until late at night. I realized our office wi-fi reaches the parking lot, so I would go late at night and sit in my car to download the files I need. Perfect go around.

Due to various personal reasons, I can only really do this at night. So, during the day, I have to rely on my questionable internet connection to connect to the system I need to look up some various info.

Okay, on to the malicious compliance.

But his new operations director limited all remote access.

Our new ops director is in the process of preparing to sunset our current operations software that is a decade past when it should have been replaced.

We are planning to go live with our new, cloud based ops software at the start of the year. I have checked it out and it will be great once it is there. However, I still need to use the old software.

If I sit in the parking lot, I can access it as “on site” with no issue and it works great, but I can’t sit out in my car for 8 hours nor can I do it in the middle of the day.

So, during the day, I have to remote access it and it is janky and slow.

For context, the entire time it has taken me to type this has been as long as it has taken for a single click in the system to show the next prompt.

Okay, it literally just showed the next one for context.

So, ops director is limiting the remote access as we are preparing to sunset the system.

He sent out an e-mail to tell everyone.

His request for remote access was denied.

Okay, I let him know my situation and that I need to keep the remote access or I will have to bug the compliance manager non-stop and he is already overwhelmed.

Not long after his reply that I will just have to manage through is when the compliance manager turned in his notice. So, ops director is next in line for me to have to reach out to.

I again asked that he keep me with remote access or this will be a huge time consumption for him and he has better things to do.

Nope, just going to have to bug him. I warned him that as these deadlines are getting closer, it will be a lot and the requests come in at all hours of the day. He said it will be no big issue.

So operations director received a flood of file requests that led to the restoration of his remote access.

Compliance manager left last week. I tried to keep it to e-mails at first, but then I had to start using IM. Then I had to Zoom call him.

Then it got to the point it was late at night and I had to text. Not only just the initial requests, but depending on what he found, I would have to reply for a follow up question.

I went back and counted it. In 7 days, I e-mailed him 58 times with multiple requests in each e-mail, Zoom called him 36 times, IM’d him 212 times, and texted him 148 times between 7 PM and 6AM on Saturday and Sunday evenings/mornings.

I received an e-mail earlier this morning that they are restoring my remote access and will keep it active through the launch of the replacement system.

Nothing changes a director’s mind faster than weekend emails.

Let’s find out what other users have to say about this story.

Here’s a sarcastic comment.

A hilarious suggestion from this user.

Share the pain, says this one.

This person applauds him for his resourcefulness.

And lastly, here’s an excellent advice.

Directors almost never want a share of the workload.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.