Any employee knows that when management tries to “fix” something that isn’t broken, chaos usually follows.

That’s exactly what happened when management decided to mess with the long-standing schedule agreement that helped operations run smoothly for a group of paramedics.

So when the paramedics followed their boss’s new rule to the letter, the result was a scheduling disaster that hit the company right where it hurt — the wallet.

Keep reading for the full story!

30 minutes or 2+ hours, your call

I’m a paramedic that works semi-rural (1-hour drive to the hospital).

We work 12-hour shifts from 6–6.

The paramedics had worked out an agreement between themselves that seemed to work for everyone.

Commonly, we would arrive at 5:30 so the offcoming crew could go home earlier after handover of equipment.

Anyway, the 5:30 arrival time was a “gentleman’s agreement” so that the offcoming crew wouldn’t have to attend a call-out that would put them over their finish time and potentially breach their 14-hour maximum working time.

Occasionally, a job would come in during that 5:30–6 period, which the new shift would take and then claim the early start as overtime (standard practice here, normally never a problem).

But of course, their manager had to start meddling.

One day, the manager sends out an email stating that no staff should be turning up early and starting work before 6 because it was costing too much in overtime.

So the paramedics complied… just to show their boss what a terrible idea it really was.

So that’s what we all did.

Every single crew — which was 30+ staff — stopped showing up early. This was at the peak of winter, which is usually one of the busiest times of the year.

It sucked finishing late a fair bit, but making the boss pay us 2+ hours of overtime and giving them the headache of driving us back to the station once we breached 14 hours instead of paying for 30 minutes was great.

Finally, the boss was forced to backtrack.

After 2 months of hemorrhaging money in overtime payments, we got another email:
“You can now go back to the 5:30 arrangement.”

Turns out, common sense costs less than bureaucracy.

What did Reddit think?

As is often the case, there seems to be a disconnect between leadership and the people doing the work.

Smart employees always get it in writing.

Does this manager even realize what they’ve managed to screw up?

Being an effective leader means knowing how to think critically.

Management finally realized the error of their ways, but it may have already been too late.

Nothing fixes a bad policy like watching it fail in real time.

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.