Imagine working for a company where there was a minimum amount of overtime you could log. Even if you just work one minute, you still have to log the minimum amount, which is 3 hours. What would you do if that policy changed so that instead you logged the actual minutes you worked? Would you still be willing to work overtime?

In this story, one engineer was in this exact situation, and he was no longer willing to work overtime.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

Remove incentive for overtime? Guess we’ll operate normal office hours.

So after leaving university I was an engineer in a vehicle testing lab.

My lab was a vehicle dynamometer which could be driven by a robot – robotic legs operating the car pedals so the car drives and stops.

Robot keeps driving up to set speeds and stopping over and over and over. So we put “miles” on components and confirm they’re OK.

So, policy when running robot driving is that I need to carry out a safety checklist of items every 24 hours of running. This takes about 20 minutes. If I don’t stop the system, it times out and brings everything to a stop automatically.

He thought the overtime policy was great, but his new manager disagreed.

Company at the time had a minimum 3 hour overtime logging policy – if you’re asked to come in on a weekend you log 3 hours pay OT as soon as you’re in the door.

This worked well for me and IMO the company. I get 3 hours OT each day, the company gets 48 hours of progress. This was a long running policy and everyone was happy.

I inherited a new manager and she HATED this. Thought I was stealing from the company and should only get paid for each minute I was on site.

After a month or two she convinced the directors to remove this policy for me if I wasn’t working 3 hours.

He was no longer willing to work overtime.

Don’t know how but she then found it “disappointing” that I wouldn’t drive 30 minutes each way 20 minutes of overtime on Saturday or Sundays.

At the time I was paid £11.44 per hour (Saturday being 1.5x and Sunday 2x). So no, I’m not giving up 2 hours on Saturday for £10. It’s ok though, I’ll leave it running on Friday night and kick it off on Monday 👍.

I left without them ever reinstating it, but always sent the many annoyed customers in her direction when being quizzed on why we lost two days of running over the weekend. At the time the facility hours were rated at ~£1000 per day in value add when running.

The previous overtime policy made it worth driving to work, but the new policy didn’t. His manager definitely didn’t think that through very well.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Here’s another story about a manager who made a bad decision.

This is true.

Thinking long term is the trick.

This is a good point!

If you want employees to work overtime, you need to make it worth it.

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.