“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a pretty good motto to live by when it comes to running a business.

And some bosses just never learn!

Take a look at what happened when managers at a summer camp decided to change things for the worse and it ended up backfiring on them.

“You must clock out at 5” or, How to Alienate an Entire Team Doing Free Overtime.

“Over a couple of summers, I worked for an overnight summer camp program for a local college.

This program specializes in teaching kids technical skills (i.e. Programming, Robotics, etc). My job was to plan, create, and instruct a weeklong course based on a specific technology.

During the day, we would focus on teaching, while we did typical summer camp stuff during the night.

For those who haven’t worked at a camp, typically the industry standard is to be paid at a weekly rate. The hours working can vary wildly between whether or not one worked overnight on a certain day or was helping with camp duties.

Thus, a per week rate simplifies the process. People who worked overnights were paid a premium, but everyone considered the pay fair “for a week’s work.”

For my program, I was tasked with teaching a class about a set of hardware. Every student would get to take this hardware home with them at the end of the week.

So, in the class, we would set up the hardware, show off some cool things they can do with it, and then let them loose at the end of the week to use the hardware.

There were some issues…

The issue was, however, that the hardware is the antithesis of reliable. Each day, a quarter of the class’ new hardware would break down. There were a couple parts in the hardware that had a 1 in 2 chance of failing within a couple hours of installation.

If a student had lucked out with perfect hardware, they were golden. However, many would have to have their hardware parts cycled out multiple times until it would be consistently working.

By the end of each program, we were usually able to ensure that the student’s hardware would be in reliably working fashion for them to take home. However, that assurance did not come without sacrifice.

Every night I had off, every break I was given, every moment I could spare was spent in the classroom working on the various non-functioning hardware. This hardware was necessary for me to be able to teach the class.

At the end of the program, the parents and the students expected the hardware to be perfectly functioning by the end of the week.

Parents could not just send the hardware back for repairs, y’know? Thus, I understood that it was my responsibility spend my free time fixing the hardware.

After all, I was getting paid “for a week’s work.” It wasn’t too bad to fiddle with cables in an air conditioned room away from kids.

However, I won’t sugarcoat and say that it wasn’t an frustrating experience. But I was able to make it work and the parents always left the program satisfied with what their child brought home.

They were all putting in a lot of work.

In addition, I was not the only one doing things for the camp outside of working for kids. There were various activities that counselors worked on and helped out with that would make camp more exciting and fun.

This involved preparing pranks, skits, activities, or even just briefly joining an on-duty night counselor’s activity to lighten the load. Even if you were not on-duty during the night, you were usually doing something for the camp.

This involvement helped create a fun and engaging camp experience for both campers and counselors. These summers were some of the most enjoyable and rewarding experiences I have ever had.

But…

However, going into what would become my final season, some major changes were made.

The administration announced that for the next season we would be getting paid on an hourly rate. This move immediately came off as weird to most of us.

I mean, weekly rates have always been the industry standard at every camp job I worked before.

There was a rumor that one of the new guys that quit last year complained that he was being ripped off for how many hours they worked, but no one could prove if the rumor was true.

Quick aside: Weekly rates when divided by hours worked can look like a ripoff. But this is no industry secret. You’re getting paid to hang out with kids. Most of the time, it’s pretty laid back. Regardless, one’s weekly take is still higher that what one would make at a 40-hour minimum wage job.

Either way, our director (who reports to the administration, but is typically on our side and handles in-the-moment personnel and client issues) assured us by showing that the hourly rate is higher than what the weekly rate was considering our hours.

This sounded good to them!

I like money, so I was excited to finally get a pay raise going into the new season.

First day of the season was pretty typical of how first days go. I had the first night off, so I was preparing myself to fix the Mt. Kilimanjaro of hardware already on my desk.

During training, they were instructing us that we needed to clock out at 5 if we weren’t working at night.

Now, that is typically when those who have off are let free. However, since everyone usually did something for the camp during their off nights, we figured that we were supposed to just punch out whenever we were done with our tasks. No one actually thought that they expected us to *STOP* working at 5.

Well, 5:12 comes and I am still just cleaning up my room from the day, when for some reason an admin walks in.

Oh, boy…

Admin: What are you doing?

Me: Oh, just cleaning up, then I got to…

Admin: Did you clock out?

Me: Well, no I still…

Admin: You MUST clock out at 5.

A switch flipped inside my brain at that moment. You see, I was no longer being paid “for a week’s work.” I was getting paid for how many hours I worked and the administration would not allow me to go over their allotted hours.

My mentality changed immediately.

So I responded:

Me: Ok. Sounds good.

I leave the room as is and lock the door.

Admin: Don’t do it again, or you will be written up.

It didn’t take long for us to realize that was a veiled scheme for the administration to cut everyone’s pay.

By offering a higher hourly rate than what we got before, they were able to convince most of the veterans to come back thinking they were getting a raise. When, actually, we were forced to work less hours.

This was pretty lame…

Everyone’s weekly take was significantly less than what they were in previous years. In addition, since it was a flat hourly rate, overnight counselors made twice as much as those who did not.

Even though the overnight gig requires significantly less focus, preparation, and effort compared to the day programs.

Everyone was mad.

It soon became the norm that once their “shift” ended, they were done for the day. Gone are the prepared skits and activities.

Those who had their nights off simply retreated to their room or went out. We weren’t getting paid “for a week’s work” so why bother making it special.

In the case of my class, that meant that I stopped repairing hardware in my free time. I then only repaired hardware during class periods.

This caused the class to slow to a halt. By the end of the first program, my class was only able to get through about half of the material and 20% students had to go home with non-functioning hardware.

I felt terrible, I genuinely did. But what could I do?

Camp received some pretty rotten emails from those parents that week, but everyone stood up for me knowing how much time was taken from me to fix. That’s pretty much how much of that summer went.

What a bummer!

The magic of camp was lost and in its place were increasingly upset parents. Most of the veterans, including all directors and leads, left at the end of the summer.

The camp still continued on, but for my friends and I, it was no longer the place that was pretty alright “for a week’s work.””

Check out what reader had to say about this story.

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And this reader asked a question.

The folks in charge obviously forgot what summer camp for kids is supposed to be all about.

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.