They Were Expected To Stay Available Without Extra Compensation, But The Employees Eventually Figured Out How To Make The System Work For Them
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Bad overtime rules can make emergency coverage disappear surprisingly fast.
One company tracked declined calls exactly like hours employees actually worked.
Answering honestly could cost workers future overtime opportunities.
Ignoring the phone carried no penalty.
Let’s get into the full story.
Corporate overtime policy leads to less coverage
My department is technically “on call” while not being paid a shift premium for it, although we do get other perks instead so it isn’t a huge deal.
The company make a small effort to try and call the people with the least amount of overtime first, and this is relevant.
But we eventually found out that if we answer the call and are unable or refuse to come in, that time gets added to our overtime chart as if we’d actually worked it, and thus we’d be less likely to get overtime in the future.
This really annoyed the money-hungry vultures.
And they figured out something else too.
On the other hand, if we don’t answer and let it go to voicemail, our spot in the overtime chart is unchanged. I’m sure you can see where this is going.
For some reason, half the department is no longer answering emergency calls, and nobody seems to know why.
And being a corporate environment, asking the employees directly affected is only going to happen after multiple rounds of consultants are tasked with finding out why hell froze over twice, and several conflicting committees are formed to investigate the issue while sabotaging each other competing for limited resources.
Wow, this really is the case of exploiting a glitch in the system.
It kind of sucks that this system is quite fair, and now the employees are working out how to play it.
This likely means that, when corporate eventually figure it out, the new system will be worse for everyone.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this.
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This person thought the policy was ridiculous.
While others were unclear on why exactly it was causing a problem for the company.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who changed their minds about donated items, only to return to the shop to find them all sold.
Meanwhile, this Redditor thought that this was the only inevitable outcome.
Employees realized answering an emergency call without accepting the shift hurt their future overtime chances.
They began letting every unwanted call reach voicemail, leaving management confused by the sudden coverage problem.
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