Imagine working in a department with three other people, but one day, all three of them are either sick or on vacation. Would you be willing to skip your lunch break and work overtime to make sure everything got done, or would you do the same amount of work as usual regardless of the consequences?

In this story, one man is in this exact situation, and he is willing to work overtime. However, his boss freaks out and claims he can’t pay him for overtime.

Keep reading to see how they resolve the situation.

Can’t approve overtime? Ok I’ll just leave early on Friday.

For background, this took place in the 1990’s when a T1 (1.5 Mbps data connection) would run you over $500 a month and only the phone company and a few very large, data-centric companies would even dream of having a T3 (43 Mbps)

I was working for one of those telephone companies in the central office where we provisioned and trouble-shot those very lucrative services.

There were 4 people in my department, making it one of the larger such office in the state.

They were very short staffed.

One day there was one person on vacation, and another one out of the office for some other reason, tech #3 called in sick.

I was alone for 8 hours with the workload of 4 technicians.

Well, as a good employee, I prioritized and got all the trouble tickets done, and all of the most urgent new services installed. Everything due that day was done.

But in the process I missed my two 15- minute breaks, and worked through lunch.

Working overtime was a big problem.

My supervisor came down at the end of the day to congratulate me for my good work, and he was watching me fill out my timesheet for 9 hours.

He started to get a little panicky, and said he couldn’t approve overtime. He would get in trouble.

I reminded him that I had just spent 9 hours doing the work of 4 people (32 hours worth of work)

But he said it wasn’t approved.

They reached a compromise.

I said, what can we do then? I worked it, I need to get paid.

He suggested I leave an hour early on Friday. So I agreed.

Come Friday, I decided to take full advantage and only take a half hour lunch so I could leave at 3:30 instead of 4:00.

We’ll guess what? The vacationer and the sick person had not returned so it was just two of us.

The other person disappeared at 1:30 or so. I found out later she was interviewing for a management position.

He knew he couldn’t work overtime.

At 3:00 I got paged for a ticket on one of those very expensive T3’s “down hard” I was to join a conference bridge to assist in troubleshooting.

I joined the call, then at 3:25 I said, sorry, I have to drop off. I’m not approved for any overtime. The night shift person will be here in a half hour to help.”

I dropped off, knowing the night person on duty had never worked on a T3 before.

He refused to look back.

I hadn’t even reached my car when the pager started blowing up. Overtime is approved, please stay on.

But I had already clocked out and so I just smiled and got into my car. Drove home and took my wife out for a long overdue date night.

I love it! It was the supervisor’s suggestion for him to leave early on Friday. All he was doing was following through on that agreement.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

They really didn’t think ahead.

Apparently, he COULD approve overtime.

This person thinks the supervisor got what he deserved.

It’s not even like he worked a lot of overtime.

You can’t have it both ways.

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.