Rigid rules often backfire on their enforcers.

In this case, a man shares how he used an unfair automated system made to control his work time to his advantage.

His superiors were not expecting that.

Let’s read the story.

“We don’t pay extra time if it’s under 15 minutes” – Okay, I can make it work

I was a software engineer for a company and out of nowhere they implemented an electronic control on our work time.

Before that, we would work extra on good faith.

If I had to do 2 more hours one day, the next day I could get in 2 hours later without a problem.

But now it was automated.

In the new system I had to clock in at 8am (if I didn’t it would consider I was late and “lose” the entire first hour) and clock out at 5pm.

With 1 hour lunch break.

Work laws here in Brazil are different from the ones in the US and most of the posts here.

If the company tracks your work time, they HAVE to pay you extra time on anything over 40hours/week.

Interesting.

Sometimes, I would get in a bit earlier like 8:50 or something and leave at 5:10pm.

At the end of the first month, I was surprised my extra hours were 0 (on the previous system, I wouldn’t care, but they were the ones that decided to track this).

The computer wasn’t tracking extra time…

I decided to do some digging on how the tracking software worked and found out that anything less than 15 minutes per check-in was completely ignored (99% sure that was against the law but I could work with that).

From that day on, guess who arrived 16 minutes earlier every day.

Came back from lunch 16 minutes earlier (if I was done and had nothing else to do) and left 16 minutes later.

They suspected he was gaming the system.

At the end of the second month, management called me in to explain why I had over 3 times more extra hours than most of the other workers.

I just told them to check their system, I’m not the one keeping track of that anymore.

To my surprise, they actually did pay everything that was owed (I could sue and easily win) and DID NOT change how the system worked.

I kept doing that for another 3 months before changing jobs to a remote one.

He made the most out of an annoying (and unnecessary) addition to his routine.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

A reader shares their thoughts.

Someone shares a similar experience.

A hot take.

This commenter shares their opinion.

Another reader chimes in.

Malicious rules deserve malicious compliance.

This shows companies should think twice before jumping to automation.

You never know when a high-IQ employee will find a way to take advantage of a turnkey algorithm.

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