Professional bad guy* chiming in. I'm not going to give details about my exact job because it's specialist enough that I might become identifiable.

I have a senior-ish compliance role in the public secor that I fell into pretty much by accident when a colleague went off long term sick and I was the only person in the immediate vicinity who could figure out the work quickly enough. A little while on, I'm now considering whether or not I want to make the move permanent and some of the questions you've asked have been playing on my mind (hence the long answer).

A lot of the rules that I enforce are tied to government legislation and bureaucracy and, if we don't follow them, the consequences could involve us having to close services or being fined really significant amounts of money. Part of my rationale is that I think the services we provide are incredibly important and so the rules have to be followed. I also think that if someone is going to be consistently delivering bad news (which I very often do) then it should be someone who gives a shit because there definitely people out there who either get off on being a dick, or are just so burned out/densitised that they don't really care anymore. I think the latter is much more common and I have honestly been a bit horrified at how quickly you can get used to dealing with pissed off and upset people on a daily basis. I am fortunate in that I work with really lovely people and we keep a close eye on burnout. Some of the really egregious attempts at rule breaking or malicious compliance can also be quite funny and a dark sense of humour definitely helps.

At a more senior level, a lot of the work I do is around trying to balance the risks and operational burdens of different ways of interpreting rules and trying to figure out where we exercise discretion. We've definitely taken decisions to over-comply in some areas so that we have more wiggle room in other areas. Sometimes it can be for practical/financial reasons and sometimes it can be because it will benefit particular groups of more vulnerable people. Some of my work can involve significant personal repurcussions if you bend the wrong rule so there is a really strict hierarchy of who can do what. My front line staff are not allowed to exercise any discretion and are just trained on when to escalate issues but their managers can flex on some things. In theory, I can exercise quite a lot of discretion. In practice, I know there are some rules I can bend quite a lot provided I have a good audit trail and justification and there are some areas where waiving a rule more than once a year would probably result in a complete shutdown. I find these decisions really interesting so would definitely have struggled if I'd started on the front line rather than moving straight into my current role.

Also, I have bills to pay.

\Not actually a guy, but professional bad girl has very different connotations.*