Imagine working at a company where it’s almost impossible to time your job so that you finish exactly at the end of your shift. If there was a new rule that overtime was no longer allowed, would you stop working the second your shift was over, or would you finish the task you were working on even if it meant working a little longer than your shift?

In this story, one man is in this situation, and he decides to stop working the second his shift is over. It didn’t take long for he bosses to realize how necessary overtime actually was!

Keep reading for the whole story.

The time my grandfather in law shut down a steel mill and got overtime rules changed.

Story takes place in the 60’s. Grandfather in law was a WWII vet, was a POW in Italy, got out of the POW camp and rejoined his unit then continued the war.

So a verified tough guy.

Worked the railroad at a steel mill. Just locally moving cars and setting up the train, moving stuff from one plant to the other, that kind of thing.

Overtime was inevitable.

The mill was on either side of a river with a rail bridge connecting them, and the main rails ran right through both sections of the mill. So when he came through with a lot of cars it would temporarily close the roads in the mill.

He would get a little overtime quite often just by the nature of the job. Couple hours or so per week.

When it’s shift change time but you’re driving a train you need to finish up before you can run the engine back to let your relief take over.

But there was a rule change.

So of course the mill decided to make a ‘no overtime, no exceptions’ rule.

It took him a couple weeks to get it timed just right.

At 3 pm his shift was over. He parked the engine right by the timeclock, clocked out, and went home.

He only had to do it the one time.

He said there was almost 2 miles of cars hooked to the engine. Went through the section of mill he was at, across the river, and into the other section of the mill.

All the track was owned by the mill, so it didn’t effect the actual railroad. Just the mill.

The mill bosses wanted to punish him, I forget the details, but the Union shut that right down.

Nothing happened and the rules changed the next day.

This is another great example of bosses making rules without understanding the consequences. He did a great job proving why overtime is sometimes necessary.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Yes, this is probably what they meant.

This is a good point.

Here’s more support of unions.

One person compares management to a dog.

Making your problem management’s problem is the only way to get the problem resolved.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.