Sometimes micromanaging employees backfires massively.

This woman and her team has had a good flexible schedule that has been working for years. Suddenly, management started requiring non-flexible hours and stopped overtime. She and other employees complied, to the detriment of the company.

Read the full story below.

Delicious double-whammy malicious compliance

My wife works in the finance department for a government contractor.

They’re hybrid, but mostly all work from home due to limited office space, with the expectation that her team is on site Monday/Tuesday.

In this role, she has a busy end-of-month every month, with the whole team working to post figures, and is often required to work late into the evening or a few hours on the weekend to finalise the month-end.

Due to insane commuter traffic, she prefers to start at 7 and finish at 3 p.m., so that the commute is 30 minutes instead of an hour or more each way, just sitting in congested traffic.

Management has some ideas for productivity.

About six months ago, management issued an edict requiring “core hours” (8–4) when in the office AND more in-office days.

My wife emailed management, stating that requiring her to sit in traffic for a wasted additional 4–5 hours a week would mean her evening and weekend flexibility would no longer be available.

Cue a management response of “Team player blah blah.”

My wife responded with a breakdown of time within her paid 40-hour week and how the flexibility established and continued since COVID has benefited the team, but that as this flexibility was being reduced, it would naturally affect HER flexibility.

They insisted.

And they stopped overtime.

So she leaves the office after “core hours,” gets stuck in traffic, and suddenly misses the end-of-day Teams call.

Of course, management doesn’t appreciate this reality, but she has the emails of their insistence, can’t control traffic patterns, and management doesn’t want to schedule the meeting earlier.

If they want her on the call, either she reverts to her original schedule… or enters into overtime to take it in the office. They suggest her previous schedule for the “foreseeable future” to aid “team cohesion.”

Recently, her management decided that all overtime now has to be approved by a direct line manager.

Cut to last week: my wife has been exiting meetings on the dot at the hour. “Sorry, I’ve got a hard stop now due to no approved OT.” BAM! and then she drops from the meeting.

So this started happening.

She’s even starting to affect other team members, with her and a colleague ceasing work on the dot due to “not approved.”

Management is, of course, on the hook for incomplete end-of-month figures and starts enquiring; the team replies with the OT edict: “All OT to require manager approval.”

“It wasn’t pre-approved, so I stopped working to adhere to the new policy.”

My wife mentioned they haven’t responded to this yet, but it’s been weeks already.

All of this is happening after management still hasn’t backfilled an open department position for five months, so they’re down an additional person.

I am now thoroughly enjoying her work stories and think reading this sub to her over the years may have had a positive impact.

Management is badly out of touch with reality.

Let’s read what other people have to say about this.

What a legend, says this one.

A valid observation.

Another reader chimes in.

This one has something to say.

And this makes a lot of sense.

More time in the office does not equal higher productivity.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.