Imagine being the manager at a store where you help customers solve issues they’re having with internet and phone services. If your employees weren’t allowed to work overtime, would you still have them answer the phone right before closing time, or would you make sure nobody took any calls near closing time to avoid overtime?

In this story, one manager was in this situation and came up with another solution that was working well for the employees and the customers, that is, until the regional manager came in and made a new rule.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

No overtime, and report actual time worked. Regional Manager steps on my toes

Many years ago I was managing a company that was part of a national chain. We served customers all over the world with internet, phone, and we also had a high volume of walk in customers on site.

My regional manager made it clear to me that I was not to authorize any overtime.

If a customer walked in or called in a few minutes before closing and would require an employee to work over 30 – 60 minutes to service the customer and make a sale, I would allow them to come in late the next day by the 30 or 60 minutes they had worked over the night before.

I balanced the time every week with no overtime, and reported regular hours on payroll. We were working a bimonthly pay period.

It seems sneaky to have a meeting on OP’s day off.

One day when I was off, the regional manager payed a surprise visit to the site I was managing.

He had a meeting with all the employees (in my absence) and read them the riot act and demanded that all of them must report promptly in the morning at the start of their shift, and leave in the same manner at the end of the shift, and they must report actual times on the (hand written) time cards to the minute.

My team reports this to me the following day, and we comply.

We rack up a bunch of overtime over the next 2 weeks, with those that got caught up servicing customers at the end of the day after hours.

The regional manager was upset.

After submitting the time sheets the regional manager calls me and goes off on me about the overtime. It went like this.

RM: What the hell is going on over there? I told you no overtime. This is unacceptable, I didn’t authorize this.

Me: Did you visit my facility and have a meeting with my staff in my absence, and demand that actual times must be reported, and they have to be punctual, and leave promptly?

RM: yes I did

OP explained how the new rule caused a lot of overtime.

Me: I have been managing this by allowing people to work late and come in late to eliminate overtime and make sales. We close at 5:00, we expect a sales rep to answer the phone at 4:59, work with the customer and make a sale. If a customer walks in a 4:59 we expect a sales rep to work with the customer and make a sale, this could take 15 mins to an hour. I appreciate my staff doing this to service the customer, and we are now complying with your new rule to report actual times. You really shook up my staff on your last visit, and I can not manage this anymore.

RM: Forget we had this conversation and go back to what you were doing.

The regional manager should’ve stayed out of it. At least it sounds like he learned his lesson.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person can relate to this situation.

Yes, this is the best part.

This person wouldn’t have agreed to go back to the old policy.

Another person would’ve handled it differently.

Changing a system that works is usually a bad idea.

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.