Folks, this story is a great example of why it’s a good idea to know your rights as an employee inside and out…

Because it might get you some extra money!

Don’t believe me?

Check out what happened in this Reddit story and your mind will be changed.

Overtime on overtime.

“This happened a few weeks ago. In a company of 3k employees, only 2-3% are paid by the hour. So most of the time HR forget about us when they implement new systems.

Normally overtime must be approved in advance by the superior. There was a paid national holiday but because of the nature of my specific work I had to come in anyway. It was approved and all was normal until I checked my pay slip.

This didn’t look right…

Normal week is 40 hours, thus paid holiday is 8 hours. Overtime is 1.5x normal hours. We do our time sheet day by day. So I put Monday 8 hours holiday + 8 hours worked overtime, rest of the week the same (8 hours each). On my pay slip they paid 40 hours regular and the 8 hour holiday so I was missing the overtime part.

I send an email to HR to see what’s up and the reply was that since it was holiday I couldn’t possibly be working so the system doesn’t allow for overtime on said days. Makes no sense and we have 10 paid holiday per year so its a recurring issue.

I also presented the point in our national legislation that said I was right: Holiday must be included in the initial 40 hours so anything extra is overtime.

We just came out of a year and a half battle with HR because they didn’t take overtime in calculation for our vacations. My boss didn’t want to start again so soon, so he asked how many hours we are talking.

They came to an agreement.

8 hours but only the overtime part so 4 actual hours. He told me to just put these hours this week and for next times to put 16 hours on a work day and no time worked on holiday to not break the system.

So I did just that.

Normally I would have to take a part of Friday off to not do overtime but he told me to put it this week so it was like approval to me. So I did 40 hours and put those 4 hours in overtime.

The following week he asked me about it with a smile, telling me I see what you did there.

Not much but I did get a few extra bucks out of it.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This reader had a lot to say.

Another individual shared their thoughts.

This person spoke up.

Another reader chimed in.

And this Reddit user shared their thoughts.

It pays to know your rights!

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.