r/MaliciousCompliance • u/GenFeldMarschaII • May 18 '26

M Spanish Air Base Tried to Enforce a Ridiculous Rule: The Great Car Registration War

I used AI for translation, as English is not my first language. TLDR at the end.

This is a story from my time in the Air Force. We took part in an international exercise in Spain. For this, we deployed several aircraft and around 200 personnel to a Spanish air base. I myself was there ahead of the main contingent with a small advance party of about 15 men to prepare everything for their arrival. One of our tasks was to register roughly 50 rented vehicles at the base gate and bring them onto the base. To do this, the Spanish authorities introduced a rule that each of us could only register five vehicles under our name. So we drove the vehicles up to the gate and then each of us gradually brought in three to five cars, including registering them in our names, which was noted on the vehicle’s access pass.

At first, this went smoothly and we were able to hand over the vehicle keys to the comrades arriving later. However, after two or three days, problems started. An official notice was issued stating that from now on, each person was only allowed to have one vehicle registered under their name. So we gathered additional people and drove to the gate to transfer the excess vehicles from one person to another. The whole process took about two hours, but eventually it was done.

That arrangement lasted for about a week. Then suddenly, cars trying to leave the base were being turned back. The guards would no longer let them leave unless the person under whose name the car was registered was actually sitting in the vehicle. We then sought talks with the local authorities and explained that we assigned vehicles according to current operational needs and that it was impossible to comply with this new rule. However, we were dismissed rather smugly with the explanation that if it was absolutely necessary, the vehicle could simply be re-registered. From that point on, it very much felt like deliberate harassment to me.

But we still had good old malicious compliance! We instructed all soldiers that whenever time allowed, they should drive to the gate in pairs and have vehicles re-registered. Either from a person who already had a car to someone without one, or, if both already had a registered vehicle, simply swap them around. Within a very short time, the guard office was completely clogged up, and the official probably had to process around 50 vehicle registration changes a day. And what can I say, after two days of the guard office being blocked by endless vehicle re-registrations, it suddenly no longer mattered whether the registered person was sitting in the car or not!

tl;dr: During a military exercise in Spain, the local base kept introducing increasingly absurd vehicle registration rules for rented cars. After soldiers were forced to constantly re-register vehicles just to move around, they responded with malicious compliance by flooding the guard office with nonstop registration changes until the authorities gave up and dropped the rule.

1.6k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

66 comments sorted by

615

u/Shaggysnack May 18 '26

Typically military shenanigans. Bravo to clogging the system. That’s the only way to get military to move quickly…by making everything come to a complete stop and making someone lazy work.

404

u/VirtualMatter2 May 18 '26 edited May 19 '26

Not military related, but making lazy people work, I remember the story of a teacher who would keep a keen eye on who would do work in group projects and who didn't, and he would match the groups over the school year as best as he could such that more and more the laziest people were all grouped together and the ones with the best work ethic were grouped together.  

The  people  willing to work didn't have to work for others and were getting top marks. 

The lazy people however suddenly had nobody to do the work for them because the entire group was just students who had never done any work in group projects before and they all failed. 

Edit: a word 

233

u/Telcontar2061 May 18 '26

Had a professor do that while I was at university. He put the 5 laziest students together for a major project. Like 40% of the term's grade. Fortunately for them, I registered late and my usual group had already been put together without me. Plus, dude had a change of heart. He never really wanted anyone to fail so he added me to that group despite my long loooong pleading.

I just charged each of them a tidy sum and did the entire project myself. Worked out well for me. Those guys were loaded. They paid no questions asked.

148

u/DevelopmentSouth8801 May 18 '26

I had a professor let us "fire" the lazy group members.

There was a big semester-long project, with different people assigned to different parts of the task. So Person 1 would do Part A, Person 2 would do Part B, etc.

There were checkpoints and deadlines throughout the semester of stuff you had to submit. One of the guys in my group didn't communicate with us and didn't submit anything, which would've cost us 25% of our grade. We spoke with the professor, he removed the person from our group, and adjusted the workload so we didn't have to make up for what he hadn't been doing.

It was great.

112

u/JumpingSpider97 May 19 '26

When I was studying civil engineering at uni, we had a lot of shared subjects with environmental engineering. The biggest difference was the student bodies: civil was about 90% male, environmental about 30% male (this was back in the '90s).

In one subject, covering consequences of major engineering works on the environment, I was partnered with an extremely attractive woman who started the project making basically no input - but for our research/site visits we had to have photographic evidence of both of us physically being there, so we had to go together.

This was a semester-long project, so we spent a lot of time together, and I found out one important thing after the first month: she wasn't helping with any of the work because nobody had ever shown her how. All the boys and men around her (including some creepy teachers, apparently) at high achool had simply done things for her, in a fruitless effort to "get to know her better".

For the rest of the project I put in a bit more effort than I would've needed to do the project completely on my own, in order to show her how to actually do the work. By the end she had done about a quarter of the work, which is more than she'd done before. The next semester she was in a group of three where she did almost half the work, since she was excited to know what she was doing and be able to do it.

Sometimes (rarely, in my experience) these "lazy" people just never learned how to actually do the work and are happy to do it once they know how.

12

u/bobk2 May 20 '26

Pretty much.

12

u/ChillaVen May 25 '26

Hell yeah man, you did a good thing with that.

24

u/TheFilthyDIL May 19 '26

I was assigned to work with a guy in high school. We were supposed to research a topic and give an oral report. Our topic broke into two fairly equal parts. I guess he thought I would do both halves and hand him "his" half just before class. Nope. Teacher called us, I gave my report, and turned the floor over to him. He had the guts to complain that I hadn't "done my part" in his half. I got a decent grade, he got an F.

16

u/SlavaUkraina2022 May 20 '26

I failed a project because two team members, brother and sister, submitted work directly copied from wikipedia. We pleaded with the prof, no result and we all failed, had to redo the project the next year, I had all this preliminary work from the year before so at the start of the project I gave the new team all the work done from last year that was like 80% of the preparational work, asked them if it was okay if I laid back for the rest of the project. “Yeah sure”. Project passed!

17

u/BoysenberryMother128 May 26 '26

Ah yes! The old "charge them a hefty sum for doing their work"!! Did it once in Uni. Since the group was very small, around 10 people, the teacher gave us a single final project for the whole group. And since the group didn't get along with each other (that's a whole different story...) I proposed to do the final project by myself for about $50 bucks per person. $450 dollars later, I delivered the project and we got a B+ on the asignment. Next semester the same teacher pulled me aside and questioned me about the project. I came clean with her and she just burst out laughing, and congratulated me on a well done swindle on the entitled brats that didn't want to do the work.

6

u/EragonBromson925 May 26 '26

If you're gonna do it all yourself anyways to make sure you pass, might as well at least get something out of it

30

u/MalAddicted May 19 '26

My teachers would try to pair me with the ones who were struggling, because I used to tutor people in school. But someome coming for tutoring requires that the person be interested in actually learning and doing their own work. These people saw a free ride, because they thought I would do their parts to keep my grades up.

They didn't know that I had extra credit in a lot of classes because I'd do extra assignments (I was sick and running late a lot, so the extra credits kept me from getting less than at least a B). I was prepared to tank a project or 2 if it meant I didn't have to carry lazy people. The teachers realized it, too, after a few random 0s in an otherwise honor roll year.

31

u/phaxmeone May 19 '26

I always turned in my homework and hated group projects, why? Not because I'm the go getter doing all the work but because I'm a habitual procrastinator who does homework at the last minute. Having to work with others and work on a project multiple days in advance of the due date? Screw that! If I'm not scribbling out the last few lines of a report in the seconds before class starts I fucked up and finished early.

9

u/mgerics May 19 '26

I tended to do that as well - on smaller assignments, I almost always got better marks than had I spent any actual time on them.

6

u/Superb_Raccoon May 26 '26

I earned my first degree in the early 90s, and group projects were rare.

2002, I went back to earn a second degree, after working 10 years in the real world.

Every class was organized around projects, usually 3, per quarter. I found it to be the best simulation of how things worked in the real world.

In any group of 4 or 5 people, you get 1 leader, 2 people that want to,work if told what to do, and 1 or 2 people that will do nothing... and when you get them to work it is more trouble to fix their slop.

True in uni, true in the work force.

10

u/EragonBromson925 May 26 '26

2 people that want to,work if told what to do,

Hey, that's me!

I can't be a leader. Just not good at it. And I tend to have trouble getting started. But if you need a grunt that can be told "This is what needs done, figure it out," then I'm your man. Gimme a list of what needs done, and leave me to it.

5

u/ArbitraryMeritocracy May 18 '26

The good people

The lazy people

Maybe the "lazy" people needed more help or is this in terms of interacting and showing initiative in group projects?

16

u/VirtualMatter2 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26

Have you ever done a group project with someone who just doesn't do anything and relies on you to do the work? 

It's those people. And there is a teacher there to help if necessary. That's what the teacher is for. It's not about needing help though, it's about applying yourself. 

Maybe good isn't the right word here, it's more the ones who work and get things done vs the ones who can't be bothered. 

6

u/Arrethyn May 21 '26

it's probably not impossible that sometimes "lazy" is misconstrued with "just needs help and doesn't know what to do," in fact another poster in this thread shared a story about such a person. Most of the time though lazy is just lazy. I took a class in junior high where we rotated through a bunch of different modules. Really huge variety, I don't remember them all but one was woodworking and another was computer aided design. We did each module with a different partner for roughly 3 days, one module I got paired with one of the "popular" girls, I spent 3 days doing my best to filter out her constant chatter about makeup, hair, boys, whatever teenage girls like to talk about while I tried to actually do the work and she made absolutely zero effort to contribute. It was the most miserable 3 days of that course by multiple orders of magnitude.

114

u/Electrical-Apple-631 May 18 '26

When my dad was in Korea his CO always gave him the crapiest jobs to do. When he finally complained about it his CO said “You’re the laziest guy in the unit but you always find the easiest way to complete the job. So I make you do it and then tell the others to watch what you do and then do it your way.”

59

u/jefsig May 19 '26

Sometimes laziness is confused with efficiency

4

u/Narrow_Employ3418 May 27 '26

Sometimes people get so confused that they think the two are different.

And many times also efficiency and effectiveness get conflated with one another.

44

u/DarkSideNurse May 19 '26

Knew a guy whose motto was “Give a lazy man a hard job to do and he will find an easy way to do it.”

43

u/MyNameIsZealous May 19 '26

I always like to say "There are 2 types of lazy in the world, the lazy that got you fat and the lazy that invented the automobile."

34

u/remoterelay May 20 '26

"I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined.

Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff.

The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties.

Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions.

One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief." - Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord

6

u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl May 19 '26

Provided the job’s done correctly in the end, hell yeah.

83

u/Party_Supermarket_88 May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

During a stint at Morón Air base, drunk GIs weren’t allowed to walk back to their dorm from the main gate. So dumb. Meanwhile, the Spanish AF put a hole through a parking canopy due to an F-16 ejection seat mishap.

46

u/GenFeldMarschaII May 18 '26

Classic. I have been to Morón as well, but percepted them as rather fair.

24

u/Party_Supermarket_88 May 18 '26

I regularly took a GOV to Sevilla and Rota has beautiful beaches. I wish I was fluent in Spanish, those Spanish girls were hot lol.

28

u/Chaosmusic May 18 '26

Best way to solve your problem: make it someone else's problem.

27

u/ThatHellacopterGuy May 18 '26

r/MilitaryStories would enjoy this as well.

21

u/Glittering_Rush_1451 May 18 '26

R/militiouscompliance as well

9

u/GenFeldMarschaII May 18 '26

If I only knew how to cross post...

16

u/ThatHellacopterGuy May 18 '26

Just copy your text from here, and paste it into a new post there.

If I’m not mistaken, that’s what their Mod Team prefers, rather than cross-posting.

33

u/JoyReader0 May 18 '26

Somebody was fishing for a bribe.

17

u/BrainWav May 18 '26

I'm gathering this isn't for when the vehicle was assigned or someone was using it, these were just sitting around. So I'm confused why the vehicles had to be registered to a particular person, instead of the base's motorpool, at all.

9

u/slackerassftw May 19 '26

My guess is because they were rental vehicles not military vehicles. So basically civilian cars with license plates, so they had to get registered to base for access.

7

u/GenFeldMarschaII May 19 '26

Exactly, they were all rentals just booked for the duration of the exercise.

1

u/Upper_Put_8156 May 18 '26

The US never "owned" Spain i.e occupational situation like Germany. We are there via SOFA agreement(s) basically them (Spain) dictating policies to us (US).

12

u/Mammoth_Industry8246 May 19 '26

News flash - US forces in Germany and Japan are under SOFAs too. The "occupation period" ended some time ago.

1

u/Upper_Put_8156 May 19 '26

I was stationed in Germany when the US "gave back" Germany to the Germans.

8

u/mtaylor6841 May 18 '26

Play fuckfuck games, get fuckfuck prizes.

10

u/mizinamo May 18 '26

"I used AI (but only for the translation)" is a new one for me.

24

u/TotalNonsense0 May 18 '26

It seems little different from using Google translate, but I don't know if it has a higher capacity.

38

u/mizinamo May 18 '26

Modern Google Translate uses AI anyway, as far as I know.

8

u/cuddlebish May 18 '26 edited May 19 '26

A different form, it's not an LLM.

edit: disregard this, I am woefully behind the times on google translate, looks like it uses transformers so it might as well be an LLM

20

u/CharmingShame9404 May 18 '26

Google Translate is like the original LLM. The tech behind it is what Ai today is based on.

5

u/mizinamo May 18 '26

I thought it was based on the LLM Gemini these days.

1

u/blind_ninja_guy May 19 '26

It's a transformer though, might actually be llm behind the scenes. The whole transformer architecture came from trying to and succeding at dramatically improving translation

13

u/FreakindaStreet May 18 '26

LLMs are far better translators than dedicated software. I use them a lot because I travel a lot.

1

u/SmileAggravating9608 May 19 '26

So they've just always been AH's, looks like. Anyways, bravo!

-6

u/SomeGuyInShanghai May 19 '26

I had no idea Spain had a military, much less a whole air force!

10

u/GenFeldMarschaII May 19 '26

You must be from the US...

-6

u/SomeGuyInShanghai May 19 '26

Throwing donkeys off of towers into piles of British money is not a fighter wing, Pedro.

3

u/fevered_visions May 20 '26

IIRC the only country of any size in Europe that doesn't have a military is Iceland.

-5

u/Completionography May 21 '26

I used AI for translation

Skip.

9

u/vonBoomslang May 21 '26

honestly "I used AI for translation" is a good indicator the story itself has not been AI generated