Imagine having a job where you have to fill out a timesheet in order to get paid.

If you were told that you would only get paid for exactly 8 hours no matter how many hours you worked, would you still work the same as usual, or would you fight to get the rule changed?

In today’s story, one construction company employee fights to get the rule changed, and he does it by complying in a way that really annoyed management.

Let’s see what he does.

Let’s just make sure those time sheets are accurate.

In the commercial construction world, the management team on site are generally all salaried employees of the General Contractor.

Superintendents, Asst. Superintendents, Safety Officers, Quality Control Inspectors, etc. – generally anyone in the job trailer.

8 hours a week, or 80 hours; our checks are the same every time.

Management changed the rules about timesheets.

I’m a Senior Superintendent, and part of this role is ensuring that time sheets are filled out correctly, individual expense reports are completed, and we’ve got adequate manpower from laborers to tradesmen.

About 6 months ago, we had a Superintendent meeting at our office.

Nothing new – we do this every month.

However, one of the things that was discussed happened to be time keeping.

We were told that our timesheets have to reflect 8 hrs a day, regardless of how long we’re actually there, and they have to be sent in no later than 9am on Monday, or checks will be withheld or late that week.

He has never liked timesheets.

To me, the time sheets have always seemed redundant because our checks don’t change, and we usually look at an app were required to download, that clocks us in and out automatically, according to our location, relative to the site.

Everyone always rolls in around 630am, even though the day doesn’t start til 7am. Most of us are there until 430 -530pm.

Its just the nature of the beast with $50M-$200M projects.

We get gates and doors open early for sub contractors, get set up for the day and we’re ready to go.

He decides to comply.

This time keeping guideline was reiterated several times through emails, so I decided it was only right that we comply.

I have 2 Asst Supers, a Superintendent 2, 2 safety officers, 2 QC officers, and 2 admin asst. in the job trailer.

Thats 10 in the trailer, counting myself.

I also have a 12 man laborer crew, 14 carpenters, and 2 trade foremen.

Thats 38 time sheets, and altogether, and 13 expense reports, along with random mileage reports. 51+ individual reports altogether.

That’s just one project.

The entire company has around 40 projects running right now.

Here’s how the day started.

If you’ve used Outlook, you know that you can schedule emails to be delivered at a predetermined time and date, so here’s what we did:

We all (38) meet in a parking lot about a block away from the site. (Our apps clock us in when we pull into the jobsite.)

At 6:55, we all pull out and arrive on site at 6:56-7:00, and then unlock the gates.

At this point, there are roughly 200 other tradesmen standing there with tools or sitting in their vehicles waiting on walk gates to be opened.

Here’s how the day ended.

Once they’re opened, these guys go to any one of 17 floors in the building, waiting turns for a very slow hydro-mobile construction elevator.

By the time they’re set up to work, it’s easily 8am.

At 330 pm, the walk gates are locked, and all personnel has to be out of the building and site, so they’re all rolling up around 2:45, in order to be off site by 330.

This reduces production from about 7 hrs a day, own to around 5, or approximately 500 man hrs of production per day.

Other Senior Superintendents copied what he was doing.

I also had our Asst. Supers, and AA’s start scheduling time sheet and report deliveries, one every minute, from 8am until 9am on Monday mornings.

From what I hear, other Senior Supers I told about this, began doing the same type of thing.

The loss in production, and the annoying chime of new emails every minute, had their new guidelines squashed in 3 weeks, overtime approved for hourly employees, and Saturday work approved for subcontractors, so we could get back on schedule and make up for the approximately 7500 lost man hours of production, just from our project alone.

When asked about it, I simply stated that I was following instruction, precisely as it was given.

There’s been no more micro-managing.

Nobody likes being micromanaged.

Good for him for getting back at management for making an annoying rule.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

People who don’t work on the site shouldn’t be allowed to make changes like this.

This person is impressed by the construction industry.

This person thinks a lot of people are incompetent.

There has to be a better way than filling out timesheets.

Never expect employees to work if they’re not getting paid.

It ain’t going to happen.

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.