Work agreements only go so far when new management decides to change the rules on you.

So, what would you do if your company suddenly stopped paying you for hours beyond forty, even though your job required long trips and weeks of overtime? Would you roll with it? Or would you follow their rules and force them to rethink the policy?

In the following story, one consulting engineer finds himself in this same scenario and opts for the latter. Here’s how it all played out.

If you pay me for 40 hours you get 40 hours

I work as a consulting engineer, designing and implementing system upgrades (including network and server) for organizations with global locations.

When initially hired by my company the agreement was I would get paid for every hour I worked, usually 40 hours a week when at the home site, up to 80+ hours per week when at the customer’s location. No overtime, just straight time as my position is “exempt”.

While on-site, I would also be paid MI&E (Lodging expenses, Mileage expenses, and Meal & Incidental Expenses) to include a rental car. MI&E can add up to a couple thousand a week in places like Hawaii, Japan, or England.

Flash forward a few years, and the company has been bought and merged a couple of times, and the new company decides that exempt employees are now on a salary and will not pay for any hours over 40, plus, of course, no discussion of negotiating a new rate due to the change in working conditions.

He turned the game around on them.

This reduces my annual compensation by over 20K per year, as I would be at a customer’s site for 4-6 months a year. I walk into the boss’s office to discuss, but he says there’s nothing to discuss.

Next time I am planning for a site, the plan is for me and my team to work 40 hours a week, meaning an additional 3 weeks on site; neither the customer nor my boss was happy.

The additional three weeks added over 50K in MI&E to the estimate because it isn’t just me that does the work and the total number of chargeable hours is the same if we are on site 4 weeks or 7 weeks.

Sorry, if you only pay me for 40 hours, I only work 40 hours. A couple of VPs were quickly brought into the conversation, and the new policy was quickly modified, so that at a customer site, we now get paid for every hour we work.

Wow! He played his hand well.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit have to say about what he did.

This person just dealt with a similar situation.

According to this reader, that’s why they put you on salary.

This person thinks he needs a new job.

These are words to live by.

You get what you pay for! The company should’ve seen that coming, because no one is dealing with that policy for too long.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.