Manager's overtime ban backfires as dedicated employee complies by closing store early

Most retail stores function on two kinds of hours—business hours and store hours, according to Entrepreneur. While the “store hours” are meant for customers, the “business hours” are for the store employees who carry out all the behind-the-scenes duties after customers leave the store. Sometimes, this little window of extra work done during the closing hours is not added to the employee’s payroll. In a Reddit post, a part-time employee—who goes by u/ThereShallBeWings—shared how they claimed credit for their overtime despite their store manager announcing an “overtime ban” and ignoring their behind-the-scenes tasks during the store's closing hours.

The employee shared that they used to work as a part-timer in the optician department of a major supermarket chain. They worked for 9 hours a week, from “3 pm to 9 pm on Saturdays” and “1 pm to 4 pm on Sundays.” One of their duties was to close down the department, as their managers “didn’t like being around at closing time.” On Saturdays, particularly, while shutting down at 9 pm, they usually left the premises by 9:20 pm. “Closing down a department takes time, mostly because you can’t do it when customers are browsing. Unsurprisingly, I consistently worked more hours than I was supposed to,” they described.

The employees were “paid an hourly rate to within a few seconds of how long you were clocked in for.” On one Saturday, the store manager, Val, called all the employees for a meeting. In the meeting, Val looked directly at them and said that they “were claiming more than their allotted hours and that this must stop. Henceforth, all overtime must be approved in writing.” The employee explained that this “overtime ban” was entirely Val’s decision and that none of the other departments had any such rule.

At 8:45 pm that evening, while Val was gathering her things to leave the store, this employee began “putting expensive frames into the night display cases, where they could safely be locked away when the department was closed.” Suddenly, Val interrupted them and said they couldn’t lock the store before 9 pm. The employee had a sharp response, telling her that they couldn’t stay in the store after clocking out or they’d be disciplined. Besides, it would take them a minimum of 10 minutes to finish up the closure duties.

The employees then reached for the tannoy and yelled the code they used to call security, asking them to bring the keys. "Good evening. Would Mrs. Lock please come to the optical department? Mrs. Lock to the optical department. Thank you!" At this point, Val went “white as a sheet,” and “the first cracks in her caked-on makeup began to show. I could see the look on her snooty face as a very large penny began to drop. She yelled, 'Wait here!' while leaving the department with a purposeful stride,” the employee described.

When she returned, with a sweaty brow, she handed the employee a hastily scribbled note authorizing 30 minutes of overtime. The tables had turned. The following day, Val handed the employee a new rota, saying they could work “from 3 pm until 9:30 pm on Saturdays and from 1 pm until 4:30 pm on Sundays.” Thus, the employee received their share of overtime claims as Val’s “overtime ban” backfired on her. In the comments, people expressed shock and dismay upon learning how some retail stores don’t consider their employees’ closing hours in their payroll. “Man, what? What insane company doesn't already include the time it takes to close as part of the last shift’s hours?” commented u/SaintBaba. 

u/PicLover shared a similar experience in which they had to quit their job at a bank due to the bizarre culture of overwork and underpay. “Paid until 4, which was when the bank closed, but of course, there was a ton of s**t to do after, like putting away the tens of thousands of dollars in USD and CAD which all had to be counted, verified and written into a book. When I raised a concern about time not being paid I was scoffed at by both my boss AND my co-workers for being unreasonable. Sometimes it took 45+ minutes to do everything after four o'clock,” they described.