Imagine working for a company on a project where there’s a deadline you have to meet.

If you were told that everyone needed to work overtime in order to meet the deadline, would you be willing to work 2 extra hours a day even if you weren’t going to get overtime pay?

In this story, one employee is in this exact situation, but there’s a loophole he takes advantage of. Keep reading for all the details.

Optional overtime?

I was working for an electrical company on a movie theatre project. It was super fun with lots of interesting electrical design elements and challenges. Even installing those little lights on the stairs was fun.

The company I worked for on the whole was pretty good. they were a medium sized union company run by a decent guy.

The problem was that they made a few mistakes on little things like bidding contracts and planning ahead on work.

The fallout on the workers was we would either have too much work or no work while they hustled up new jobs or as in this case a really tight budget because they didn’t realize that a theatre is a wee bit more intricate than an office building.

OP was required to work overtime.

So onto the compliance, we were working away and struggling to make the completion date. The word came down that we were going to have to work 10 hour days to make it.

No problem, I could use the extra bucks.

Them: “Sorry, we bid too tight we can’t afford overtime pay. You just work the extra two hours at regular time.”

Me: “Wait? No overtime pay? Umm… that’s not in the contract.”

Optional means optional.

Them: “Well…. no but… as long as you all agree it will be fine. And it is completely optional.”

Me: “Oh well then, that’s great as long as it’s optional then I can opt out. I do really like working for you guys and appreciate that it’s optional.”

Them: “Are you sure? All the other guys are doing it.”

Me: “That is what optional means and it’s great that with their help you should make schedule.”

Some coworkers were annoyed.

So at my regular ending time I would clean up as usual and then head for home.

I got a lot of attitude from my some of my coworkers (sad) but a lot of respect from others.

My foreman had to be very careful about how they treated me but the two things that stand out were. One, I was told that it looked bad for the other guys that I would be seen sitting down at the end day (after cleaning up material, washing up, and changing boots I would wait for the clock out). So now I had to just work to the end time and leave stuff out for others to clean up.

The other slightly retaliatory action was the funniest. The project manager sent down some nice company hats for all our hard work and sacrifice. Guess who didn’t get one?

The other coworkers shouldn’t have agreed to work overtime for free. If nobody agrees, then the company has to pay.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

He did the right thing by not giving in.

This is a good point.

The hat was worthless.

He was definitely the smartest person there.

A hat is a pretty pathetic thank you gift.

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.