When a company policy works, it’s probably best to leave it alone. And this is still true even if changing that policy may save the company a small amount of money.

What would you do if a new HR rep came into your workplace and changed policies that people relied on? Would you accept the changes? Or would you find a way to make it backfire on the rep?

In today’s story, this exact thing happened to a security supervisor. Let’s check out the story.

Try to become our boss? Screw over employees and order us to follow our contract exactly how it is written? Let’s see how this works out.

Before the company was sold and then driven into the ground by the new owners, I worked as a patrol supervisor for a high-end security company.

Now let’s explain some things that are relevant to the story.

Only supervisors got salary. Our normal working week was 48 hours (four 12 hour days). Anything over that we got hour for hour paid time off in lue of a normal vacation.

It sounds like this contract laid out all the facts.

Our contract stated that if a supervisor worked any position that wasn’t as the supervisor on duty they were to be paid an hourly rate based on their average hourly salary rate.

Also, the contract stated 2 more important things.

1. That the company can buy paid time off for 85%, or more, of its value if the employee agrees. Said employee can also offer to sell it back for any amount.
2. Contracts are valid for 1 year. If the employer wants to re-negotiate before that time the employer has to pay so much for each month the contract is still valid for.

Not the exact phrasing, it’s been a while, but you get the idea. For clarity were 5 months into out current contract at the time.

A good boss is always appreciated.

Now the owner, I’ll call John, was awesome. He expected a lot but he treated everyone well. Gave his supervisors almost free reign, made sure officers had the best equipment to protect themselves and was generally just a good guy.

So we didn’t give him much flak over little things.

Now we asked for, and he gave, the supervisors a discretionary fund for our officers. On most nights we had an on call officer, some nights we didn’t.

Sometimes, it only takes one new hire to change the entire dynamic of a business.

If we needed to call someone in we could say “Hey, come in and work and I’ll buy you lunch” or “you want to come in but don’t have the gas to get to your region and back? Meet me at this gas station and I will buy you some gas” little things to keep the supervisors from having to work regions and do our jobs, plus it made everyone happy.

Normal cost was around $450-$500 a month but saved the company thousands. He wanted a low turnover company and found ways to keep experienced people applying and staying with the company.

Enter the new HR rep, Mary. Well, she calls a meeting with us supervisors. She has some things she needs to discuss.

An HR rep should never alienate employees on the first day.

So the next morning me and my fellow 2 supervisors show up. On the table was an end to the discretionary fund, as it cost the company too much she said and stuck to it after us explaining how it saved money.

Also, without going into specifics, we had to work exactly like our employment contract stated, no deviating.

Any requests for promotions among the officers needed to be approved by her. Which to her they were just a payroll number, and a bunch of other things designed to put herself between us and John and become our boss.

After you’ve worked somewhere for a while, you start to know how people react.

Now none of us had never really read the whole contract, so at the end we went over it without her. Turns out there are loopholes we could drive a truck through, but legally valid.

Now we could have taken this to John but we knew he would say to give it a chance, so we did.

Seeing we were salary, our pay period was monthly, 30 days, instead of weekly. We also knew John didn’t read certain emails or payroll until the end of the month, so we set out to do exactly as she asked. Stick to the contract.

Without the discretionary fund, everyone was under more pressure.

So, we each worked our 48 hours and other days of the week. I ended up working 24 days out of that month, my normal 48 hours as a supervisor plus and additional 24-36 hours a week as a region patrol officer.

Mostly because without our fund it was getting almost impossible to get people to come in on their days off. So we split it up, but I did the majority.

So we submitted forms for not only paid time off for those extra shifts, but a pay request for hourly for each extra shift. Which for me was $18.75 an hour for each one, I never went into hourly overtime for the week.

Here comes the good part.

At the end of 27 days I accumulated over 100 hours of paid time off from the extra shifts and going overtime on my supervisor shifts.

John was added to the email also, but the subject was “end of the month forms” which means he wouldn’t read them until the end of the month to verify the ones Mary gave him were correct. In other words we double dipped like no other that month.

Now fast forward 27 days after the meeting and John send us an email stating he was aware of the situation and scheduled a meeting for 8 am the next day.

We get in there and he doesn’t look happy, but Mary looked smug so we got worried it might of backfired, until John started and basically it went like this.

Upset, John called a meeting with the security personnel.

”Gentlemen, Mary told me about your meeting. She didn’t discuss it with me first or I would have stopped it. I also know if you would have came to me, I would have said to try it out. Also HR will never be in charge of the supervisors. You work for me and me alone.”

So, he holds up three envelops and hands them out saying “here is your hourly pay for being region officers this month, your normal pay comes at the normal time.”

“Also,” hands out another envelope to each of us “this is my attempt to buy back all your paid time off you have gained this month at 90%. If you don’t accept give me the check back. (None of us did).

“Now, here is another check each for the contract buy out and I will have a new one ready in the morning. I have also refilled and reactivated the cards for your discretionary fund. So use it as needed and if you run out before the end of the month, email me.”

The joke was on Mary.

He then looks over at Mary and says “So, Mary how much did your idea save the company?”

Mary says, “$500 John.”

John replies “No, Mary. It cost the company $12,000. That’s what those checks total. Sure Spongebob got the lions share, but the man is a work animal. It still cost me $12,000!”

Some people clearly don’t understand basic business law.

Then Mary said something that I’m sure she got fired for, she said “Come on John, it’s just words on a piece of paper and not really legally binding. Besides the use of loopholes in a contract is illegal”

That got us all staring at her. We may not have attended business school, but we are smart enough to know she was not only wrong, but dead wrong.

Yeah, the next day John sent out an email saying the position was open and anyone interested should send in their resumes.

Yikes! Mary really should’ve talked to John before she went changing policies.

Let’s take a look at what some of the readers over at Reddit had to say about this.

This person is amused that apparently Marys cause a lot of problems at work.

According to this comment, it’s common for businesses to try to skirt the law.

If anyone is confused about why Spongebob was mentioned, this comment is for you.

Here’s an example of someone who doesn’t understand that time is money.

It seems everyone got what they deserved in the end.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.