Imagine working in a customer service help desk role. Sometimes, it would probably be necessary to work overtime if you were stuck on a call with a client trying to resolve a difficult technical issue.

What would you do if your new manager refused to pay you overtime? If you were on a call with a client when your work day ended, would you hang up or keep helping the client until the issue was resolved?

In this story, one employee was in this situation, and after not getting paid for overtime hours that she worked, she refused to work anymore overtime. Instead, she ended calls with clients before the issues were resolved.

Obviously, the clients weren’t happy about this, so she urged them to complain.

Keep reading to see how the story ends. It’s pretty satisfying!

I know I authorized overtime, and you worked four hours of it, but I’m only approving ONE.

Last job I had was an overall mess but the particular manager I had wanted to try and introduce more structure/rules to the place.

He’d moved here from out of state, had a long resume of help desk/IT supervisory experience, and at first seemed like a decent, skilled guy.

Then, came the overtime policy.

Here’s how the overtime policy used to work.

Previously, overtime was allowed without needing approval because sometimes calls run long, as long as it wasn’t excessive.

Excessive meant more than 5 hours and even then all you had to do was explain what took so long and management was happy to approve it because sometimes tech stuff gets messy and takes awhile.

The previous manager never had any issues approving it, and the CIO never had any issues approving that approval.

The new policy sounds awful!

One of the new manager’s changes was that all overtime had to be approved, and if it wasn’t approved (spoiler: it was rarely approved) it meant telling a customer you had to cut a support call short when your shift was over.

Terrible idea but, okay pal, I’ll help you dig that grave for yourself.

I ended up getting a call about an hour before my shift ended and it was a call that was a bug in OUR software that was fixed by a particular windows update; the clinic closed at 5:30, and the office manager asked us to do it after hours.

OP got the overtime approved.

I talk to the manager, he gives me written authorization to work late and get windows updates run on 30 some computers. I do that, and it takes roughly 4 hours as the clinic’s internet connection started to bottom out if I had more than 4-5 remote sessions going at one time.

No big deal, I get it done, submit my time punch for that day, and think nothing of it.

He calls me in the next morning with, “I can’t approve this much overtime! CIO would never authorize it!”

I remind him he authorized overtime for this and that he knew it was one of the larger clinics.

This sounds illegal.

He says, “Well you should have just started some, clocked out, checked on them, then clocked back in when others were ready, you didn’t need to babysit them! I’ll authorize ONE hour.”

I explain to him that that’s a stupid idea and also that it’s not legal to pay me for time worked when he authorized that time and I have it in writing.

He says he doesn’t care and I’m only getting one hour of overtime authorized.

“Fine. From now on, I will clock in exactly at 8am and out at 5pm.”

The supervisor thought he had won, but he hadn’t.

He snaps a, “Good, that’s the policy!” at me and I leave.

Instead of reporting him to the CIO, who I was on friendly terms with, right away, I spent a few weeks collecting things like really ticked off doctors and clinic staff and every time they got understandably angry that I was dropping a call when the issue wasn’t resolved; I’d apologize and tell them it was $Manager’s fault, as it was a policy he implemented and not only is it illegal for me to keep working without the company paying me (as I was an hourly employee) I flat out wasn’t going to work for free.

I suggested they e-mail the CIO and Cc the manager on it, telling them exactly what they thought of the new policy and how it affected their practice and their patients’ opinion of the clinic.

The CIO wanted to know what was going on!

About a week later the CIO paid a surprise visit and wanted to speak to me. He asked me what on earth was going on, he was getting all these ticked off emails from clinic sites saying the techs were dropping calls immediately at 5pm CST regardless of what time it was at the clinic or if the issue was fixed or not and they all said the same thing about it being $Manager’s policy.

I explained the policy to the CIO, also told him about the overtime incident, and he just. LOST IT.

Got up, opened the door to the empty office he was using, and YELLED across the whole IT floor for the manager in question to get his butt in here right now.

Here’s how the CIO handled the situation…

The manager got torn to pieces, forced to apologize to me, marched out of the office like a child by the CIO, who then called everyone over, made him apologize to everyone else for the policy, asked us all to email him dates and actual overtime hours so he could check the time clock and see if they coincided with dates that $Manager had edited, and ended with telling the manager, “You’re lucky I don’t fire you right now but, if I were you, I’d consider maybe not selling your house in $CityHe’dRelocatedFrom just yet.”

The CIO also sent out a department wide e-mail stating that the manager’s overtime policy was revoked effective immediately and we were going back to the original method of dealing with overtime.

He also reiterated that he would have absolutely no issues with approving any overtime as long as it was clear that it was necessary to get a clinic’s systems back up and running or the clinic had specifically asked that the work be done after hours–which is what the old policy had been anyway.

$Manager ended up resigning before they fired him and in one conversation we had after he left he swore it was because the CIO “randomly decided he hated me”.

That manager was really out of line to refuse to pay overtime after approving it. OP handled it really well by getting the clients to complain so the CIO would understand the problem and the consequences of the manager’s policy.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who is told to work a holiday without overtime pay, and how they ended up getting their money.

Let’ see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person doesn’t understand the manager’s reasoning.

But this person explains why the manager probably didn’t want the employees to work overtime.

I’m sure the customers were furious.

The manager definitely didn’t learn his lesson.

She definitely handled that well! Letting the customers be the ones to complain was definitely the right move.

The manager clearly didn’t learn anything from this experience, but at least he quit. He clearly realized he wasn’t cutting it there.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a hotel guest who complained about noise from an event, then reported the employee who agreed with him.