Do not attempt to out-malicious-compliance the staff at the malicious compliance conference.
Some dipshit decided to pay the conference fee ($250) in quarters. He handed us a wrapped plastic bag full of loose change. “It’s all there,” he said with a shit-eating grin, “you can count it.”
Oh buddy. We’re going to count it. What were you expecting?
At about the time I got to $60, he offered to give us $300 collateral so he could get his badge and go to the conference.
No, bud. You get to watch the most dyscalculic staffer count to a thousand while all your friends go in to the breakfast and find seats for the first talk.
“Ruining someone’s day” is the favorite hobby of everyone here. Why would you hand us the perfect opportunity to wreck your shit and think that was an own? Half the con is calling him “Untraceable,” the other half is calling him “Quarter Boy” and nobody cares what he says his handle is.
I spent an hour counting that and made him go fetch me baggies to hold it every fifty dollars.
This ended up being a good bonus prank for me too, because when the counting was done I wrapped the bags in gaffer’s tape and spent the rest of the day handing it to people very casually while saying “oh here, hold this for a sec” and then watching they weren’t ready for the weight (I only did this to people I know well enough to know this wouldn’t hurt them).
It’s an infosec conference, so it’s a weekend in a hotel full of people whose favorite thing is breaking the law and whose second favorite thing is following the letter of the law while cheerfully violating the spirit.
After the hell of the past two days, this reminded me of what America could and should be about. It’s a little pocket of hope when our administration is trying to extinguish diversity and community and basic human decency and replace them with fear and hate and division.
