Most jobs come with a set schedule where you have to be at work, but employers understand that you can’t be working every second that you are there.

What would you do if your boss told your team that they expect you to be logged in and ready to take calls from one second before your shift starts until one second after it ends?

That is what the boss of the employee in this story said, so even though she was on a call with a customer, when the clock went one second after her shift ended, she hung up and went home. Needless to say, the boss wasn’t happy.

While this may have been a bad career move, it was a very satisfying story that I’m sure many people loved. Read through the whole thing here and see what you think.

Just complying with your written expectations and directions, boss.

I was working at an IT helpdesk at a large hospital quite some time ago.

If this is the requirement, they need to pay them for those 15 minutes.

We were expected to be at our desks, logged in, ready to take our first call by the start time of our shift.

It took about 10-15 minutes to log in, load up and login to 7 different programs, all with different passwords. So really, you needed to be there 15 minutes early.

It sounds like a lot of unpaid labor to me.

They were shared computers, sometimes you could get away with just locking it and leaving everything logged in and running until your next shift, but if someone else restarts it in the meantime, you had to log in to everything again.

It was a constant pain point for us that was frequently raised, especially as, for example, when medical staff need to scrub up and scrub down, this is all during their shift time.

Let’s see how the manager wants to handle this.

My manager sends a somewhat passive aggressive email to the team

“Hi all,

It seems we are still having lots of issues around our shift times. I want to clarify my expectations.

I hope the manager wants to pay them from the moment they sit at their desk.

If you are on a 7am to 4pm shift, I expect you to be here, logged in, ready to go, and your status on the phone queue as ‘available’ or ‘on a call’ at 6:59:59am.

If you want to make a coffee, fill your water bottle, or put your lunch in the fridge, this needs to all be done before 7am, not after.

She definitely sounds like an awful manager.

At the end of the shift, I expect you to be ‘available’ or ‘on a call’ until 4:00:01pm. Only then may you logout and wash your coffee cup, etc.

If you are going to be stuck in traffic, have trouble finding parking, or miss your bus, you’ll need to manage your time better and leave earlier.

Thanks”

She will show her manager the problem by complying perfectly.

So, for a while, I comply, and am always ‘available’ or ‘on a call’ at exactly 1 second before my start time, just waiting for my moment.

And it happens. I get a call a with a splash less than 2 minutes left on my shift and take the call.

I honestly feel bad for the caller. But only slightly bad.

I get about as far as their name, where they are, and halfway through them describing their issue, I see the clock hit 1 second over my shift time.

I say “sorry to interrupt you, my shift is over. Goodbye”, hang up, log off and go home.

This all seems very reasonable to me.

Of course they complain and my manager pulls me into his office, asking me to explain why I did what I did.

I explain

“Well I was ‘available’ on the phone until about (2 minutes before the end of my shift time).

You can’t have it both ways, manager.

I answered the call, putting my status to ‘on a call’ until 1 second past my shift time, so I logged off”

They replied

“No, if you are on a call, you need to finish that call first”

It really is that simple.

To which I reply

“Your email says we are expected to be ‘available’ or ‘on a call’ 1 second before our shift time, which I have been.

It also says we are expected to be ‘available’ or ‘on a call’ until 1 second past our shift time, and only then may we log off.

I am simply following your expectations and written directions”

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Sometimes it is worth burning a bridge to make your point.

Of course this was a very CLM (career limiting move) but at this point I already had my foot half way out the door.

I definitely don’t regret my decision.

Wait, what happened? I want the rest of the story. Did the manager back off on the policy? Inquiring minds want to know.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a software engineer who coded a perfect program, and refused to change it after hardware cards were installed upside down.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this fun story.

Contacting an attorney is a good idea, though.

What the company is asking for is likely illegal.

They are asking for the impossible.

How does the company think that this makes sense?

There is no shortage of horrible bosses.

You have to pay people while they are working, and part of that is logging into the systems. So many bad bosses out there think they can get 15-30 minutes of free work out of their team, and it isn’t even legal.

When companies make people work without paying them, they can get sued, which ends up costing them far more in the long run.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman whose HR department advised her to quit if she was that unhappy, so she did and found herself in a role reversal years later.