The Original Post
This happened years ago in my past life as a graphic designer. But I still think about it to this day. I was 22 and fresh out of college with my graphic design degree. My first gig was at an advertising company. We mainly did those really horrible print car ads that you got in your mailbox and immediately threw in the trash. You know the ones: only one font and it’s huge and screaming at you. Every inch of space has a picture of car, cramming 50 cars into a 7×5 inch area. You know… trash!
Fresh out of school, I foolishly made suggestions on how to make actual ads and not hot garbage. But it was made clear to me very quickly and very aggressively that they wanted trash. So I compiled.
Now, we had one client who was THE client. He brought in the most money and bought the most trash ads from us. And he also was very specific on just how bad his ads should look. Font was Impact on all ads and it filled every corner of the paper. On one ad I remember him demanding I squeeze over 100 cars into a single space. It legit looked like a magic eye poster by the time it went to print.
I dealt with that guy and his unreasonable requests for over a year. Well the guy amazingly got worse. Started telling me which colors I could or couldn’t use. And one by one, the colors dropped out. And eventually I had enough. After he said I could no longer use orange I said “just to confirm, you do not like and do not want me to use red, orange, yellow, green, purple, pink, brown, white, or black?”
He confirmed. I said okay. The only color left was blue. So I spent hours taking all the cars, all the fonts, all the text and all design elements and making them all the same exact blue. No shading. No highlights. Just a flat blue. The end result was one giant flat blue square. Like someone took a paint roller over it.
Now I could have made a blue square in two seconds. But I spent hours using all the elements he told me to use to cover my ass. Because when we sent that blue square to proof, the client of course blew up. Called me screaming. I replied calmly that he told me the only color I could use was blue. I used all the pictures and elements he asked for and did exactly what he wanted and made them blue. Our calls were recorded so I didn’t get in any trouble with my boss. And I got to waste several more hours remaking the same ad but with the original car pictures and elements.
It was a really fun day.
What Reddit Said
Redditors absolutely loved this story of perfect malicious compliance. Many praised OP for following instructions to the letter while exposing the client’s ridiculous demands. However, some pointed out the brilliance of spending hours creating the blue square using all required elements rather than just making a simple rectangle.
The consensus was clear: this was textbook malicious compliance at its finest. Moreover, fellow designers chimed in with their own horror stories about impossible clients. In fact, many wished they had OP’s courage to push back against unreasonable demands.
The Verdict
Reddit’s verdict was unanimous praise for this graphic designer malicious compliance masterpiece. This represents the perfect balance of following orders while highlighting their absurdity. It’s a classic example of malicious compliance that teaches clients to be more reasonable with their workplace demands.
Original post from r/MaliciousCompliance (3,341 upvotes, 123 comments)