Workplaces will often let employees go home a little early the day before a holiday as a nice perk.

What would you do if your normal schedule meant that you had already worked your full day when they said you could go home early?

That is what happened to the IT guy in this story, so he started scheduling ‘appointments’ in the morning so he could also take advantage of leaving early.

Check it out.

Everyone can leave early on the day before the holiday.

In an old job, about 15 years ago, they had an unwritten policy where executive leadership would send out a “surprise” e-mail at 1-2 PM the day before a holiday telling everyone to go home early and have a nice extended holiday.

That’s a nice little perk.

This happened every Wed. before Thanksgiving, December 23rd, December 31st, etc. – like clockwork.

Big surprise, right?

This was great, except for one thing: My shift started at 6:30 in the morning because I was the one covering the IT systems for the early arrivals, and I had a long commute, so I liked the early hours to miss the traffic.

Leaving at 1:30 in the afternoon was about an hour early for me.

Most of the staff rolled in about 9-10 AM each day, so for them, it was a pretty nice half-day of work when this happened.

That would be a complete waste.

Taking the day off that day was also a terrible idea because it cost you 8 hours of vacation time despite the shorter day.

For a couple of years of we groused about the policy, and tried to negotiate a somewhat fairer setup, but our ideas were rejected because the going home early thing was a surprise, not official policy, and this was a government job so they had to be careful about the optics of sending folks home early with pay.

Sometimes you have to play games in order to win.

Eventually, everyone learned that on days when we knew everyone would be getting out early, all of us simply made doctor’s appointments, or suddenly had car trouble, etc. just that morning.

Often there was nobody onsite until about 9 AM.

Do what you have to do to get the benefits that you are entitled to.

Let’s see what the people in the comments say about this.

This is a much better way to do it.

Yeah, this isn’t going to help.

Watch out for time zones!

Come on boss, help this guy out.

There is no way I would work extra.

When giving perks at work, bosses need to make sure they benefit everyone.

It really isn’t fair to employees like this guy.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.