Imagine working for a company where you’re not allowed to work overtime. Once you reach 40 hours, you’re done for the week. Then imagine working for a company where you’re expected to work every day as long as it takes to get the job done including overtime if necessary. Which would you prefer?

In this story, one employee loved working for a company that had the first policy and often enjoyed long weekends because of it. Then everything changed and the employees were suddenly expected to follow the second policy. The only problem was that they weren’t getting paid for the overtime hours!

One employee had enough and came up with a plan. Let’s read all about it.

Don’t wanna pay OT? Fine by me.

I worked for a company that would never pay over 40 hours.

Whatever day you reached 40 hours you were done for the week.

Not a bad policy honestly, I’d usually work 10-12 hour days and have a 3 or 4 day weekend.

But then things changed.

That was all fine until the owners son stepped in. We’ll call him Jay.

The nepotism was strong with this one. His parents had coddled him and put him in positions he had no where near the experience for.

Instead of being humble and asking guys who had been around awhile what was up. He just came in and acted like the hot shot, gods gift to the world.

Suddenly, they were working overtime.

The issues started when he started taking contracts that involved switching over power from one system to another at large grocery stores.

To keep it from getting technical this mainly involved the stores front line POS systems.

Working 40 hours and cutting out when reached no longer worked.

Sometimes we’d have to work 10 hours of OT which then they would say wasn’t approved and wouldn’t pay.

Jay blamed the employees.

I tried bringing it up to Jay but he’s make comments about how it was because we were screwing around and just wanted to milk the jobs.

The truth was, once change over started you couldn’t stop working until done.

The worst thing that could happen was the Point of Sale stations were down come opening.

Work would start at 9pm and sometimes end at 7-8am with almost always no breaks or lunch.

Jay really didn’t get it.

After doing 3 change overs and working OT with out getting paid for it, I’d finally had enough.

I talked to Jay and told him that he needs to come out for a night and see what we are up against.

He flat out refused. Jay told me to stop complaining and moaning and that the work wasn’t that difficult. He said he could do it in 1/2 the time I could.

That was my breaking point.

Time to put the plan into action.

I devised my plan for later that night.

The Pre-con meeting started at 8pm. Work started at 9pm. Removing the wiring and old boxes started right away and was usually done by 11pm.

11pm also happened to be the time I’d reach my 40 hours for the week.

Jay won’t pay me for OT? Well then I can’t work. He failed to understand this ain’t a hobby.

Time to go.

At 11:15 when the demo is done, I packed up my tools and quietly slipped out the door.

I turned off my company phone and dropped my van off at the shop.

I went home and enjoyed a nice week off before starting my new job.

OP never went back.

Through the grape vine I heard the GC started blowing up Jays phone once he realized I wasn’t coming back.

Jay showed up and apparently had it all finished by 3pm.

Unfortunately for Jay the contract stated any delays on the POS station would incur back charges to the company to pay for lost sales.

In the end, I got a new job and a raise, the company had to pay $12,000 in lost revenue to the store, they lost the contract and Jay got to work for about 12 hours.

The best part is simply walking off the job and never looking back; although, not paying overtime is illegal. They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with that.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an IT department who keeps receiving tickets for a company that was previously spun off.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say.

This is very true.

This person shares what they would’ve done.

Another person shares why they quit their job.

This person thinks they should sue.

They really should sue. The company legally needs to pay the employees overtime. I wonder if the owner knows his son refused to pay overtime.

OP did the right thing by leaving though. Sometimes it’s better to walk away from a bad situation than to fight it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who is told to work a holiday without overtime pay, and how they ended up getting their money.