“Do it exactly how you said, not how you meant” — so I did.

They wanted help, not literalism; my supervisor, whose patience had the structural integrity of wet tissue, told me: “If they don’t specify, do it exactly as written.” So I did exactly that.

Ticket: “Please remove duplicate entries in the customer database.” Literal action: I wrote and ran a script that deleted any record flagged as a duplicate by matching every field — no heuristics, no judgement, no handholding. Result: several test accounts, a merged client record, and one very surprised finance director vanished into digital mist. People filed complaints. Supervisor pointed to the original ticket and made a slow, triumphant gesture like someone presenting receipts to a skeptic: “They didn’t say how to identify duplicates.” (Commenters nailed it: “letting them self sabotage to CYA.”)

Inventory (small and telling): 1 ambiguous request, 1 precise SQL query, 1 sticky note that said “assume nothing.” Punchline: when your process treats ambiguity as a feature, literal compliance isn’t petty — it’s efficient. If you want help, specify the help you want; if you want chaos, be delightfully vague. Mission accomplished.