There’s generally nothing wrong with being a stickler for the rules, but if it ends up costing your company money AND it’s unnecessary, it seems kind of…counterproductive, don’t you think?

You know it!

And this worker got fed up with the policy at their job and decided to teach the big shots a lesson.

Check out what happened.

One minute ended up costing them.

“Around 20 years ago I got a job at a local factory which manufactured aluminium windows and doors for some very large new builds, huge skyscraper types.

I started out as a general Labourer but within 3 years had worked my way up to fitter/manufacturer. Then the firm invested a huge amount of money in a new CNC machine, I was selected to be one of the programmer/ operators. I was sent to Germany from the UK to be taught how to run it, it was a real head scrambler to start with but eventually I figured it out and loved the job.

Things were going just fine.

Once it was installed and running smoothly the company was able to deal with much bigger contracts so naturally took them on.

In order to fulfil all the work, I had to ensure the machine worked every minute of the working day possible. My hours were 8-5.

I would arrive at work at 7.30 and spend the next 30 minutes firing up all the computers, turning on the machine and running it through all the set up procedures and making sure it was ready to go. Then I would walk across to the main factory at 8oclock to clock in.

However one day I had a small issue with the machine which took a few minutes to fix, so by the time I got to the clock in machine it was 8.04.

They got a surprise.

I really didn’t think anything of it until I got my payslip that week, it was 15 minutes short.

So I went to see my manager, he looked at the pay slip and said company policy was, 3 minutes late clock in allowed only, over that time is an automatic 15 minute deduction, but he knew it was a genuine reason for the late clock in so would speak to the payroll dept and get it sorted.

They however said, tough! Rules are rules.

If you say so!

So no prizes for guessing what I did next!

From then on I arrived at 7.30, and sat and drank coffee until 7.55, walked over to clock in, and only then started my setup.

That 2.5 hours a week amounted to a large amount of lost production, teams of fitters began to run out of product after about a week.

At that point the big boss got involved, he realised immediately that he could not ask me to go back to doing what I did before so he offered me 30 mins a day at overtime rate.

Well why not, I was there anyway.

That 1 minute extra on the clock cost them 2.5hrs a week at time and a half for the next 2 years, when I finally left the company.”

Now let’s see what people had to say.

One reader talked about middle managers.

This individual thinks they could have handled this differently.

One Reddit user talked about how they handle things as a boss.

This person’s workplace is all out of whack.

And this Reddit user talked about people who work for free.

Jeez, what a waste of time and money.

Totally ridiculous!

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were travelling for business.