They Denied This Overworked IT Specialist Overtime Pay, But He Finds A Legal Loophole That Costs His Employer Thousands

Heather Hall

27 minutes ago

Some companies think they can push their employees to the limit without consequences.

But what would you do if you discovered a way to hold them accountable and help your coworkers at the same time?

Would you ignore it?

Or would you take advantage?

In the following story, an overworked IT specialist deals with this exact dilemma.

Here’s what he did.

Not going to pay overtime? Think again.

This story is about “Bob.”

Bob has been fiddling with computers since he was a kid and knows them pretty well.

As with most IT people, he’s moved from job to job.

The employer he worked for was a service/distribution company in Ontario, Canada, with two IT employees.

About three years ago, Bob’s employer decided to modernize their software.

They had separate programs for Dispatching, Inventory, Payroll, and Finances.

It was complicated to move information from one program to the other.

They decided to get an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) program, and Bob recommended one that he knew inside-out from a previous employer.

For those of you who don’t know, an ERP program handles everything.

Purchase orders. Sales. Inventory. Personnel. Vendors. Customers.

All of it.

You can run a report and find out which customer has bought the most Part ABC in the last year.

Which salesman has improved his numbers the most.

Which vendor has the fastest delivery time.

Which shipper packed the most orders.

The ERP program was complicated to use, so Bob received lots of calls.

Everyone in the company used the ERP program, but it was very complicated, and they used aspects of it that were related to their position.

For example, the Receiver would accept a shipment, verify the quantity, confirm it was received…and the inventory stats would be available to the Sales people if they wanted to look up how many were on hand.

The Receiver didn’t care what the price was, or who the vendor was, he just did his job.

Bob was run ragged during the implementation process, but he managed to train most of the employees on their aspects, and after a few months, everything was running fairly smoothly.

Bob still got tickets for tweaks in the operation of the software, and occasional hardware IT issues.

At some point, the company expanded its services, which caused timezone problems.

Then the company decided to expand their footprint and was marketing into different time zones.

That messed things up.

Atlantic Canada is 90 minutes early, so if someone sent an email or an order at 8am their time, it would arrive at 6:30am Ontario time.

Pacific Canada is 3 hours late….so an email sent at 3pm Vancouver time would arrive at 6pm.

This stretched out the day, so many staff came in early and worked late.

Bob would arrive at 8 a.m., and there would be people who demanded his immediate assistance and were annoyed that he didn’t respond instantly, even though their request was submitted before his start time.

The same would happen late in the day.

His phone would ring at dinnertime with people who wanted help right now.

They tried to fix the IT schedule, but no one wanted the job.

They decided to stagger Bob’s and his IT colleague’s shift times.

Bob would start at 6 a.m. and work until 2:30, and his colleague would start at 10:30 a.m. and work until 7 p.m.

Bob’s colleague had kids and refused the shift change.

The employer insisted.

The colleague quit.

That meant Bob was the only person in the IT department.

The employer said they would look to hire a new IT guy, but they had trouble finding one who knew the ERP system….and they were offering well under a market-value salary.

Bob asked for a raise and was denied.

Then, he wanted overtime, and the employer told him that as an IT specialist, he was exempt from overtime laws in Ontario.

Bob looked it up, and the employer was correct.

Bob started getting treated very badly.

This went on for some time, and he knew lots of IT people socially.

They told him what the company was offering, and Bob knew that they wouldn’t find another tech.

Things went downhill from there.

Bob would get chewed out if he missed a call or an email, no matter what time it came in.

He had to train new hires in the ERP system, as well as take care of the hardware.

He asked repeatedly for better compensation, and was denied….so he planned to get a new job.

Now, here’s the revenge.

Bob had access to the entirety of the ERP program.

When a user signed in, the time was logged, and even if they didn’t sign out, after 15 minutes it would log them out anyway.

He decided to run employee time reports.

Everyone in the company was on salary, and many of them came in early and stayed late.

Ontario labour law states that even salaried workers are entitled to overtime after 44 hours a week, unless they were Managers or Supervisors.

So Bob jumped into the program and ran a report for each employee that wasn’t a Manager.

All the way back to when the ERP program was started.

Then he reached out to an employment lawyer and got the okay to refer employees to him.

After lining up a new job, Bob emailed everyone in the company with some good news.

Bob lined up another job, and after he left, every employee in the company got an email with an Excel sheet showing the hours they had put in past 44 hours a week.

The subject line said “You’re Legally Entitled to Overtime Pay”

In the body of the email was the lawyer’s name.

Everything hit the fan.

Almost every employee authorized the lawyer to negotiate with the company on their behalf, and the company had to pay a ton of money.

All the company had to do was pay Bob for the extra work he put in.

Instead, they had to pay almost everyone.

Wow! That was very selfless!

Let’s see what the fine folks over at Reddit have to say about Bob’s actions.

You would think!