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Sometimes rules don’t make sense, but if employees know how to work the system, they can make these rules work in their favor.

That’s actually what happens in the story you’re about to read.

A nurse explains the overtime rules at the hospital where she works. She also explains that they’re incredibly short staffed and that when the work day is done, she really doesn’t want to work overtime.

Overtime is highly discouraged, but the bosses also know that sometimes situations come up at a hospital that make it impossible for nurses to clock out on time.

Keep reading to see how the nurses use that information to their advantage.

Don’t want to pay me 7 minutes of overtime? Mmmkay, pay me an hour.

I’m a nurse and a hospital I worked at early on paid by tenths of an hour, as most do.

They were cracking down on OT.

They were more than happy for us to clock out up to 7:36 (quit time was 7:30 and this meant we didn’t get OT) but if we clocked out at 7:37 -0.1 hour late, it was a problem.

They were very short staffed.

The unit I was on got a new director and became hell.

More and more people quit, they couldn’t replace them, we became dangerously short staffed.

We never took the 2 15m breaks. Ever.

Working was more important than eating.

We usually clocked out for a lunch, because you’d get in trouble if you didn’t, never mind you didn’t have time, but we had to clock out.

About half the time we would have to work during that mandatory lunch, unpaid.

What am I going to do? Sorry you’re dying but my lunch is getting cold?

Here are some more details about the overtime rules and consequences.

Anyway, big OT crackdown came.

Our manager told us if we had more than 1 late clock out we’d get a verbal (not really verbal bc it’s documented in file), another late clock out a written. Then who knows.

Now, I rarely clocked out late because I worked my tail off but about once every other week I may clock out 0.1-0.2h late but that’s because I’d tried REALLY hard to get out on time. I didn’t even want the OT, I wanted to go home!

About everyone got a verbal within 2 weeks. She then came back and said if you clock out 0.1-0.4h late then you would get the verbal. However, if it was >0.5h late then they knew something bad happened and would let it go.

The employees knew how to work the system.

So all of us that did our best to get out within 0.1 late on bad days?

No longer. We took our sweet time and we were all clocking out 45-60 minutes late.

Our documentation was never so perfect.

Suddenly they dropped they dropped the whole bs.

I feel bad for these overworked nurses, but I appreciate their hard work and prioritizing patients over their own lunch break. They should be compensated fairly though. Good for them for getting that extra bit of overtime without consequences!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Respect the lunch break!

This is sad.

I assume this person is a nurse.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a hotel guest that made a scene in the middle of the night, then immediately wished they hadn’t.

Here’s a vote for a lawyer.

Well, what we can take away from this story is that hospitals need more nurses. If you are looking for a career field that’s hiring, maybe consider nursing. That said, you may not get a lunch break or any breaks at all, and you might deal with annoying bosses who want to write you up for clocking out one minute late. So, maybe don’t consider nursing.

Nurses are true heroes, and they should be treated like it.