Employers love getting the most out of their workers, but sometimes, it backfires.

What would you do if you were given a full-time workload but told you could only work part-time hours?

Would you overwork yourself to meet expectations?

Or would you follow the rules perfectly and let the bosses deal with the fallout?

In the following story, one employee finds herself in this exact scenario.

Here’s what happened.

I Can Only Work 29 Hours A Week But Have Full-Time Responsibilities? Ok Boss!

I (23F) started a new job last summer as a part-time fellow with the possibility of going full-time.

I was hired to replace someone who was full-time, so my responsibilities were much greater than the time that I was allotted to work, which was 29 hours a week.

Basically, my bosses kept piling work on me, and since this was my first job out of college, I finished it but was basically working full-time for about a week and a half.

I had flagged the issue with them and they told me to reflect the time on my timesheet.

Fast forward to payday, my bosses are livid that I worked too much, saying that I had to stay at exactly 29 hours to be a part-time employee.

Cue the malicious compliance.

It didn’t take the bosses long to realize how much they needed her full-time.

I started vehemently tracking my hours.

I would plan my weeks in advance, so I knew the maximum amount of hours I could work each day to stay at 29 hours.

I basically worked from 9:30 to 3:30, but obviously, there were days that I had to work longer.

When my bosses would give me tasks on Thursdays and Fridays, I would say to them, well, I have to leave at 2 pm today, so I’m under 29 hours this week and go home and relax.

This obviously made my bosses frustrated since they needed to offload work, but I was just following exactly what they had told me to do.

After about 3 weeks of this and multiple tasks not being able to get done because of my strict 29-hour work week, they finally offered me a full-time job.

Wow! It really shouldn’t have come as that big of a surprise to the bosses.

Let’s check out what the readers over at Reddit have to say about her story.

This person tried for full-time but never got it.

Great point.

Here’s someone with a similar experience.

According to this comment, it’s not actually malicious compliance.

She handled this well!

No one should be expected to work for free, so setting healthy boundaries was the right choice.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.