Imagine working as a courier, but the routes aren’t always equal. While you struggle to complete all of your deliveries on time, you have a coworker who is always done a couple hours early. Would you complain or keep doing what you’re doing?

In this story, one person is in this exact situation, and they decide to complain. When that doesn’t work, they slow down and take another approach.

Keep reading for the full story.

Refuse to help? Let’s play a little game

Back around 1987 I was a courier on the afternoon shift 11:30am to 8:30om.

Dispatch cutoff the calls at 6:00pm and after a 5 minute grace period you could clear and go home at 6:05pm and get paid to 8:30pm.

My route had a highway down the middle and the roads I covered on both sides had a lot of businesses. Those roads were busy with a 40 km/h (25 mph) speed limit and lots of lights.

My route got very busy and I would often be at one end of the area and get calls at the last minute for the opposite end. The only way to make it work was to use the highway often and speed.

But a coworker wasn’t nearly as busy.

Next to my area was another courier we will call Richard. He would finish early and wait on the on ramp of the highway at 5:50pm daily waiting to clear and go home early.

As I got too busy I got in the radio and asked Richard to help with 2-4 calls and guess what, he refused.

I went to my manager requesting they help with my workload.

Management informed me that there was no one that could help and I had to suck it up.

OP was understandably frustrated.

When I informed him that Richard was right there and had quite a bit of free time he still said it was my route and my problem.

I am mad at this point and figure screw it I will definitely figure it out.

One of the key items at work was that the nightly linehaul truck MUST leave on time at 8:30 pm sharp or management hears from Head Office.

The very next day I start my route and I do not use the highway and stick to the speed limit religiously.

The managers are getting pretty upset.

I roll in the first day at 9:00pm on overtime with the managers calling me every 5 minutes for an ETA.

I have three managers waiting for me to explain and simply told them it was busy and went home.

Next day, same results so I keep this up for a week.

After a full week of my tardiness management is under pressure and they come to me to do better.

Obviously, they’re not going to put it in writing.

I point out that there is a speed limit and maybe Richard could help.

They tell me I should pick up the pace (speed) and at that point I said “no problem, put that in writing”.

They walked away deflated hoping I would be back earlier…..nope.

I did this another week much to the utter dismay of the managers.

The managers finally changed their minds.

At the end of the second week the managers meet me again at the dock with a noticeable smugness about them. They then informed me that as a group they have come up with a solution.

I listened as they explained how they did a route analysis and have determined that Richard should get about 25% of my area to help out.

The beauty was that I retained the best area and Richard got all the crappy calls.

Here’s how it worked out…

Monday rolls around and they informed Richard of his new route and he is mad and vocal about it.

The Linehaul truck on time the rest of the week and Richard worked to 8:30 nightly.

The new route was great and enjoyed to reduced stress.

Richard lasted about another 2 months then quit. Lesson is don’t be a jerk.

I guess Richard got what he deserved for pretending to be busy when he wasn’t. It’s too bad the managers didn’t make the routes more equal to begin with.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

If only they had done this earlier!

I completely agree!

It does seem to be a common thing.

This person shares their favorite part.

Yes, this is exactly what happened.

At least it finally worked out.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.