HR departments love to quote company policy, but they sometimes forget what’s hidden in the fine print.

So when one employee tried to leave his job for a better opportunity, HR tried to gaslight him into giving up six days of salary.

But after reviewing the handbook for himself, it turns out HR didn’t have much of a leg to stand on.

Keep reading for the full story.

HR tries to gaslight me and screw me, they end up bending over backwards

I work for a multinational consulting company.

I had just recently finished my engineering degree and, since I was already working there as an intern, when they offered me a full-time job I figured I’d accept it while I looked for another job that I would enjoy more.

The project I was in was a complete crap show.

Multiple factors led to this employee being totally miserable at this job.

The client was always angry at us because we were late on our deliveries constantly.

The PL was a good guy but didn’t have a clue about what us “pawns” were doing on a daily basis and would chew everyone out whenever things didn’t go as he planned.

The project itself was boring as heck, so there wasn’t really any challenge or opportunity for learning anything valuable.

His coworker’s lack of effort often ended up making his life harder too.

To top it off, while most of my coworkers were cool guys, some of them were just slackers that tried to do the absolute minimum, and often times not even that.

Which usually meant more work for me.

No one bothered to stay at the company long.

There was a huge amount of turnover too.

So high that I was one of the “vets” despite having been there for only six months.

The project never really felt to be getting any traction.

To be fair though, they always treated me well and with respect. So nothing to complain about on a personal level.

So finally he moved on somewhere else.

After two months with my new contract in that sucky project, I finally found a job at another company that I really liked.

Salary and other benefits were far better than what I had at the moment.

And the project was much more interesting.

I passed all the interviews with flying colors and they offered me the job starting the following month. Great!

But the old job wouldn’t let him leave that easily.

In my country, you usually need to give a 15-day notice before leaving your current job or you risk facing penalties.

Now, it was my first time switching jobs, so I called HR to confirm this.

They did.

The employee worries that when HR hears he found something new, they might just kick him to the curb.

It’s also relevant that once you put in your leave notice, the company can actually let you go whenever they want before the 15 days are over.

This meant that if I would have told them right then that I was leaving next month, they easily could have let me go the next day.

And I would have been left without a job for the entire month.

So this employee decided he needed to be strategic with his timing.

With all this information, I decided to wait a couple of weeks before putting in my leave notice.

About 17 days before the starting date at my new job. So I could at least guarantee myself half a month’s salary.

The day came and I talked to HR to put in my notice.

They were very polite, trying to convince me to stay, but gave up when I told them what my new conditions would be.

Then the conversation went as follows.

HR soon threw several curveballs.

HR: “Alright then, we’ll process your leave request… your last day being 1st October, you will be deducted six days of salary…”

Me: “Wait, what? Why?”

HR: “Oh, you need to give us notice 15 labour days before leaving. It’s company policy.”

The employee tries to fight back.

Me: “But I literally talked to you a couple weeks ago and you never specified that they had to be labour days. We always talked about natural days.”

HR: “I doubt that. It’s always been labour days, not natural days.”

This exchange went on for a bit.

The employee can hardly believe what he’s hearing.

And I started having the feeling that he was gaslighting me. So I tried to think of another solution.

Me: “I still have six vacation days left over. Can’t I just take those right after I ‘leave’?”

HR: “No, sorry, can’t do. Company policy.”

So here I was thinking these duplicitous, gaslighting, unhelpful Toby’s at HR had got me by the arms.

The only thing he did was remind me that company policy is set in stone.

So the employee decided he needed to do some research of his own, and soon he found something that just might help.

Finally, I told them that I would look into my options and call back.

I started going through my contract to see if I could do anything about this.

And I gotta say, I struck gold.

The contract I signed was a regular, indefinite time contract.

However, the first three months of it were probatory. Which meant that the company could terminate it at any time without repercussions for any reason.

But here’s the really important part.

I looked it up on Google and confirmed my suspicions.

The same was true for the employee.

It had been only two months since I signed. So I could leave whenever I wanted. No notice needed at all.

So he goes back to HR with what he finds.

With the biggest grin I could muster, I called HR back.

Me: “Hey, it’s me, calling you back about my leave notice. I just read my contract and since I’m still on probatory period, I take it I can leave whenever I want, no penalties whatsoever. Like for instance, right now, at 12:39 in the afternoon. Is that correct?”

Silence for one, two, three, four, five seconds.

HR: “…I guess we can probably arrange it for you to leave right before 1st October if you wish.”

No kidding.

He finally had HR exactly where he wanted them.

What did Reddit think of this malicious compliance?

It always pays to read the fine print.

When you back someone into a corner, you can’t be too surprised when they fight back!

This commenter further clarifies.

This policy really didn’t make much sense to begin with.

Turns out, the fine print works both ways!

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.