Unwritten workplace agreements tend to work just fine — until the wrong person takes notice.

So when an HR manager took issue with a contract designer arriving late despite consistently unpaid overtime, a long-standing understanding suddenly vanished.

But this rigidity ended up costing the company big time.

Keep reading for the full story.

Hours will be counted

I worked as a contract graphic designer for a large Canadian retailer that has a big cat as their logo.

I had the habit of staying later to finish projects, but only charged for regular 9–5 hours.

She had made an agreement with her boss that seemed to work just fine.

As such, the supervisor and I had an unwritten agreement that I could show up a little late from time to time, since I always got the work done on time.

Until HR had to go and get involved.

One day, I came in 25 minutes after 9 and the head of HR ran into me in the hallway.

She asked if I was just arriving to work. I told her yes, and she immediately escorted me to the supervisor’s office to rat me out.

The boss tried to explain, but the HR lady wouldn’t hear it.

The supervisor tried to explain our agreement, but the HR manager told me that if it happened again, my contract would be terminated.

So the contractor decided to take a very different approach with her billing.

From that day forward, I started counting all my overtime and billing them for it.

When management asked why I was suddenly billing at a higher rate, I explained to them what had happened.

Luckily, there were much better things in store for her.

A few weeks later, I was offered a better job elsewhere and decided I would show up late the next day.

The HR manager saw me arrive late and started stomping over. As she reached me, I handed her my resignation letter and walked out.

But the same couldn’t be said for the company.

I found out later that they ended up needing to hire two designers to keep up with the pace that I was handling on my own.

They cracked down on lateness, and the designer clocked out for good.

What did Reddit think?

Surely this manager should have been able to make something work with HR, right?

There’s nothing worse than an HR busybody with nothing better to do.

There’s at least one viable reason why HR would insist on perfect timecards.

Freelancers really ought to value both their time and their work.

Turns out flexibility is cheaper than rigidity!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.