When a company forces strict rules on how half days must be taken, it can open the door for creative workarounds.

What would you do if your manager insisted that all half days must begin after lunch, even though your shift started hours earlier than everyone else’s? Would you follow the rule without question? Or would you find a way to make the most of it?

In the following story, one employee finds himself dealing with this exact situation. Here’s what he did.

Half Days Entirely Depend on the Set Lunch Time? Alright Then!

My friend used to work in finance for a company that generally treated him pretty poorly. He was paid far less than he knew the company could afford, and was generally overlooked. They had been working from home for a while due to COVID, and then were allowed to return to the office 3 days a week, working from home 2 days.

Whilst working from home, my friend loved missing the commute. Being an early riser anyway, he decided to ask his boss if he would be allowed to start work at 7 am and finish at 3 pm, so as to get to and from work quicker, and because the office was open at that time anyway.

This was approved, and so he started working from 7 am to 3 pm, which he then extended to his work-from-home days, as he enjoyed having his late afternoons free.

Due to his start time, half days were treated differently.

Now, so that everyone was available at the same time, lunch time at the company was set at 1-2 pm, with no leeway.

One Friday, my friend wanted a half day to begin the start of a long weekend. Because he would usually finish work at 3 pm, he asked if a half day for him could be earlier, around 11 am, since he would be putting in more hours before lunch than anyone else.

“No,” he was told, “half day means finishing at lunch.”

So, he had to work from 7 am to 1 pm (6 hours), despite it counting, holiday-wise, as a half-day. This annoyed him for obvious reasons, until he found a great benefit to this.

Finally, he found the loophole he needed.

Working from home on Fridays, he began booking mornings off work, which meant he didn’t have to work until 2 pm. Then he worked for one hour from home, and that was it.

His colleagues thought it was genius. His boss had very firmly told him that half days revolved around lunch times, so he couldn’t do anything about it!

So, my friend enjoyed a few months of practically doing no work on several Fridays for the cost of a half-day at a time, until eventually he left the business and moved on to a job where he was treated a lot better.

Wow! That must’ve been an awesome schedule!

Let’s see how the people over at Reddit relate to this story.

This person is having a hard time understanding.

It’s supposed to be something like that.

That’s a great point.

Here’s one way to look at it.

He got really lucky! Most people would love for something like that to happen to them.

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