Imagine having a job where you regularly skip your lunch break and work overtime to get as much work done as possible in the most efficient way possible. What would you do if you were told you could no longer work overtime and you could no longer skip your lunch break?

Would you happily comply, or would you be upset that you weren’t able to get as much done?

In this story, one diesel mechanic is in this situation. He decided to comply, but there are consequences.

Keep reading for the whole story.

No more overtime. No more services on the customers yard. Now I drive around most of the day.

I’m a diesel mechanic that works for one of the largest two fleets in the United States.

My job is to work off-site for a single customer which is on one of the largest middlemen of the product they ship in the US. I can’t much more about the product because it would give away exactly who they are.

Anyway, my job is to load up my truck at the shop with parts and oil, travel to the customer’s site, take inventory of the units on their yard, compare the list to overdue and coming due services, work on the customer write up list, work on our internal company campaign list, send an email AND internal memo about any truck I work on AND receive info about, pay attention to the internal group text, keep up on my training online, do repairs on-site, and look at drive ups as they come in.

I have to keep track of EVERYTHING. It took some getting used to but I’m decent at it now.

He has learned that it’s better not to take a lunch break.

In the state I work in the law states that during our required 30 minute meal period we are to be paid if we remain on the clock or have to do anything work related during the mall period.

My first few days I clocked out for lunch but was immediately interrupted by a drive up.

Our time keeping program has no allowances or adjustments to state that I had to work on my meal period.

I don’t mind working when I’m trying to eat so I simply don’t clock out for lunch as I tend to nibble through the day anyway. The customer likes that I’m always available and I get 30 minutes overtime everyday.

It seemed like everyone was happy.

With the days I work I get 2 hours overtime every week. If I work a day extra I get a lot more.

The customer is happy which makes my box happy which gets me more money and makes me happy.

Win win win.

But there were big changes at work.

Last week I was notified by my company that were on now on ZERO minute overtime and we MUST take our lunches and breaks.

No problem. I’m pretty compliant because my boss is cool.

I was also told that we can no longer do any repairs or services on site. They have to be done at the shop.

Again, no problem. I don’t really care where they want them done.

ANY overtime has to be pre-approved by my boss’s boss’s boss. I’ve worked with him in the past and he’s also pretty cool, but he’s very busy and rarely responds ridge away.

He has started doing things differently to comply with the new rules.

Here’s the malicious compliance part.

I now come back to the shop for my breaks and lunch near the end of the day because I’m not interrupted here. That’s an hour not at the customer’s yard.

I also have to come back here to do services so I’m rarely at the customer’s yard now.

As any overtime requests go mostly unnoticed, I don’t do anymore overtime.

Work is now pretty inefficient.

I get drive ups during the day and I have to tell the driver’s to contact corporate as I have to adhere to these new rules or I’ll be fired.

The broken down tractors and trailers are piling up in the customer’s yard because I’m barely there, and they’re piling up in the shop yard because I now spend most of my time driving back and forth and the other staff count at the shop hasn’t increased.

No overtime, more driving in circles, much less actual work.

I wonder if it would be worth pointing out the consequences of these changes to the boss. Or maybe it’s better to wait and see how long it takes for someone higher up to realize how much slower work is getting done.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Another person shares their situation.

This person works a lot of overtime.

This person’s supervisor sounds awesome!

It might be a good idea to tell the boss.

The problem is only going to get worse.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.