When a company demands that you keep a time sheet, that comes with certain rights and responsibilities.

What would you do if the company refused to honor the PTO you were supposed to be earning, and then acted like they didn’t even know about it after you brought it up several times?

That is what happened to the worker in this story, so he threatened legal action and got his payout very quickly.

Check it out.

Salaried (exempt) employees have to punch a time card now? Ok. It would sure be a shame if someone notified the labor board about your illegal PTO practices, though.

A few years ago I was employed by a relatively small but publicly traded company.

I virtually guarantee you wouldn’t recognize the name if you weren’t in their specific little corner of industry.

Well, this place went public and decided to use some of the money to purchase an even smaller company, and suddenly we were in the DoD contracting business.

Interesting, I never knew that.

As you may or may not know, the US department of defense places restrictions on private sector contractors about how much profit they’re allowed to make, among other cost-control mechanisms.

One such mechanism is that anyone working on DoD contracts has to charge their time to specific project codes so that they can compare your actual costs to the costs you estimated when you were awarded the contract.

Well, our genius company decided that instead of only having the personnel working on these projects (which was no more than 50 people out of over 1000), that they would make every single salary person sign a time card every week.

For 95%+ of us, we charged 100% of our labor to the commercial side of the business, which was one project code.

“Non Defense Overhead” or something like that. Most people just charged 8 hours per day regardless of how many hours they actually worked, because no one tracks their time down to the minute.

That is a nice rule.

Shortly after this happened, new state legislation went into effect requiring that all employers provide 1 hour of sick leave per 40 hours worked.

Nobody paid much attention to it.

But I did, because I was in a fairly specialized engineering role, with only 2 of us at the whole company, and I trained the other guy, who also happened to live overseas to support another site.

This is important later.

I started charging my actual hours.

I noticed that despite how many hours I charged, the amount of PTO I was accruing stayed the same.

This happened 3 or 4 paychecks in a row, and then I approached HR.

They looked at me like I had two heads when I informed them they were not adjusting my PTO accruals based on hours worked.

Does this really matter?

“But you’re salary. You’re paid for 40 hours regardless of how many hours you work,” they told me.

I explained how that didn’t really apply to the situation due to the new legislation.

They again looked at me like I was completely crazy.

They said they’d get back to me with an answer in a week or two.

Fast forward two months.

I’m still diligently filling out my time cards like a good little drone, and I’ve spoken with several of my work buddies who start doing the same.

The thing about this particular group of folks was that we all traveled, internationally, oftentimes last minute, on a regular basis for work.

Well wouldn’t you know it, it turns out that travel time (per our state labor laws) is considered working time.

This will add up very quick.

Sixteen hours worth of flights to Germany?

All working time. (I believe the language is “place of rest to place of rest”).

And while you’re there, you’re not exactly relaxing.

It’s long days, handling customer concerns, multiple days in a row.

A perfect storm of circumstances happened that fall, where we were all traveling around the same time, and we all booked 120+ hour weeks of work.

We all eagerly awaited our paystubs to see all that extra PTO accrued and… nope.

We approached HR again.

They told us they would escalate the issue to their attorney.

We went back to work.

Never put up with a company you can’t trust.

Well, not surprisingly, things started going downhill for all of us, we started complaining about things a bit, and we all end up quietly looking for jobs.

Within a 5 week period, all of us put in our notices… and I lost my patience.

I wrote an email to HR detailing our contacts with them and informed them that I would be escalating to the labor board without a full accounting of all back-owed PTO that would need to be paid.

I got a panicked phone call within about 5 minutes.

HR Drone: “Why are you even recording your hours that way? You’re salary!”

It’s really not that complicated.

Me: “Because we have to fill out timecards.”

HR Drone: “Why don’t you just put 8 hours per day like everyone else?”

Umm, that would be illegal!

Me: “I’m sorry, but it sounds like you’re asking me to falsify my timecard. When I sign it, the timecard specifically asks me whether I’ve reported my time accurately, under threat of prosecution.”

HR Drone: “…no, I’m just… why haven’t you brought up this issue previously?”

Me: “I have. Twice. With you. I detailed those encounters in the email I just sent. I’m sure the company’s attorney has informed you of your requirements by now.”

HR Drone: “They… haven’t gotten back to me.”

He is not messing around.

Me, grin now wide across my face: “Well, funny enough, I went ahead and emailed our general counsel. It turns out my email was the first they’ve heard the concern. I’ve put in my notice. I expect to be paid in full for all back-owed PTO, or I’ll be filing a report with L&I, who take accusations of wage theft fairly seriously. I believe they give you a week to remit payment or pay up to triple what’s owed?”

HR Drone: “…”

Me: “Please contact me via email only when you have decided on a path forward.” click

Well deserved.

It turns out that not only did I get paid the full PTO I thought I was owed, there was a bit extra on there as well.

And one of my buddies went ahead and reported the company to the labor board anyway, which apparently caused quite the stir.

Last I heard, the HR department (with the exception of a couple of recruiters) got completely turned over, all the way up to the VP.

Companies will try anything to get away with not paying their employees what they are owed, it is really sad.

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

Sometimes sick time and PTO are the same.

This person used to do audits for the DoD.

Every company is different.

I’ve never seen one in real life.

Yup, it burns up all their goodwill.

Oh my, that time tracking policy really backfired huh HR?

They never learn.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.