Maintenance Asks Tenant To Provide “Proof” Of Mouse Infestation By Bringing What They Catch To The Main Office, They Maliciously Comply 

In this New York Times Best of Modern Love essay from autumn 2019, a mouse war rages in an apartment. It all starts when their cat strolls proudly with a mouse in his mouth, in need of a maintenance call. At first, maintenance thinks it’s nothing to worry about, because there’s no mouse shit on the floor and all the traps are empty. But that was just the beginning, and soon more mice were showing up — up to 16 documented intrusions via photos — and the tenants became increasingly frustrated. Though the landlord will not get a professional exterminator for the tenants demanding one, he will send maintenance to repeatedly “patch” holes and other possible entries without nipping the bloody situation in the bud.

And in the coup de grâce of ridiculousness, maintenance advises the tenants to bring each captured mouse into the office for “analysis.” The couple bends the knee to malicious compliance for the absurd. One brings a dead mouse to the office in the middle of a bustling leasing tour, highlighting management’s incompetence to future residents. The landlord was mortified by the scene and, fearing damage to his reputation, promptly summoned a pest exterminator, who then detected and sealed hundreds of access points. And with that, the issue with the mouses finally over.

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What do you do with 17 mice in your home? Probably pack them up and bring them to the landlord

Well, OK, not 17, but still, at least one—it’s enough proof of an infestation, and a good way to “conform to the letter, but not the spirit, of a [ridiculous] request”