If you work for a certain kind of company or boss, it can be pretty satisfying to realize the opportunity to give as you’ve gotten – while still keeping your job – comes around.

This woman didn’t miss hers, that’s for sure.

She works IT for a financial company, and is engaged for far more hours than she typically gets paid for in a week – her boss expects it, but she likes her job so doesn’t mind too much.

The story starts with me and my company, I’m a 30-year-old businesswoman who works in an IT service in a bank space. I’m the girl for everything basically, but I’m a specialist for first level support, administration and backup, sometimes even networking.

Even when I’m not head of my it department, I’m basically had all the responsibilities of them, but unfortunately my pay grade doesn’t reflect that at all. I think of my Boss of my IT department as kinda lazy if not incompetent, he even brags about getting so much money for basically doing nothing.

I have a 40-hour week, but since the whole IT department is my responsibility I need to keep track of the servers and maybe problems that can occur 24/7, this is mostly done via emails. When the server status gives out a warning or a failure, I will get notified, and then I’m fixing the problem over remote desktop or going to the company itself (even in my free time).

I wouldn’t mind this, but I’m not getting paid for this, but on the other hand, I’m getting punished when something is going wrong.

Her Big Boss likes to give her grief for not dressing “fancy” enough even though she spends most of her days crawling under workstations, and that irks her a bit though.

My Bosses Boss wasn’t that much better. Since it was a fancy Bank, everyone should be in a suit the whole time, to let it look professional, best with a skirt and high heels.

Only problem is when you work in the first level support you need to do a lot of “behind the scenes” work, like slipping under the desk to do or repair cable management, doing work on the server rack and doing lots of other activities that makes you dirty.

You can imagine that this worn out my business clothes really, really fast and not only that, they were so impractical and really made my work harder. So I changed my clothes to a comfy Hoody and work pants to fit the work I’m doing a bit better.

When my Boss saw me, he was furious, demanded I can’t look like “a poor hobo” inside his bank. I told him that I demand work clothes for both occasions because they are expensive and gets worn out quickly. He refused, and I wasn’t really happy about this.

The opportunity for comeuppance came when the Big Boss had the bright idea to institute “quiet hours,” in which no one would be able to access or respond to their work emails.

Someday, my Bosses Boss (head of the whole company) called me.

He had a plan. He wanted to create “quiet hours”, means he didn’t want his employees working on weekends to let them rest properly. (At first glance, you could say : Hey, that’s a nice idea. Yeah…. no, he just didn’t like to pay them for overwork, because he got in some legal trouble with overwork paying in general. Not only that, some employees have strict deadlines and need the extra time to get work done.)

To actively ensure nobody can’t work over the weekend, he wanted the following : “Please make sure NO ONE can access their emails and remote desktop over the weekend, no exceptions!”

She asked for instructions in writing, so that she was clear on exactly what he wanted and also so that she would have proof of what he said.

Since we had a ticket system and be able to attach emails to tickets, I ask him to write and official work task. (this has two reasons. First, I like everything documented. Second, I have a something to protect and secure myself if the task I was giving is incorrect. And it’s exactly this that saved me)

And sure enough, he said “NO EXCEPTIONS” and she was off and running – even though she knew exactly what was coming.

So, she cut-off after hours and weekend email access for the entire company – her boss and herself included.

So I was in my office desk again, thinking how to get the task done and what implication it will have and then… it was clear to me what it meant!

The email came from my Boss with the Task and indeed he wrote : “for EVERYONE, NO EXCEPTIONS”.

I was thinking to myself : Should I write them, the implications it would have? After thinking, I thought of how I am treated as a worker and I… decided against it.

I was working immediately at this task and made an automated process to block every access to emails after Friday 6PM to Monday 6AM.

Things were going great until he called her at home, stressed because he could not get into his emails and of course “everyone” hadn’t meant him too.

She said it did, and she could fix it…on Monday when she had access to her own email again.

Weekend came, and it was Saturday, and I was calm relaxed because if you have not noticed by now, by cutting down EVERYONE’s emails, means of course… that I don’t receive any updates on the Servers. I can’t possibly work on it because my remote access is also cut, of course. (IF you think : You could forward your work email address to your private address, no I can’t because we have a very strict data protection. Nothing is allowed to go out.) I’m happy!

It’s still Saturday, middle of the day, I’m cooking myself and my husband a nice meal and my telephone rings, it’s my Bosses Boss!

He talks with a stressed voice and told me that he can’t access his emails. I needed a second to process this, but I responded : “That doesn’t surprise me at all, since you ordered me to cut EVERYONE’s email access, without exceptions”.

He was angry, very angry, and told me that this obviously doesn’t count for him. I told him that he specifically told me that they are NO exceptions, and he stated EVERYONE. He then argued that this wasn’t how he phrased it, so I reread him his own email. After that, he was silent for a moment. He noticed his flaw in his logic.

I broke the silence and ask him : “Sir, if you still want access to your emails on the weekend, that’s no problem, please send me a request per email and I’ll work on it first thing on Monday.”

A bit angry again, he replied that he wants to have it done immediately, and I calmly explained to him that I can’t do this, since my remote access is also blocked, like he ordered.

He hung up…

When he called back he offered to give her a pay raise if she could fix it right away – and she even negotiated work clothes for her and her coworkers, too.

10 minutes later, he calls me again.

He asks me calmly if I can fix the problem right now when he pays me for my overwork. He also wants me to be available at any time (means I should receive my emails and be able to remote work) and that this will raise my pay grade by a lot. I thought that this is the perfect opportunity.

I agree to that condition and pay raise, but only when my coworkers and I finally get work clothes.

He agreed.

Since then my work situation drastically improved and mostly only because I Maliciously complied, well aware of the consequences of the given task.

Let’s hear how hard Reddit high-fives her for this one!

The top comment pointed out that it’s not a problem until it’s HIS problem!

This person says it’s a good reminder that everyone should get everything in writing – and then save it.

You might even want to go old school and print those emails.

This commenter says probably everyone learned a lesson here.

They say she’s the workplace hero.

I think that if this had happened in America, it would have had a different ending.

But maybe that’s just me being jaded.