Shutterstock

Imagine working for a company that has offices in different countries. Would you think it would be fair to give all the employees in all the offices the same rules and the same supplies, or should the rules and supplies be different in different countries?

In this story, one man who works in the London office is upset that corporate refuses to give his office the same supplies the U.S. employees are getting, so he decides to get even.

Keep reading to see how he makes sure corporate doesn’t save any money by issuing the London office different supplies.

Management saving pennies by throwing away pounds.

My brother’s company has asked their staff to return to the office for a minimum of 3 days a week.

He understands, it makes sense for those in central departments, but he works in an offshore office with three other colleagues, none of whom do the same job (think of it as boss brother, local admin suport, local engineering, local marketing).

Since they worked from home they’ve talked on the phone fewer than 10 times and met in person no more than twice. They work in different departments and don’t really need to talk to each other now that everything’s online.

If it was supposed to be fair, he wanted it to be fair.

The company are insistent that it’s one rule for all, except for the senior manager who decided to move out of their head office and to a different country. She’s exempt because she’s moved, apparently.

Anyway, the whole ordeal annoyed my brother but, being the good guy he is, he relented as long as his team got the “return to office” kit that everybody else got. Namely, headsets, an extra laptop charger, and a locker.

Well, his company decided not to supply lockers.

He quoted their “one rule for all” back to his senior manager and was told no, Central London is expensive so you must make do with your kit. The new downsized office is what you have, take it or leave it.

Again, this doesn’t seem fair.

The US staff, following their senior manager’s lead, realised that she’d bought a wireless headset because it was easier to transport on her flights back to the country she lived in, so they’d all been given wireless headsets too.

Again, he asked for wireless headsets, but was told no, the rule is wired headsets.

My brother is a very patient man (he has two younger sisters, and we didn’t make his childhood easy, so I get this part). He’s also someone you never want to tick off because he’s very happy to go full send to make a point.

Whilst he’s only got a team of 4, including himself, he’s the most senior UK employee, totalling about 60 people.

There was a significant difference in cost between wireless and wired headsets.

He agreed to wired headsets if he could request some “appropriate periphery” to go along with them.

He waited until he got an “approved” email from his seniors until he put his plan into action.

60 x wireless headsets were about £47 each, and came with a case.

60 x wired headsets were about £30 each.

But he had a plan to make sure their wired headset kits cost more than wireless headsets.

60 x headset cases were £10 each.

60 x Apple lightning to 3.5mm adapters were £8 each (the company phones are iPhones and don’t have 3.5mm adapters).

60 x large health and safety-compliant backpacks were about £42 each.

60 x spare 3.5mm cables were about £2 each.

The company didn’t save any money by insisting on wired headsets.

The company could have spent £2820 on wireless headsets to keep their offshore staff happy.

They ended up spending over double that, £5520, and then complained that the wired headsets were too expensive.

The newest UK hires are being issued with wireless headsets, and my brother is now looking to return all of the wired headsets and obtain wireless headsets “for commonality and functional purposes”.

I don’t think he’ll follow through on that at the moment, but if he gets any more complaints then I’m sure next time I see him for a drink he’ll be wearing a wireless headset.

Good for him for making the total cost much more expensive than if he had gotten what he really wanted!

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person likes what their company did.

Here’s another good observation.

One person has a suggestion.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a craft store customer who refuses to take no for an answer when it comes to wrapping his purchases for gifts.

Another person quotes the TV show The A-Team.

Next time, the company should either make it fair for all the employees regardless of where they’re located or listen to the employees about what actually works best for them given their location.

It really doesn’t seem to make sense to require OP to return to the office. It also doesn’t make sense not to give him and his coworkers wireless headsets.

He handled that well!