Boss scolds employee of 25 years for clocking out 3 minutes prior after 19-hour shift and regrets it

Working overtime is something that companies have varying policies about. However, corporations need to show some sense of empathy towards employees who have worked overtime and not make unreasonable demands of them. Reddit user u/irritatingfarquar shared a story highlighting how managers can often be insensitive about working overtime. The post titled, "So you are claiming I defrauded the company by booking an extra 3 minutes, no problem," has gained an impressive 14.9K upvotes within a day of being posted on the site.

The individual begins by sharing that they had worked for a water company for 25 years and happened to be one of their "most productive repair crews." Everything was going well until a new manager joined the company. They mention how certain employees had a monthly quota where they would have to be ready to attend emergency repair calls out of working hours for one week every month.

They write, "On the day in question, I started work at 7.30 AM on a Friday and finished work at 3.15 AM Saturday morning, so a pretty long shift. I get to work Tuesday morning and get called into the office by the manager and get accused of defrauding my company as according to my vehicle tracker, I'd left the yard at 3.12 AM and not 3.15 AM." The employee was upset that the manager would be so petty about such a small difference.

The employee reasoned to him that they had just returned from a brutal shift and just wanted to go home and rest, so his drama over 3 minutes was completely uncalled for. They write, "He said he was making me aware that I could be fired for it." The individual decided to get back at him by strictly adhering to timings and not deviating for any reason. They add, "I said that if we're going to be this petty you can take me off the emergency contact list for extra coverage and I won't be starting 20 minutes early each day either, I'll now be clocking in at exactly 7.30 am and I shall be heading out at exactly 5.30 pm, no deviation whatsoever and you can explain to your bosses why productivity is down and you are struggling to get coverage for emergencies. We'll then see how important your 3 minutes are when they are costing the company money."

The manager's bonus happened to be directly linked to the performance of the team and he was severely affected as the other employees followed the individual's suit and began to adhere to strict timings. Three weeks passed and the organization received many customer complaints about work not being done on time. The manager soon got called into his boss' office to explain what was going on.

The manager insisted that the individual had "turned" all the employees against him and this was all happening because of that. Interestingly, the manager's boss knew the individual from before as he had been trained by this old employee. So, the manager's boss asked the employee to come to his office to know exactly what was going on.

The individual explained the entire ordeal to him. They write, "In conclusion, the manager was let go for misuse of the tracking system, as it's only supposed to be used for emergencies and not monitoring and we had our on-call system reviewed to cut the hours we were having to work." People shared their insights in the comments section.

u/not-rasta-8913 said, "When will new managers learn not to screw with veteran employees? Probably never." u/OneDishwasher commented, "Good stuff, this is the kind of story I read this sub for. I hope your next boss is more reasonable." Another user, u/SuperHyperFunTime, said, "Working to contract is so underrated by employees. Great work in knowing your value."

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