One of the most frustrating aspects of corporate work is how focused management can be on people following the rules vs people getting their jobs done in the most effective way.
OP had a great thing going, because instead of charging their company overtime when they had to address something before or after hours, they simply took that time in time off.
I was working for a small-ish company, about 60 employees across several locations. IT support for both hardware (laptops, phones) and software.
When I was hired (just under 9 years ago) it was verbally agreed that instead of clocking any callouts as overtime, I would just take the time in lieu. Callouts were always minimal and there were never any issues with me taking the time here and here to make up for it.
Any calls in the middle of the night were quickly resolved, and I had no problem getting back to sleep. Appointments in the middle of the day were fine because of the additional hours from whenever…
This worked well for almost my entire time there.
They would often get to work early, but because they had worked unpaid overtime the night or week beforehand, would take off out of the office early.
I also ALWAYS started early, just depending on when I left the house, got into the office, got my coffee – could have been anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes because I would leave the house earlier so as not to wake the family if school was off that day. I didn’t care at that point. It never bothered me.
They got free time from me, but again I DID NOT CARE because honestly what else did I have to do? It was a great job until it wasn’t.
One weekend I was working on some hardware maintenance (cleaning up wiring, ethernet, plugs, installing a new UPS) that took me the better part of Sunday to complete (6-8 hours). This was understood, approved in advance and appreciated.
The following week I decided to start burning those extra hours up. I still came in early (as I had done for years), but started leaving an hour early from my regular end time every day if nothing was going on. This is important – if something needed done, I got it done.
I was reachable via email until early evening, and phone pretty much 24/7. This particular week was slow so I had nothing going on. I left an hour early for the first 4 days.
This was all well and good until some of their coworkers informed the manager they “didn’t understand” why they got to leave early all the time.
Instead of simply explaining the arrangement, OP was told to be at their desk from 8 until 4.
On Friday, my boss comes to me and gently says “people notice that you’ve been leaving early this week, I’d like you to make sure you stay in your office until the scheduled end of day in case someone needs you.”
I explained to him that I was burning up lieu days and he just reiterated that “it looks bad to others”.
Seriously? You can’t tell the “others” that I work my 40 hours a week, just not at the same time as them? Fine. Cue the MC.
So, OP started billing overtime.
I immediately submitted 4 hours of overtime for the hours that I didn’t take in lieu.
I still showed up at the office at whatever time I got there, but didn’t start ANY work until 8am. If asked, I would say “sure, 8am start time”.
If I got called outside of office hours, depending on how long I spent on the issue, I logged it as overtime. User calls me at 7pm to ask a question? I answer him in 30 seconds… one hour OT.
Management wasn’t happy and neither was OP; they moved on shortly afterward.
When my boss then started to ask “how come you’re submitting all of this overtime?” I responded with a simple “some people don’t understand or like me taking lieu time, so I need to claim it as overtime since I am at my desk from 8-4”
Because I wasn’t available at his beck and call, it ended up costing them more money. 95% of my job could be done from home because of full remote access, but that stupid old school mentality means that people in the office need to see you at your desk all day long.
I left the company very shortly after that for a much better paying job with full work from home.
Know your worth.
Does Reddit think this is something managers everywhere need to fix?
At least one other Redditor had this exact same experience.
They say bosses like this one are for sure part of the problem.
Business decisions shouldn’t be based on “how things look.”
They’re not buying that other employees complained, either.
These bosses need to learn about picking their battles.
Image Credit: Reddit
I don’t know how easy it would be to change this culture.
It sure would be a lot easier for a lot of people if we could, though.