You can always tell when management didn’t think through a new rule before forcing everyone else to follow it.

So what would you do if your call center suddenly changed its policy so that being five minutes late counted the same as skipping your entire shift?

Would you take the hit and work anyway? Or would you refuse to give your time away for free?

In the following story, one call center employee finds himself in this situation and decides to go home.

Here’s what happened.

Being late counts as an absence? Okay then…

Back in the early 2000s, I worked at a crappy call center that had a pretty straightforward attendance policy: If you called in sick for the day, you got an attendance point. If you were 15 or more minutes late for your shift, you got a half point.

Additionally, absences over consecutive days (with a doctor’s note) were worth 1 point. If you had more than 6 points in a six-month period, they let you go.

A few years later, we got a notification that the policy had now changed: If you had more than 3 three points in the CALENDAR YEAR, you were terminated.

Rather than show up late, workers would just call in.

Also, there were no more half points for being late – if you didn’t sign into your phone within FIVE minutes of your scheduled shift, it was considered a full attendance point (even if you worked the whole shift).

The result: People would show up to work late (because of traffic), realize they were going to be penalized the same as if they hadn’t shown up, and would then call the sick line and leave.

Enter Malicious Compliance time: I had a coworker who was 15 minutes late because of a traffic accident on his commute.

Eventually, the company started having staffing problems.

His supervisor told him he couldn’t grant an exception, while tut-tutting about not being “better prepared” (for something that was beyond his control).

So the coworker, without breaking eye contact with the supervisor, called the sick line from this desk phone, saying he was going to be absent for the day, and then left. I had a hard time not laughing while I watched the whole thing.

Pretty soon, turnover (which was already high for a call center) went through the roof, to the point where they were having difficulty keeping the minimum staffing needed for their contracts. Six months later, they rolled the policy back without explanation.

Yikes! That escalated pretty quickly.

Let’s check out what the readers over at Reddit have to say about it.

Here’s a similar story.

Here’s someone who was forced to work while running a fever.

This reader didn’t like their call center’s policy either.

It sure is.

That’s a ridiculous policy!

They’re literally asking to be short-handed at any given time.

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.