Simple Sabotage Field Manual (Updated for Office Workers)

General Interference with Organizations and Production

Organizations and Conferences

• Insist on doing everything through "channels". Never permit shortcuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
• Make "speeches". Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate comments.
• When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration". Attempt to make the committees as large as possible - never less than five.
• Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
• Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.
• Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of advisability of that decision.
• Advocate "caution". Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
• Be worried about the propriety of any decision - raise the question of whether such action as contemplates lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.
• In meetings and general coordination, promote and lock in sub-optimal choices.

Managers and Supervisors

• Demand written order, policies, and "best practices".
• "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can.
• Do everything possible to delay the delivery of orders Even though parts of an order may be ready beforehand, don't deliver it until it is completely ready.
• Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.
• Order high quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get them argue about it. Warn that inferior materials will mean inferior work.
• In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers or poor machines.
• Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products. Send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye.
• When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions.
• To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work.
• Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
• Multiply paperwork in plausible ways. Start duplicate files.
• Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.
• Apply all regulations to the last letter.
• In your function as a supervisor, act arbitrary and capricious. When addressing conflicts between your subordinates, always take the side of the one who was in the wrong.
• Towards your own supervisor, act boisterous and demand scope increases for your area whenever possible.
• To lower morale, take credit other people's work and blame productive colleagues for every mishap (real or imaginary).

Office Workers

• Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names. Use wrong addresses.
• Prolong correspondence with government bureaus.
• Attract undue regulatory or legal attention whenever possible.
• Misfile essential documents.
• Keep unnecessary paper copies of everything and insist on proper filing/archiving.
• Tell important callers the boss is busy or out of the office.
• Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope.
• Misuse computer equipment and pretend not to understand as many things as possible without attracting undue attention to yourself.
• Open many tickets for IT and office equipment "problems".

Employees

• Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job.
• Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can. When you go to the lavatory, spend a longer time there than necessary. Forget tools so that you will have to go back after them.
• Even if you understand the language, pretend not to understand instructions in a foreign tongue.
• Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than once. Pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with unnecessary questions.
• Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that these things are preventing you from doing your job right.
• Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.
• Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so that they have to be done over. Make mistakes or omit requested information in forms.
• If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to the management. See that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management, involving the presence of a large number of employees at each presentation, entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so on.
• Mix good parts with unusable scrap and rejected parts.

General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion

• Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.
• Report imaginary spies or dangers to the police.
• Act stupid.
• Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.
• Misunderstand all sorts of regulations concerning such matters as rationing, transportation, traffic regulations.
• Complain against replacement materials.
• In public treat enemy affiliates coldly.
• Stop all conversation when enemy affiliates enter a cafe or other location.
• Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.
• Do not cooperate in salvage or recycling schemes.
• Make mistakes in routing so that information and materials will be send to the wrong place in the company.