Nothing makes an employee stick to the clock like a boss who refuses to pay for their time.

So, what would you do if your boss told you to stop recording overtime, even when urgent jobs for major clients needed to be done after hours?

Would you give your time for free?

Or would you follow the new policy and let the fallout speak for itself?

In today’s story, one service engineer faces this very decision and opts for the latter.

Here’s what happened.

I’m not allowed to work overtime? Okay..

I used to repair electronic equipment in the printing industry all over the state (in Australia, this state is bigger than Texas! Lol!), which was vitally time-sensitive for the customer.

Can’t tell you how many times they begged me to fix it NOW because they have a hard publishing deadline overnight or within hours or a day (think major daily newspapers, periodical magazines, etc).

I never had problems with this personally and always did whatever it took to get them going again. And I’d submit my time sheets (signed off by the customer) to show the overtime worked. Heck, the customer was paying every penny of the OT.

Shortly after, the boss confronted him about customers being upset.

But then, my Service Mangler told me they would no longer pay me for OT work and that I must ONLY log time sheets with regular hours. I told them this would not benefit the customer, but he didn’t care and said the order came from “upstairs.”

So that’s what I did. The customers were livid, but I refused to work past 5 PM, nights, weekends, or start early. If I wasn’t going to get paid, they weren’t going to get service. The boss’s orders.

After a couple of weeks, my boss called me in for a disciplinary chat about being a “clock watcher” and that customers were complaining about this.

I told him point blank, “No money, no workee” according to company policy, HE insisted on – and gave him the date and time and my personal record of his instructions that I made of his orders on the day.

It didn’t take long for the policy to get changed again.

I told him, as I told him then, that I was personally happy to work overtime if paid, but I CANNOT FALSIFY COMPANY RECORDS by working outside the allocated work hours (including job travel time) and not record the actual time worked.

So, according to company policy, I cannot even volunteer my time after hours.

I was the lead service engineer for that company, so you can be sure the other engineers watched this very carefully.

Overtime payments were reinstated shortly after.

Wow! That boss sounds like a nightmare.

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

This is a major issue with working off the clock.

According to this person, the main boss probably didn’t give the orders at all.

This person should find a new job.

Here’s someone with a lot of questions.

He was right to fight back, because no one should have to work hours for free.

Period.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.