If you’re an hourly employee and if your time clock at work rounds to the nearest 15 minutes, it can be extremely helpful to know exactly when to clock in and clock out to get paid the maximum amount with the minimum amount of work.

The employee in this story figured out how to do just that, and it’s pretty impressive!

Let’s read all the details.

Don’t explain to me that the time clock rounds clock in/out times until I’m short hours and I will abuse the system.

This is more of a Petty Compliance story, but I’m bored and thought I would share.

I left a job I had been at for 20+ years to work for the Town Government where I lived.

I had been salaried, but had burned out and took a job with a lot less stress, but also an hourly position.

He wasn’t going to get paid as much as he thought.

I was about six months into the job when I was looking at my hours for the week.

I was expecting to be into overtime if I stayed until 5.

I was planning to ask if I could leave whenever I hit 40 hours since it would be before 5.

I realized my hours for the week were going to be short, even if I worked until 5.

After calculating the time I worked each day and comparing it to the payroll software (KRONOS).

I talked to my boss and was told that the time clocked rounded to the nearest 15 minutes.

I was mad this was never explained to me when I started.

Based on how things went when I started, it wasn’t surprising.

Here’s how the clock works.

For those that don’t know how this works. If you clock in between 7:53 and 8:07, the time clock records this as 8:00.

If you clock in between 8:08 and 8:22, the time clock records this as 8:15.

When I did the calculations, there is a potential to abuse this to swing your hours worked by 2.5 hours every week.

Meaning, I could work 37.5 hours and get paid for 40.

Or I could work 40 hours and get paid for 37.5.

I looked up federal labor laws and this was absolutely legal.

He tried to maximize this system to work in his favor.

Fine, from then on, I never clocked out in the 7 minutes past every 15 minute increment.

I’d leave for lunch at about 11:53 EVERYDAY and get back at 1:07, time clock records an hour.

Get to work at 8:07, leave at 4:52, if the time clock said 4:53, I’d go back and work until 5:08.

I wouldn’t have done this if I had been informed up front.

Obviously I couldn’t completely adhere to this schedule, but I tried by hardest.

Here’s an example of how he used the system in his favor.

So the best example of my abuse of the system was that I lived about 5 minutes from work.

Occasionally my kids would lock themselves out of the house. They got home around 3:00PM.

The first time I asked my boss if I could go let them in (which seems stupid that I would need to ask).

She says to me as I’m walking away (make sure to clock out).

I think it was meant as a joke, but obviously I was going to clock out, I’m hourly.

It just rubbed me the wrong way.

Looks like he didn’t miss any work at all!

So, I got to the time clock, clocked out at 3:08, drove home, let my kids in, drove back and clocked back in at 3:20.

Time clock sees a 3:15 clock out and a 3:15 clock in.

If she hadn’t said anything I wouldn’t have rushed home or back and I would have had to make up that time.

If how the time clock worked had been explained to me when I started, I wouldn’t have abused it.

He did a great job manipulating the time clock to work in his favor. Any smart person would do the same thing.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person had to deal with a similar time clock.

Another person thinks the company intentionally had the time clock round to the nearest 15 minutes.

Not paying for overtime is a problem.

Here’s an interesting story about time clocks at a theme park.

Management wised up at this company!

It’s better to get paid for not working than to work for free!

Obviously.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.