When a Dying Radio Battery Shuts Down a Theme Park: Malicious Compliance Done Right
There’s nothing quite like a summer job at a theme park: sticky uniforms, the smell of popcorn in the air, and the high-stakes responsibility of making sure nobody accidentally launches themselves while you’re manning a ride. But what if the biggest threat to safety isn’t the ride itself—but a dead walkie-talkie battery and some truly questionable management decisions?
That’s exactly what happened to Reddit user u/bingbong_Iamwrong, who shared a jaw-dropping tale of theme park drama, dead radios, and the kind of malicious compliance that makes you want to clap out loud. Buckle up—this story’s got more twists than a rollercoaster.
Let’s set the scene: our narrator, a responsible 17-year-old, is running a busy theme park ride that requires tight coordination among a team. Communication is key, and while radios are the norm, every employee is trained in hand signals, just in case. Enter M—the college-aged “lead” with a talent for avoiding responsibility and chilling in air-conditioned booths.
The summer is already tense, with several near-misses involving employees and even a guest inside the ride fencing at the wrong time. (Pro tip: You want to be on the ride, not under it.) The pattern? Inexperienced staff getting thrown into the deep end while M is conveniently MIA, presumably sipping a cold soda somewhere cool.
On one especially hectic day, radios start dying left and right. Our narrator, being the responsible type, goes to swap batteries—just as trained. But in their brief absence, a substitute operator (who hasn’t worked this ride in a month) makes a mistake, trapping a co-worker inside the fence. Fortunately, the emergency stop gets hit in time. Disaster averted—but management comes down harder than a dropped safety bar.
Management’s solution? Fire the poor substitute, try to pin the blame on our narrator, and then, in a beautiful display of corporate logic, issue a new rule: If a single radio is dying, the entire ride must be shut down until a manager brings a new battery. The managers, busy as ever, take their sweet time responding, leaving lines of furious customers and a team that could easily have solved the problem in two minutes flat.
Here’s where the beauty of malicious compliance shines. The narrator, following the new rule to the letter, shuts down the ride every time a radio starts to croak. The result? Mob-level customer fury and a flood of complaints. Suddenly, management remembers what hand signals are for and quietly scraps the rule, letting sanity (and actual safety) return.
So, what’s the moral of this theme park fable? Sometimes, the most effective way to highlight a ridiculous policy is to comply with it to the letter. When frontline workers are forced to follow poorly thought-out rules, the resulting chaos can be the only thing that gets management to see the light. It’s a classic case of “be careful what you wish for”—especially when what you wish for is less common sense on the job.
But let’s not ignore the real villain here: leadership that hides from responsibility and throws their team under the bus. It’s a tale as old as time (or at least as old as summer jobs), but it never fails to infuriate. The fact that our narrator stood their ground, refused to sign bogus paperwork, and ultimately returned as a better lead the next summer is a lesson for anyone who’s ever been blamed for someone else’s mistakes: sometimes you have to ride out the storm, but you might just come back stronger.
Have you ever had to follow a ridiculous work rule or been thrown under the bus by a manager? Share your own stories of malicious compliance or workplace mishaps in the comments below! And next time you’re at a theme park, give a nod to the ride operators—they’re probably dealing with more drama than you’ll ever know.
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Original Reddit Post: If a single radio's battery dies, shut it all down