Imagine working as a truck driver, and you’re paid salary, which means, no overtime. Would you be willing to work overtime anyway to make sure all the deliveries got done, or would you refuse?

In this story, one man was in this situation, and he was willing to bend the rules and go above and beyond…at first. One day, that all changed, and he insisted on leaving work on time every day no matter what.

Keep reading to see what made him change his mind and how his boss reacted.

No paid overtime you say, ok….

This story happened in the late nineties, when i got my truck drivers license. I was about 32 years old at that time.

The world wasnt as digital back then as it is now and we had to use paper drive/rest diagram discs that we filled out with our names, dates, numberplate for the truck and how many kilometers it had run before we started our day. The disc was then inserted under the speedometer.

This was important because if we were pulled over by the police or road authorities thay could check if we have had our required resting period and didnt drive too many hours which could be dangerous if we got tired and fell asleep behind the wheel.

Here’s what the law has to say about breaks for truck drivers…

The law states that you can drive 4,5 hours straight, but then you need to take a 45 minutes break before you could drive for another 4,5 hours.

After the second 4,5 hours you are not allowed to drive anymore that day and had to take a break till the next day, or at least 11 hours.

There are some exclusions to that law but i wont go into that because its irelevant to this story.

Whats relevant though, is that when you are on your break, you are not allowed to any kind of work at all, you just have to rest.

This sounds simple enough.

There was a little knob on the speedometer that you could switch from «driving» to «other work» (this is included into the 4,5 hours of driving) or to «break/rest».

If you where driving from A to B in 4 hours, switched to «other work» and loaded/unloaded or whatever you had to do for 30 minutes, then you had to take a break for 45 minutes, you get the picture.

I hadnt been working for a few years due to some major damages i got from an accident when i was hit by a car when i was riding a small motorcycle myself and and i used time to recover from it.

Took the opportunity to get the truck drivers licence and thought id try to get to work again and started applying for jobs.

Now we get to the real story…

This was the background, now my story starts.

I got a job at a small delievery company that had 6-7 trucks and we all were driving our own assigned routes. This company was located in another town and i had to drive my own car nearly 1 hour to get there.

My contract with this company said i had to work for 10 hours per day (7 AM to 5 PM) and i was on salary.

Ooopsss, red flag!

There was another red flag!

Remember the 9 hour per day rule?

I was told by my boss not to put in my paper disc under the speedometer before i actually left the loading dock, that way we could bend the rules.

2nd red flag!

But there was another red flag!

He allso told me that as i had so many stops per day i didnt need the 45 minutes break to get my rest time as the times i was out loading and unloading the goods probably would be more than 45 minutes per day.

3rd red flag!

Well, i needed the job to get myself into a routine again after been away from the working life for several years so i gave it a go.

Here’s how it worked…

They delievered and picked up goods that were going across those routes and shared the goods amongst the drivers on their own loading dock and goods station.

Lets say truck A came in with a pallet that were going on truck Ds route, then truck A left it on the loading dock at the end of the day and then the driver of truck D loaded it into truck D and delievered it the next day.

Quite effective.

There was yet another red flag!

I was told that i would have 3 days of training with the driver that had the route that i was assigned for before he was leaving the company for another job.

This was for me to get to know the route and some customers before i started.

My trainer left after day one, then i was on my own.

4th red flag

But there was free pizza.

This was before everyone had GPS and there i was, a truck driver with a fresh drivers licence who hadnt been working for years, driving on roads i didnt know at all.

Needless to say that i used longer time on everything because of that but atleast i made it through the days.

The boss was a fat blimp, 10 years younger than me, and was given this position because his father knew people. All the rest of the drivers were his age and he tried to befriend all of them.

Once a month, on a Saturday, he set up a mandatory company meeting that took place in the office and we didnt do nothing other than eating pizza and talking crap. This was the bosses way to show that he was a good boss and took care of his employees, by feeding them pizza.

But the mandatory fun was on OP’s day off!

Mind you, i had to drive 1 hour to get there and 1 hour to get back home for this unpaid meeting with free pizza and crap talking.

I was the only employee that lived out of town and he didnt see that i lost both family time and money by attending to these meetings.

In his own words we had to socialize and since we didnt have the time to do it on our workdays, we had to do it on a Saturday.

Hooray, thanks for the free pizza boss, and thanks for ruining my day off.

OP was injured on the job.

To explain how good this boss were i have to tell the story about when i were supposed to pick up an industrial metal door from the factory.

They forgot to grind one of the edges to smooth it and when i was lifting it the metal cut through my glove and into my fingers and made me bleed pretty bad.

I loaded the door onto the truck and secured it, then i got a new unused glove to put on my bleeding hand before i drove to the hospital and parked at the side.

I went in to the emergency entrance where the ambulances were. Found a woman dressed in white and asked if i could get some help.

The nurse helped him out.

She asked me what i needed help to and then i pulled my glove off by its fingertips. Incredible how much blood there is being pumped through there. When i pulled the glove off to show her, there was a pool of blood on the floor.

I was stitched up and got a tetanus shot and was told to sit on a chair for 30 minutes to see if there were any complications or reactions from the shot.

After said 30 minutes i was allowed to drive the truck back to the company but got discharged from work for 4 days so the wound could heal.

The boss sounds heartless.

When i called this in to the office my boss was ticked off because he didnt need accidents in his reports.

If you injure yourself at work here, it is supposed to be reported to the labour inspection service but i guess he «forgot» as its a lot of papers to fill in and if you are inspected and found wrong it will hit the company hard.

Wound healed and im back at work.

His boss needed him to do an urgent delivery.

One day i got a phone call at 3 PM and was told i had to go to a way out of route and to another shipping company to pick up a few pallets of something that they had failed to deliver to a factory. Now that factory had to shut down their production because of it. The factory couldnt produce whatever they did due to the lack of feed.

I was told by my boss that we (the company that i worked for) would be paid generously as this was an after hour emergency blah blah blah and that we would get good rates and more to do.

I did what i was told (i knew i was breaking the law but my company would probably pay the fines if i was pulled over by the police for anything) and drove the fastest i could to get the factory their goods.

They were very happy with what i did and if they had had a red carpet im pretty sure they would have rolled it out for me when i arrived.

He expected overtime.

I drove from the factory and to my companys loading dock where i parked the truck for the night. It was now 9 PM.

Next day the boss slapped me on my back and told me i did a good job and i thought so myself as well, even with too many hours behind the wheel.

I was on salary, remember? Even though i was, i still have to turn in my time sheets every week, telling when i started work and when i finished each day. We did this manually and i wrote down my overtime.

To my surprise i didnt get more than usual when we were paid and i went into the office and questioned my boss about it.

He didn’t like the boss’s answer.

The answer i got was: You are on salary, you dont get paid overtime.

When i told tham that this wasnt fair as the company clearly had made a load of money on me driving for them my boss shruged and said that i needed to see that i had to stretch myself a little as this was a small company and they needed the money.

I. WAS. MAD!

I went out of the office and slammed the door so hard that i heard the pictures that was hanging on the plaster wall fell down.

I got a write up for that one….

He was done with making exceptions for this company.

Now the malicious compliance.

I started putting in the paper disc (drive/rest) that i told you about in the beginning of this story exactly at 7 PM and turned the knob to «other work». Then i worked for exactly 4,5 hours and had my 45 minutes break.

I stopped my usual delivering and pickups exactly 3 PM after that and started driving to our companys loading dock. A truck can only drive as fast as 80 kilometers per hour, if you go over, then you are speeding according to the law.

This was well calculated, from where i usually was located at 3 PM it would take me about 1,5 hours to get «home» and then i had 30 minutes to unload the truck and get all the goods in it were it was supposed to be in our depot. After these 30 minutes the clock were 5 PM and i was off for the day as i didnt get paid for more than that.

His route changed, but his malicious compliance did not.

After a month or so i had to switch routes and i got one that i didnt know again and thing went slow, just like with the beginning of the previous one. No GPS means slow.I continued to do the same and ended my day at 5 PM every single day.

Now my boss was mad but he couldnt do anything about it as i did my work and the company was loosing money every day hence the pickups and dropoffs not being done.

Then he decided to punish me, well so he thought. He rented me out to the mother company, the one that actually owned the company that i worked for.

I was instructed to drive to a city far from where we were located and pick up a full truck of pallets that were supposed to be distributed the same day by myself.

He still played by the rules.

I didnt care what i did or where i was driving, my workday started at 7 AM and ended at 5 PM anyway.

I loaded the pallets in the said city and started the distribution. I think i got 3 of them delieverd where they were supposed to before my 4,5 hours were up and i had to take my break.

I stopped the truck and started my lunch break. While i was eating the phone rang but i ignored it, i was on my break.

When my break was over i called back to the number that called me and spoke to the boss for the day, he wasnt very happy that i took my 45 minutes and not answering the phone but little could he do about it. He just wanted to know where in the world i was and he wasnt getting happier when i told him that i only had delievered 3 pallets till now.

His boss expected him to work overtime.

The day went on like normal, i delivered most of what i was supposed to but i had 4 pallets left on my truck when it was time to start driving back to the company.

I called the boss of the day and told him that everything went fine and that i only had 4 pallets left on the truck.

He replied that he was glad that it went fine and that delievering those 4 pallets would be no problem as the places that were waiting for them didnt close their doors before 8 PM and that was 5 hours ahead.

I replied with a grin on my face: That might be, but im not paid after 5 PM so i cant do it. In fact, at 8 PM im probably sitting in my sofa with my legs up watching TV. You see, i cant afford to stretch that far, I have a family and i need the money.

His friends had his back.

I left my notice of resignation the day after that and started working as a forklift driver in a goods hub that i used to visit on my first route after that.

I became friends with the workers there when i used to drive that route and i was there every day delievering or picking up. They called me and asked me if i needed a career change and of course i said yes.

I got much better pay and i clocked out when i was supposed to.

What goes around comes around.

The best thing about this was, after a few months working in that hub my old boss came in with a small truck. He lost his job as boss and now he had to be a driver himself.

He didnt have a license to drive the heavier trucks so he was stuck with a small one that was absolutely horrible to drive as it was underpowered.

He came to me with papers that showed that he was to pick up an industrial double steel door, a really heavy one.

I dropped it off in front of him and told him: There you go, then i left him to struggle with it alone. I hope he didnt cut hiself…..

I’m glad he stopped working so hard when his boss clearly didn’t appreciate his hard work. The mandatory pizza parties sound awful too.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person wishes he had handled it differently.

It is sad that so many workers let their employers overwork them.

By the way, this story took place in Norway.

The company could’ve gotten in big trouble.

When there are red flags, just walk away.

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.