So this is a funny story where I know I wasn't exactly in the right but it was still Malicious Compliance.

So I'm a software engineer. And I'm a gal. So as you can imagine, I'm always either the only, or one of very very few non-males in the team.

This MC is from a previous job of mine. I was the primary SWE (Software Engineer) on a project. One random Wednesday (yes I remember the day of the week) we had a meeting scheduled with the client. This was a large company and the client was in a different country, so the meeting was scheduled virtually.

Now if you know anything about me, I'm a bit of a promiscuous gal and I guess this day I was being a bit silly and wore a dress that was a teeny tiny but too short. At lunch I was told by my manager that someone had complained and I needed to go home and change. I knew I was wrong and immediately apologized but I brought up the meeting I had coming up.

Now as per company policy, we could not take any company equipment home unless we were the scheduled on call, or unless we had permission. I could not take this call from home without the company laptop I needed to demo something, and I knew none of the other engineers on my team could manage the demo (yes they knew how it worked, but no one knew it as well as me and they had to refer to manuals to do the demo and answer questions which is not a great presentation for the client).

So I offered 2 options:

1. I get to take the company laptop home for the night
2. I sit in one of the conference rooms for the next hour and a half and then join the meeting from that room

I was told neither was an option. I either had to go home and then return after changing, or go home and join in the call via a telephone and let a teammate present. I presented my arguments and my manager then told me that I should change and come back. There's no ways I was doing that mainly because it would take too long. I made that clear. So he offered that I could take the next off out of my (unlimited) medical leave if I came back because he knew how important the client was.

I once again suggested I take the company laptop home. I had done it multiple times when I was on call so it wasn't a trust issue. He said "no that's only when you cannot take a call from the office." I gave one more shot to explaining that even if I went home and left right away I would miss most of the call but he did not care. He said he would take care of the call until I reached.

I said okay and put in the next day off along with an email confirming what we had discussed and then headed home. I obviously was not in a rush. I got home, changed and went back to the office. As soon as I left home I started receiving frantic calls asking where I was. I explained that it would take me 45 minutes to reach the office if traffic allowed and they should start the call.

Bottom line: No one was prepared, everyone freaked out and made a mess of the presentation, the client was unimpressed and did not move forward with any further projects.

So yes, I messed up. But I was willing to make up for it. He did not listen to me and chose to dismiss my statements, so I did exactly what he wanted. Could I have stopped at a mall 5 minutes away and picked up leggings? Yes. Did I choose to follow his instructions by the letter? Yes.

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Edit: I cannot reply to so many comments so thank you everyone for your comments.

I want to clarify that the problem was not with my outfit being too short for the meeting. If the meeting had happened before the complaint reached my manager, I'd have gone home and taken the L on the half day. But the problem came because I had to attend the meeting and they had to enforce their punishment on me.

I forgot to put the outcome. The manager did try to blame me, but I simply reminded him that I had told him about the issue and emailed him the discussion of our meeting. I had explicitly told him this would happen if he sent me home to change but he said he would handle it. He wasn't that bad of a person to say that didn't happen so he simply used that to make our lives harder about everyone being fully involved in all projects which meant a lot more meetings and a lot less work getting done, so I quit not much longer and I know multiple others did because it was affecting bonuses too.