Every workplace has at least one person who does everything to work as little as possible, even if it means piling the work onto someone else. The less they have to do, the better, which often leads them to make some weird requests of their colleagues. The question is, should the colleagues comply, or should they refuse to "help" others ease up their workload?
Generally, I don't mind helping my coworkers when they ask for my help with their workload. If there is something I can do to make life easier for them, and as long as it doesn't cost me my whole workday, I usually don't mind giving them a helping hand. The situation usually gets complicated when they start making demands that make no sense to either of us. When that happens, it becomes clear that a helping hand is not really what they truly need.
That is the case with the employee and their boss's assistant in the story posted in r/MaliciousCompliance. The boss's assistant seems to want to do as little work as possible, which means that she makes some odd demands to the boss's employee. After she made a mistake, she refused to take accountability and blamed the issue on the employee, which led the employee to ensure it would never happen again. The employee made a point to be as clear as possible with each document they sent the assistant, which in turn added more work for her. Something that we already established she does not like.
When the assistant inevitably complained about the over-documentation to her boss, the employee was already ready with proof showing that the over-documentation was exactly what the assistant asked for. Scroll down to read how the boss reacted.