Google's definition for Malicious Compliance:
Malicious compliance is the practice of strictly following a rule or instruction to the exact letter, even when you know it will cause a bad, inefficient, or counterproductive result.
How It Works
Letter vs. Spirit: You follow the exact wording of a policy while completely ignoring its intended purpose or common sense.
Plausible Deniability:
You cannot easily get in trouble because you technically did exactly what you were told to do ["I followed the rules"].
Protest:
People use it as a passive-aggressive way to show how foolish, impractical, or flawed a rule or a manager's order is.
Common Examples:
No Overtime:
A boss bans all overtime to save money. An employee stops working immediately at 5:00 p.m. right in the middle of an urgent project, causing a missed deadline.
Strict Approvals: A manager demands written approval for every single purchase. An employee submits a formal request to buy a single 50-cent pen, clogging up the approval system.
CCing the Boss on Everything:
A micromanager demands to be copied on all emails to monitor progress.
The employee complies by copying the manager on every single internal chatter, trivial update, and automated notification, flooding their inbox.
Why It Happens:
Employees feel micromanaged, ignored, or frustrated by poor leadership.
Workers feel unsafe or tired of speaking up, so they use literal obedience as a quiet form of pushback.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicious_compliance