It has been a few years, but I believe this story might fit here.
A few years ago, I was a wide eyed and somewhat naive student looking to go into human resource management to improve life for all employees. I was fascinated by research that proved how trusting your employees and giving them more freedom could often be very beneficial to a company, even from a purely financial viewpoint.
When I got the chance to do an internship for a company, I happily took it. Even if it was on the smallest scale, I might make someones life better. At the same time, I wanted to discuss all these amazing new insights with people who worked in the field. Did you know how asking people to do overtime often reduces their overall productivity? How simple rewards for above average performance both boosts overall performance, reduces sick leave and increases employee retainment?
When I got there, I'd start of mornings with some administrative duties like processing sick leave and sorting out the physical filing system. I'd also answer phone calls and process simple requests. Because I was interested, I made sure to know all the rules in the employee handbook, agreements with unions and so forth. This helped me understand what rights people had and under what administrative codes absences could be noted.
I noticed many employees weren't fully aware of their rights. Someone would ask for a day off, but casually mention it was to take a family member to the hospital. I asked for clarification: would this be a request for care leave then? According to the union contract, everyone could take up to 5 days leave per year at half pay to care for a sick family member, rather than losing a full day of vacation time. If they made sure to do half a day's worth of overtime throughout the rest of the month, there would not be a cent difference in pay.
I got called in after a month, warning me to stop urging people to use loopholes. If they didn't bring something up, just give them what they asked for. A day off should cost them a day off.
The next week, I got a request for reduction in hours. The person indicated that they could no longer physically keep up, so they'd need to start working less. I knew the request would drop them from fulltime to parttime, including loss of benefits. I also knew there was an obscure rule about people above a certain age having been with the company for a long time. As I was informed to only process the requests as given, I held off on accepting the request. “Please, read through section 7.4 of the union handbook before handing in a formal request. I'll need the request to be on paper and signed, so make sure you submit under the right clause.”
Unfortunately, I was let go from my internship after that. Disappointed and confused I started speaking with teachers and alumni from the field, and realise I could never keep my sanity in this toxic wasteland. It was also very unusual to not finish an internship with glowing reviews and job offers at my uni, enough that all wellconnected teachers took note. I was advised to keep my head down until I was in a position to push for change more subtly.
I dropped out of uni, had a good think and switched to a field where I won't hate myself. Even managed to set up an experiment there with a student company proving again that fewer man hours can lead to higher quality and higher total productivity, but that's a story for some other time.