Workplaces often run smoothly because of dedicated employees picking up the slack.

So when a seasoned machine operator who was carrying extra responsibilities refused to work a holiday and was threatened with losing his bonus, he agreed to scale back to the bare minimum.

It didn’t take long for HR and management to come back with their tail between their legs.

Keep reading for the full story.

When HR takes a dislike to you

Some years ago, I worked for a company that made parts for cars.

We mostly made parts for the aftermarket, but we also had a few OEM customers.

I had ended up controlling some of the machines that mostly did parts for the OEM customers.

This employee was often forced to make up for his boss’ many shortcomings.

It had reached the point where, due to the laziness of my immediate supervisor, I made sure the work was done in order of priority, monitored and requested orders for machine consumables, requested parts from other departments so orders could be finished, and the salesperson responsible for the customer would come directly to me if he needed something in a hurry.

Basically, I was doing my job and the parts of my supervisor’s job that related to me.

Despite the low pay, he mostly didn’t mind.

I didn’t mind doing this, even though I wasn’t being paid to do half of it, as it pretty much let me do my own thing without some idiot (my supervisor) getting in the way.

Our main OEM customer had to redesign all the parts we made to comply with new regulations that had come in.

So, along with our development department, we proceeded to make and supply sample parts to customer specs for them to test and approve.

This was taking up quite a bit of his time.

This was a slow process that could take months of back and forth before they settled on a final product.

This had been going on for many months, where my time was split between developing the new parts and making sure existing orders were completed on time.

Up until this point, HR was covered by someone that also had other roles in the company.

But then one day, there was a shake up in the department.

For whatever reason, they decided it was time to get someone specifically for the role and employed someone from outside the company for the position.

After HR had started, the company decided to look at the way people were paid.

Up until this point, everyone in a production role was paid the same no matter their ability.

So machine operators were paid the same as someone that was a setter/operator (my official job title).

Suddenly, HR wanted to start paying certain people more.

They decided some of the more capable people would get a pay rise and be given a new job title of Machine Setter.

It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

I was one of those people.

This employee had a particular philosophy when it came to taking his breaks.

One of the things I had a habit of doing was, if I was in the middle of doing something—say setting up for a part—I would finish that before going for my break.

That meant I didn’t always have my break at the allotted time with the rest of my department.

But before long, HR seemed to have a problem with it.

Nobody had previously had a problem with this, but for some reason HR didn’t like it.

It was raised in a meeting by HR that I did this.

They were basically told to keep their nose out, as I was getting the work through and that was all that mattered.

They didn’t like this but were overruled, so couldn’t do anything about it.

Then came a holiday weekend.

A few weeks after all this happened, it was coming up to a bank holiday weekend, and they were looking for people to work on the bank holiday Monday.

They weren’t offering anything in the way of incentive beyond normal OT rates, and so I said no thanks.

Admittedly, I would’ve refused even if they had offered double or triple time.

Turns out, HR didn’t like this decision either.

On the Friday, I was called into the office by my supervisor and HR because of refusing to work the bank holiday.

HR accused me of being selfish and of letting the team down by refusing to work.

HR pointed out how other people did more overtime than me and were still willing to come in on the Monday.

To that, I basically said good for them, and I still wouldn’t be doing it.

Then HR started playing dirty.

This was when HR smugly brought up the fact I had recently been given a pay rise and I was risking that by refusing.

They had given the pay rise in the form of a bonus instead of on the hourly rate, so it would be easy for them to stop paying it.

But this employee wasn’t about to be extorted.

My response to this was to tell them they could take the bonus if they wanted, and in return I would only set and operate the one machine and do none of the extra work I had been doing.

Thinking they were being clever, they said fine—that’s what I could do if I was still unwilling to work the Monday.

My supervisor didn’t look happy in the slightest at this decision.

So the employee moved forward with making arrangements.

So that is exactly what I was going to do.

I went and informed those that needed to know the situation and that if they needed anything, they were to see either one of the other setters or the supervisor.

Then he enjoyed his day off, and when he returned, his approach to work had completely changed.

After enjoying my bank holiday weekend, I went in on the Tuesday morning and proceeded to set my plan in action.

I went on a work-to-rule policy.

I did only the bare minimum of what was required of me.

Anyone that requested anything “outside my pay grade” was politely informed to see one of the setters or the supervisor.

Due to his previous work ethic, this would have some pretty big implications for the rest of the company.

One of the key factors in my plan was that the machine that did the vast majority of the work for the OEM customers wasn’t the one I was running.

This was also the machine that 90% of the redesigns were being done on.

After about six relaxing days, the Production Manager came to see me.

This Production Manager needed things to go back to the way they were before.

He took me for a walk outside and asked me to go back to what I was doing before; the extra money I wasn’t being paid would be backdated.

He also said HR had been ordered that if anything came up in regard to me, it had to be run by him first.

Turns out, he had pulled several strings, promptly putting HR back in their place.

I later found out that the Production Manager had just come from a meeting where both the heads of sales and development had raised the issue to the Company Director.

After ripping HR a new one, he told the Production Manager to get it sorted.

I never had a run-in with HR again after that.

In fact, they were out of his hair completely!

Apart from a few dirty looks, they completely avoided me to the point where they would go out of their way to avoid having to interact with me.

They lasted for less than six months before being replaced.

HR tried playing hard ball, but this employee still got the upper hand.

What did Reddit think of this saga?

This commenter offers some sage advice.

This story couldn’t have ended any better as far as this commenter is concerned!

Good management knows how to solve problems, even if it means having awkward conversations.

HR really shouldn’t have gone over the manager’s head like this.

If you threaten someone’s bonus, don’t be shocked when the bonus work disappears too.

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.