When a coworker complicates your life it’s natural to want to do something about it.

Unfortunately you often can’t, because in theory, you want to be able to still keep your job in the process.

Read on to find out how this employee used their own bad work policy against a time-stealing coworker.

Check it out.

Make me stay late for not being 15 minutes early? I’ll show you how early I can be.

I work at a casino as a dealer.

We have a first-in-first-out way of scheduling dealers.

So if you start at 7pm, you get to leave before people that started at 8pm when they are able to close tables down and send you home.

Pretty normal and straightforward.

But this system enabled a problem.

If more than one person starts at the same time, then who gets the option to leave first is assigned on a rotating basis.

So if you have the first option one week, you will be second the following, the third after that, then back to one.

So one afternoon, I was reporting to work with 2 other dealers, all set to start at the same time.

I was looking forward to a short evening, as I was the first option and I had plans after work.

I arrived 10 minutes before my shift, and noticed one of the dealers who was starting at my start time was already dealing.

They (the dealer) must have been in the EDR and the pencil needed a dealer to start right away.

Then she prompted karma.

I confirmed that they had started 15 min before their scheduled time and they were the 3rd option.

Fast forward 6 hours, and we had tables we could start closing.

I’m stoked to get out of there, when I look over and see the dealer that started early leaving before me.

I pointed out that I was supposed to be leaving before her, and she gave me a grin and said “Well I started before you, so I have the first option.”

Then she walked off all smug.

I was super ticked and said something to the supervisor.

He shrugged me off and said “It’s policy.”

First to start leaves first? Okay, game on.

I knew this coworker had kids, and had to wait for her mom to come over to babysit before she could leave for work, so she wasn’t always early for her shift.

So she turned the tables.

I have no kids or obligations, so I started showing up 2 hours before my shift and just chilling in the EDR.

I would let the supervisor know I was there in case they needed me to start early (which they always did, because they would not refuse to open a table for lack of staff knowing I was on property and available to work).

Three weeks of this, and I had held the first option on every shift I worked.

The dealer who was all smug about starting early was getting frustrated and angry at me.

Having to stay super late every night was wearing her down.

“It would be nice to get off before close just once!” she said to me once as I was leaving early yet again.

I told her I was just following policy and she was welcome to show up early to make sure she was always first out.

2 more weeks and many complaints to the boss later, the policy was changed.

Now, in order to jump option numbers, you have to be called in over an hour before your scheduled time.

15 minutes wasn’t gonna cut it anymore if you wanted to leave early.

I hope that it was worth it for her staying until near close for over a month over that 15 minutes. I am petty and I have a lot of free time.

Here is what people are saying.

It seems by design if you ask me.

Incompetence wins, unfortunately.

Haha I didn’t get that either.

It makes no sense to me. It’s like these people wish they could be dictators.

Well put. Revenge isn’t worth your job.

Let’s hope she’ll think twice about pulling another stunt.

This is the height of pettiness.

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.