Sticking to Orders

So a few years ago I was an engineer for one of the largest bread makers in the UK. We worked as a team of 4 including the team leader. Our plant had 3 production lines with a combined output of 220 loaves a minute.

Our engineering manager had just been sacked and we were given some other pointless manager, who could only manage numbers not people. We all disliked him as he'd pushed good engineer's out of the department as well as stabbing operators in the back and getting them sacked.

This was his first order: Engineers are not to be in the workshop unless working on something, or shift handover. Engineers are to be assigned a production line each with the spare looking after the 12 slicers and baggers. Engineers are to patrol the lines unless on break, no deviations allowed

And this is where our malicious compliance came in.

Due to the large scale manufacturing, there was a lot of heavy equipment. Some jobs could occupy all 4 of us for manual labour. We were also differently skilled. Some mechanical, some electrical and me as the sole multiskilled and software tech on our shift. The way the bread is produced, if one part of the line goes down (eg oven) then all the bread on the conveyors, proofer and mixer has about 5 to 10 minutes before it becomes scrap.

We stuck to our orders and all agreed, if we saw another engineer having to deal with a job that we'd all not help. We all agreed not to bust our balls, or create unnecessary work for the ops. If a line had a mechanic, but had an electrical issue it would have to wait until the next break rotation which could be 4 hours away.

After one shift the efficiency of the line dropped from an average of 75% to 40. And the scrap rate went from 25 to 50 percent. The bakery lost a shit ton of money that shift. It carried on for the night shift, then the assigned areas was abolished and never spoken about again the following morning