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Imagine working for the same company for a few years when a new manager comes in and wants to make a big change to try to save the company money. If you knew this change would actually end up costing the company more money, would you explain or would you comply and let the manager find out the hard way?

In this story, one employee is in this situation, and she decides to comply. It actually made her job a lot quicker and gave her a huge bump in her paycheck. However, it was a short lived change because Corporate definitely noticed and wondered what was going on.

Keep reading for all the details.

Try to Save Money? Try again…..

This was more than a few years ago when I worked for a low ball Medical Home Health company. I was hired as a Respiratory Therapist and had a area to cover roughly 150 miles out from the office.

The company had issues with managers cause of the lost of money and always had turn over.

So my job was to set up breathing treatment machines but the most common thing was checking on oxygen concentrators in Patients homes.

At the time I would make $25 a visit plus mileage. So you try and group the Pt’s and hit three or four at a shot. Every month a Pt had to be checked and the check lasted about 15 minutes just a fast check.

A new manager usually means something is going to change, and not necessarily for the better.

SO one day we get a new manger that was really all about saving money and getting the company back on track. He started to streamline departments and all I could hear was things were not done BY THE BOOK.

So he called me into the office one day, I worked from home mostly, and had a talk. That the cost of driving everywhere was to high for the amount of Pt’s I had and could we do something about it.

Explained that there was no other way of doing my job than how I was doing it.

So he came up with the idea of a PHONE VISIT.

The manager was insistant.

I explained really can’t do that cause I could not see the equipment.

And he countered with the drivers see the machines every week and can just spot check to see if they were working. So he made up a work sheet to Check off the things I usually look for, Hours of use, clean filters?, clean machine?, hoses ok and not needed repaired?, total of 10 questions.

He proceeded to say I can call and have to Pt give me hours and ask the questions and bill it under a visit.

Which I can’t do cause the code isn’t right, so he look up all our codes for me and picks Phone Consult and tell me to bill under that. To Cover my Butt I ask for a letter stating this and he gives it to me next day.

She did exactly what the manager told her to do.

Cue Malicious Compliance.

I got all my Pt’s numbers toward at the end of the month and worked through the list and got 34 done in about 4 hours and decided that was enough to make a point.

At this time I complete my paperwork and send it to corporate with the letter from my boss telling me to bill under that type code.

She was making a lot more than before!

Week later I get a check for $4250 since that Phone visit code was a $125 per consult ( Mainly used for ventilators).

Not bad for a Part time job.

So The next week I do a few more patients and submit my pay.

Corporate definitely noticed the pay increase.

The Following week I get a call from Corporate asking why I was getting paid more than full timers in Executive posts.

I explained everything and forwarded all the documentation to them.

A week later the manager was at his desk when a fleet of cars pulled in and in walked HR from main office and fired him..

I’m sure that was nice while it lasted! The manager clearly didn’t think that through very well.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Hopefully the manager learned this lesson!

Another person thinks this sounds dangerous.

This person thinks the manager must have made more than just the one change.

Another person has a theory.

The manager clearly had a very bad idea. Instead of insisting on this “phone visit” change, he should’ve listened to the reasons why it wouldn’t work and done some research about what the different billing codes actually meant.

OP definitely proved a point and got corporate’s attention.

If only the manager had listened!