When the boss tells you to keep on going and you know you’re gonna get a big, fat paycheck out of it, what should you do?

Well, you keep on workin’!

That’s what this person did and they shared their story on Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page.

Check out what went down!

I don’t care what you have to do just get it all done your bonuses are on the line (sweet overtime pay).

“This happened several months before I left my last job.

The company I was working for went through something of a restructuring. The old owner and boss retired and handed the company to his youngest son, who in turn forced a lot of the great people in high positions out and replaced them with his under qualified friends.

I was a team lead engineer in the safety and compliance department. I had a team of three senior engineers and their juniors, plus a personal secretary, two general secretaries, and an office administrator.

This wasn’t good…

One of the people hired to oversee all the engineers of the company was a fresh-out-of-school business student who didn’t know the first thing on what we do or how we do it. His mindset was getting more out of us then was actually possible.

It was his brilliant idea to downsize the department.

Before there were two teams like mine. Instead he moved one team to be on build site and pawned all the extra work on my team. Unfortunately we had already been swamped with the extra work. We were falling behind.

The way our contracts were set up we had our base salary + end of year bonuses (based on contract completion) + any hours worked a week above 44 (which was paid overtime at a premium rate.)

I went to the new department lead and I explained to him that we were swamped and needed a few new people or we needed another team. Him being the cost cutting jerk he was, would hear nothing of it.

Instead I was met with a, “Do what you have to do to get it done I don’t care how much you have to work or your yearly bonuses will be in jeopardy.”

I tried to explain the situation, that it’s just too much work. His bright idea was to print out everything he said in his letterhead, sign it, and leave it at that.

Gotcha!

I had a nice long conversation with my team and the office administrator pointed out that we had, on company letterhead signed by the “boss”, a ticket for all the overtime we want.

So that’s what we did. We gave him exactly what he wanted. We got all the projects done by working 80 hour work weeks for three straight months. (Let’s just say the pay checks were beautiful)

It was after the three month mark I guess, someone in HR noticed the huge pay checks everyone in my department was pulling in. My boss and I were called into a meeting with HR and the owner of the company.

Well, they tried say I was scamming the company out of money. In those 3 months they paid out almost 2x more than they would have if they kept the two teams as they were.

But I had all the information I needed. I kept all the emails and signed documents from the department lead and handed everything over (photo copies).

This was a big score!

I also put down a copy of everyone’s contract, with the bonus part highlighted, where it states “paid on a per contract basis.” That year my bonus was 3x bigger then it normally was.

But after that incident I left the company (three months after it had become a bad working environment.)

On a side note, when I left the company they had to buy my contract out, but that’s a completely different story. I’ll tell it sometime.

Additionally all of us who were eligible for the bonus took 1/3 of our bonuses and split it with the support staff.”

Reddit users shared their thoughts.

This person weighed in.

Another individual had a lot to say.

And this reader spoke up.

Just following orders, boss!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.