His Boss Reprimanded Him for Leaving Early — So He Started Claiming More Overtime Than Ever
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Imagine working for a company that doesn’t want to pay you overtime. They’d prefer you get “paid” for the overtime by taking extra time off. What would you do if your boss reprimanded you for leaving work early and didn’t care when you explained that you were leaving early to make up for the overtime you worked over the weekend?
In this story, one employee was in this exact situation, so he decided that he was going to get paid for any overtime he worked.
Keep reading to see how the story plays out.
“People” don’t understand why you’re leaving early
I was working for a small-ish company, about 60 employees across several locations. IT support for both hardware (laptops, phones) and software.
When I was hired (just under 9 years ago) it was verbally agreed that instead of clocking any callouts as overtime, I would just take the time in lieu.
This wasn’t an issue.
Callouts were always minimal and there were never any issues with me taking the time here and here to make up for it.
Any calls in the middle of the night were quickly resolved, and I had no problem getting back to sleep.
Appointments in the middle of the day were fine because of the additional hours from whenever…
This worked well for almost my entire time there.
OP actually worked overtime for free.
I also ALWAYS started early, just depending on when I left the house, got into the office, got my coffee – could have been anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes because I would leave the house earlier so as not to wake the family if school was off that day.
I didn’t care at that point. It never bothered me. They got free time from me, but again I DID NOT CARE because honestly what else did I have to do?
It was a great job until it wasn’t.
Then, OP worked some approved overtime.
One weekend I was working on some hardware maintenance (cleaning up wiring, ethernet, plugs, installing a new UPS) that took me the better part of Sunday to complete (6-8 hours).
This was understood, approved in advance and appreciated.
The following week I decided to start burning those extra hours up.
I still came in early (as I had done for years), but started leaving an hour early from my regular end time every day if nothing was going on.
But OP wasn’t slacking off.
This is important – if something needed done, I got it done. I was reachable via email until early evening, and phone pretty much 24/7.
This particular week was slow so I had nothing going on. I left an hour early for the first 4 days.
On Friday, my boss comes to me and gently says “people notice that you’ve been leaving early this week, I’d like you to make sure you stay in your office until the scheduled end of day in case someone needs you.”
The boss didn’t care about OP’s explanation.
I explained to him that I was burning up lieu days and he just reiterated that “it looks bad to others”.
Seriously? You can’t tell the “others” that I work my 40 hours a week, just not at the same time as them?
Fine. Cue the MC.
I immediately submitted 4 hours of overtime for the hours that I didn’t take in lieu.
Now, OP is claiming a lot more overtime hours.
I still showed up at the office at whatever time I got there, but didn’t not start ANY work until 8am. If asked, I would say “sure, 8am start time”.
If I got called outside of office hours, depending on how long I spent on the issue, I logged it as overtime.
User calls me at 7pm to ask a question? I answer him in 30 seconds… one hour OT.
When my boss then started to ask “how come you’re submitting all of this overtime?” I responded with a simple “some people don’t understand or like me taking lieu time, so I need to claim it as overtime since I am at my desk from 8-4”
He didn’t work there much longer.
Because I wasn’t available at his beck and call, it ended up costing them more money.
95% of my job could be done from home because of full remote access, but that stupid old school mentality means that people in the office need to see you at your desk all day long.
I left the company very shortly after that for a much better paying job with full work from home.
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Know your worth.
It can be very frustrating to feel chained to a desk in an office when you know your work could be done 100% from home. I was in that situation at a job once. It was very frustrating, but at least I was able to claim overtime hours without any issue.
Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.
Exactly! He should’ve simply refused to work overtime.
Another person shares his wife’s situation.
This person thinks his coworkers wouldn’t care when he leaves.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a customer who can’t seem to come to grips with the fact that her reward points will not cover a purchase.
But another person’s coworkers definitely care when he leaves.
Management should simply explain that not everyone is on the same schedule.
Good for him for refusing to be overworked and underpaid. If he can’t make up the hours by leaving early, getting paid for the hours was the only other option. I’m glad he stopped working for free in the mornings too.
The manager should’ve handled this issue differently.
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