Imagine working for a company where you’re allowed to work overtime, and you’ll get paid for each hour of overtime you work. What would you do if the policy changed so that if you wanted to work overtime on the weekend you had to work a full day? Would you work a full day or would you refuse to work overtime on the weekend?

In this story, one employee was in that exact situation, and he changed his schedule because of the new policy. This caused a lot of problems with work flow.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

Full day OT only?

Many years ago, I worked as an engineer repairing retail customer PCs.

Our team was small and there was often times when the amount of PCs needing repair was more than the team could get through during normal hours.

In these circumstances, we were allowed voluntary overtime on Saturday and would get time+half for it.

The rules for the OT were flexible, we could start when we wanted and finish when we wanted, and would get paid for each full 60mins we were clocked in for.

He regularly worked overtime on Saturdays.

Back then my girlfriend (Now wife) used to work until 2pm on a Saturday, so I would go in for 9:30am and leave at 1:30pm, giving me plenty of time to pick her up.

This worked out great for everyone.

However, the company structure was a little strange, with the front facing customer service under the management of one Director and the back of house (including my team) under the management of another and they despised each other, constantly trying to cause each other problems.

And of course, the workers were always caught in the middle.

Nothing seemed too unusual at first.

One fateful Saturday, I was working and noticed the front facing Director walk up, see that I was there and move on without saying anything.

I didn’t think anything of it and a short while later left at 1:30 as normal.

I got in as normal on Monday, to find I had a meeting request from my Director. Confused, I attended the meeting and found both my Director and the front Director also there.

Turns out, the front Director had arranged for a customer to bring in their PC for an urgent repair on Saturday, having confirmed I was there to fix it.

This wasn’t typical.

On-the-spot repairs were very rare, reserved for only the most problematic or highest spending customers.

Me not being there to look at it had caused the customer to have a meltdown in the shop in front of many other customers.

Of course, the front Director took the opportunity to bring this up with the MD to get one up on my Director, leading to the Monday meeting, where she was out for my blood.

The overtime policy changed.

Luckily, as the overtime rules for our department were clear and I followed them, there was no direct action taken against me, with my Director supporting me. However, one thing that did come from this was that we lost our flexible overtime.

From that point on, if we wanted to do OT on a Saturday, we must be there for the whole day.

As I wasn’t willing to lose my entire Saturday, overtime stopped.

It took less than a month for the departments backlog to hit over 100 units. Our target was to have <15 at the end of each day.

It didn’t take long for the policy to change again.

I’d originally wondered why my Director didn’t put up a fight when the new rule was set, but it didn’t take long to see the number of Customer service complaints and call waiting times skyrocket. All of which was the front Directors responsibility.

Not long after, my Director approached me smiling, to let me know that the front Director had gone to the MD, first to try to force us to do OT and when that failed, beg for the new rule to be removed.

So the next Saturday, I was back earning a little extra cash and that Director didn’t try to screw around with our hours again.

Wow! It sounds like the director was misinformed and assumed that if someone was working on Saturday they would be there all day. Retaliating by changing the overtime policy really backfired!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

At least one director knew what to do.

Seriously! Explaining what he was thinking would’ve helped.

I’m sure he wouldn’t have stayed, but a quick conversation would’ve prevented the customer meltdown.

He shouldn’t have been expected to read the director’s mind.

This person would’ve done the exact opposite.

Making assumptions can really backfire.

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.