Many readers might be too young to remember a time before cell phones, and I can almost guarantee some of you have never written a check.

But back in the day, it cost extra money to call long-distance or between certain hours, so companies tried to keep that to a minimum.

Using the phone, however, was still a big part of many people’s jobs so it could prove difficult to balance.

In this story, a company was trying to crack down on phone calls, but it ended up costing them more than the calls would have.

Check it out for details.

Phone Bills

In the mid 1980s I was working as an IT contractor at large company.

It is amazing how far technology has come.

This was before cell phones so we occasionally used our office phones for personal calls.

As long as we weren’t spending hours on the phone calling relatives in Europe, no one cared.

I suppose this makes sense, if the contractors are racking up huge charges for their calls.

Then the site manager decided that contractors should reimburse the company for the cost of personal phone calls.

Each month we all received a report listing the calls made from our office phones and we had to go to the woman who handled petty cash and settle up.

Oh wow. This whole policy is for $5?

The typical bill was less than $5.00.

I was talking to a guy who worked in Corporate Accounting. He said that with all the overhead it cost the company about $4 to process a paper check, and almost $7 to write one.

Clever! Costing the company more than they are getting!

So the next month when I got my bill for $4.87 I wrote them a check for $5.00.

And sure enough, 3 weeks later I received a nice check for $.13.

All the other contractors started doing the same thing.

It took about 6 months before corporate told our site manager that the cost of these paper checks was coming out of his budget and the bills stopped.

This is a great example of malicious compliance.

They clearly learned that it isn’t worth it to nickel and dime the contractors.

I wonder what other people will say about this.

Yeah, I think more and more companies are writing off the small amounts.

Show them that their policy is pointless.

This is crazy, they don’t let you make a free call home while working late?

I wish this glitch was still in place!

Why are major corporations such cheapskates?

They shouldn’t have to be taught lessons like these.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.