Imagine working for a company where you’re occasionally required to work overtime. If you shortened your lunch break from 1 hour to 30 minutes, would you assume that the shortened lunch break would count as 30 minutes of overtime?

In this story, one person is pretty sure she filled out her overtime request correctly, but not everyone is on the same page. It takes a few emails to get it all straightened out.

Let’s read all about it.

Mandatory overtime? Okay- I’ll do it

Job mandates overtime when we’re at risk of not meeting our service goals so we are able to keep are contracts with certain government entities.

Recently, we were advised of a few days that require 1hr of overtime, and the rest of the days in this 1.5 week period are all 30mins OT. Anyone who had lunches longer than 30min had their lunches shortened to 30min to help balance that mandatory OT(not a big deal)

However, the big deal came in when I was putting in my requests (they made US submit them, instead of just fixing the schedules for our team- probably to get around having to deal with it)

I had submitted my couple requests for 30 mins, COUNTING my shortened lunch time as part of my OT beforehand(because duh not going unpaid)and thought that would be the end of that.

But that wasn’t the end of it. The manager claimed the requests were incorrect.

Later on, our manager advised that those of us with 45min-1hr lunches that were shortened were not to count that time as our mandatory OT. Manager personally messaged me asking to correct my time requests, and sent an email to our team basically saying the same.

Manager email:

Hey, Team!

Scheduling team is saying people are not submitting their requests at all, or not requesting the correct amounts of OT. Please correct.

Thanks

(Manager name) —————-

OP sent a followup email asking for clarification.

I send an email to the scheduling team basically stating:

Hello,

I am wondering if it is true that I need to be requesting an additional half hour beyond the 1 hour of Overtime I have already requested to be scheduled for the requested days. I have 1hr lunches and my thought process assumed my shortened lunch accounted for 30 minutes of this time.

Thanks,

OP ——————-

It turns out OP was right after all.

1hr later, scheduling team sends out a department wide email: Hey everyone,

It has come to our attention that employees with 45min-1hr lunches are being advised that their 15-30min shortened lunches do not count as part of their total OT. This is incorrect. That OT can be counted towards part of your mandatory OT.

Any questions, please email scheduling directly.

Thank you. ————————

All these emails for nothing! At least it wasn’t a meeting that should’ve been an email.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Always get it in writing.

I hope this person isn’t saying that she works overtime for free.

Another person didn’t see anything malicious happen.

Here’s a person who can relate to this story.

It never hurts to ask for clarification.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.