Not all workplace rules make perfect sense.

Imagine being told to take a lunch break but not to clock out. Would you take a short lunch break or a long one?

This man was working for a small company that got bought by a bigger company.

This involved changing their time management system.

When he clarified his lunch break concern with HR, they clearly instructed him, “Do not clock out.”

Read the full story below to find out what he did instead.

Don’t clock out on breaks? Why yes I will gladly comply!

My former small company was bought by a much bigger one.

When this happened, our time management system changed to a new one.

Nothing extraordinary here.

This man noticed that the new time management system was flawed.

The new system, however, had a major flaw.

It subtracted half an hour of mandatory break every day from your hours, but you could not manually clock out for longer breaks or the system would break.

He and his colleagues usually take longer breaks as approved by their supervisor.

I, however, was taking longer breaks on some days.

This was common before, and I (and my colleagues) had the approval of my supervisor for it.

So with the new system, I could not clock out for my breaks properly. It had to be manually adjusted each day.

His supervisor advised him to talk to HR about it.

I talked to my supervisor about it.

He told me to go to HR and let them sort the system out.

I went to HR, explained that I had approval to take longer breaks, so I asked how to use the system correctly.

But HR simply told him not to clock out during their breaks.

I got this exact reply in writing: “Don’t clock out on your breaks, the system works automatic.”

So clearly, what they wanted to say was: don’t take breaks longer than 30 minutes, but that was not what was written.

I answered and thanked them for the clarification.

He did exactly that, even when he was taking really long breaks.

Cue malicious compliance: I did exactly as I was told.

I took long breaks every single day, but the system only ever counted them as 30 minutes.

On some days, I took like 2 or more hours of break.

I went into the city from the office to get some ice cream or do some shopping and never used more than 30 minutes of time for it.

Because of this, his overtime hours skyrocketed.

My “overtime” hours were going so high that I was ordered to take multiple days a month off to compensate.

This went on for about 2 and a half years until we were sold again.

The new system sadly did not have the same flaw.

Getting it in writing from HR was key. Sounds like a great 2 and a half years!

Let’s read the responses of other people on Reddit to this story.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

LOL. Here’s a funny suggestion from this person.

You didn’t do anything wrong, says this person.

Here’s another valid point from this person.

Finally, people are loving the malicious compliance.

Some rules have loopholes that smart employees know how to use.

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.