Boss demands employee punch in work hours to reduce their salary, ends up paying 30% more

Editor's note: This article was originally published on March 25, 2023. It has since been updated.

When the management changes or a boss shifts from a company, a lot of things can change for an employee. The new boss might ask for a work review or might change the whole work schedule. Nevertheless, it could get difficult in many ways. That's what happened with this Reddit user u/disastrousnarwhal926. His new boss made sure the employee punched in his work hours, trying to reduce his salary, but the employee ended up getting a 30% raise due to the overtime pay.

The 31-year-old employee started working for his uncle two years ago as he owned a company with some business partners. His work was directly under his uncle, "learning every perk of running the business and also being a personal assistant to him," wrote the Reddit user.

He was getting paid a fixed monthly amount with a bonus of an additional salary by the end of every year. However, he did not have any overtime but had full control of his work schedule. "My uncle knew my work ethic so is kind of a win for him since when needed I'd work 60-65 hours a week if needed, also I could work during a holiday."

He shared that work was going great until September 2022, when his uncle took a couple of days to travel to another state for work. "One of his associates (let's call him Gordon) took his role in the company for those days to support some of his roles," he wrote in the Reddit post.

During those days, the employee did not have much work, so he took an early leave the first day and arrived way after lunch the next day, then started working normally from the 3rd day until his uncle came back a week later. He clarified he took that time off as he worked a 14-hour shift the day before the travel and also two 12-hour shifts the week before, so he "was dead tired."

However, it didn't go down well with Gordon. "He was furious at my 'attitude' berating my uncle for even hiring me in the first place since I don't even work full regular hours and demand among the other business partners (the company has in total 6 owners including my uncle), that I at least punch in my working hours and if I don't meet the 'quota', those would be deducted from my monthly payment," wrote the Reddit user.

Other partners agreed to what Gordon asked for. But his uncle said that "since we're doing it by law, it means that we also will pay him overtime according to the law, right?" - they all agreed and from October forward I would start punching my hours on the job every day," wrote the employee.

Gordon expected that the employee's pay would decrease, but in fact, now, they had to pay him a lot more over time, even for the time they called him until the call finished. "One more thing, by the law, the rate of overtime pay increases the more overtime is done in a month, this is a really weird formula, but to simplify my average overtime hours pay 1/3 higher than the average overtime hours of other employees that have the same monthly salary as me," he wrote. He concluded the post by saying that his monthly income has become 30% higher due to overtime and could even get closer to 50% higher in a busy month. 

The post has about 7.5k upvotes on Reddit and is captioned, "Want me to punch in on the work clock, fine now deal with overtime pay." Many on the platform were happy with the end result. u/coderjoe1 commented, "You should send Gordon a thank you card for being your biggest supporter." u/JipC1963 pointed out, "So you actually get a monthly "bonus" now on top of your yearly bonus! Thank you, Gordon!!! And, yes, your Uncle is AMAZING! Blessings on both of you!"