If you were required to get approval before you could work overtime, what would you do if a client insisted that you needed to work overtime but you couldn’t get ahold of your supervisor or the project manager?

In this story, one inspector is in that exact situation, and he decides to work overtime anyway. The project manager isn’t too happy about it, but he gets even more upset when the inspector complies with his request.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

Verbal Overtime Approval is like Toilet Paper. Ok!

I was hired as an inspector which was an hourly job.

Overtime pay and overtime was common but involved management to approve.

Management needed to approve as there were many inspectors on standby and if they could just have another inspector continue at start the next shift they wouldn’t need to pay overtime. Which was fair.

Overtime decisions were made by team leader, supervisor, scheduler or project manager.

The story involves a client asking him to work overtime.

I was working at a client site, it was around 2.50pm when the client walks on the floor and asks for the progress.

I let him know that I am done with 95% of the work and the remaining 5% should be completed the next day.

He then asks me if I could complete the remaining 5% today by staying overtime.

I let him know that I could and that it actually needs approval.

The client gave his approval.

Now this guy was from same country as I was from, and we got along well.

He says I have his approval and if any of the supervisors, project manager or anyone needs to hear it from him, he can let them know that I have approval.

I say thank you and he walk away.

He knew he needed to tell management he was working overtime.

This client facility is huge, and the area I was working had bad cellphone reception.

I try calling, texting the other management that I was doing over time.

One text goes through to a supervisor, who don’t reply back, but I knew he would be cool with it.

(I couldn’t walk out of the facility or to a different area as walking out means I need to check out of security and walk about 7-8 minutes to get there, and then go back inside checking into the security and walk back 7-8 minutes. Walking to a different area kind of meant abandoning my post, which was frowned upon by the client and reported to my management, so was taking untimely breaks.)

He figured he could approve the overtime himself.

Me being a team leader myself, had the authority to make that decision. Me being the only person on site doing that job also meant I was acting Supervisor.

So I decided to complete the job which took me 25 minutes of overtime.

This was Friday.

But the project manager wasn’t happy about the overtime.

On Monday I was scheduled to a different client along side the supervisor whom I had texted.

(supervisor came from a different site and joined me few hours later)

Couple of hours into the shift, when my hours were processed and I sent the end of project email with all the report and hours billed, I start getting nasty-grams from my Project manager as to who approved the overtime and who did I contact and all.

(This is in the same email chain as the end of project report to the customer: Project manager removed the customer from the email chain before sending me those nasty-grams.)

The project manager doesn’t trust verbal approval.

My supervisor who is setting up this stuff, sees that I am uneasy and kind of scared as the Project manager was angry on me, and looking into what was going on.

In the email chain I explain that I had verbal approval from the client.

Project Manager: “Verbal approval is like toilet paper, it gets flushed down the drain” plus some stuff that basically says we cant trust the client and that I should get written approval if not before at least afterwords as soon as possible.

Cue Malicious Compliance

He decided to get written approval.

We were required to have all conversation with the client regarding a closed project in the same email chain so that all issues (if any) stay in one email chain which the management was copied on.

Since this happened on Friday end of shift, technically Monday was “as soon as possible” per the request.

So I added the client back to the email chain, and asked him to kindly send a written approval for the 25 minutes of overtime he requested.

He sent the whole email chain.

Ohh and yes, I made sure I added the client replying back to the email from my PM where he said the toilet paper line.

I also called the client to let him know about replying back to the email with the approval. We were cool and kind of buddies at this point.

He says he will and we hang up.

Now, the project manager is upset again.

10 minutes later PM called me angrily saying he didn’t mean that I ask for the approval in the same email chain and all.

I explain I had approval and all but the conversation just ended he repeating his side and me repeating mine.

Meantime I tell the supervisor what I did and we burst out laughing, he saying he cant believe it.

It ended with HR getting involved.

Client eventually replied back saying I had approval and the chain went silent after that.

I get a call from HR that day saying I need to be aware of the email chain and what stuff is in it before adding customer, etc.

That’s hilarious! It’s a good thing he’s buddies with the client. Otherwise, the client might’ve gotten upset when he saw the whole email chain.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

The PM needs to follow his own advice.

Yup. The PM wasn’t very professional.

This is good advice.

He asked for it in writing!

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