This happened years ago to me but this sub reminded me of it.
I was working as a contract IT guy for a Biotech. I was supposed to bill out in 15 minute increments, and 1 minute over an increment counts as a full 15 minutes.
So I was required to be in the building for 8 hours and because of various reasons I generally was there for between 8 and 9 hours. I liked the people I worked with and I always felt weird about billing for the odd 15 minutes here and there. Sometimes I'd give them a whole hour for free. No big deal.
That is until the HR director “caught” me printing out concert tickets at the end of the shift. The conversation went like this:
HR lady – “The ink isn't free you know (yes it was toner, not ink). You know how much that page costs?”
Me – “Yes, your vendor charges you 4 cents, we can probably round that up to 4.5 cents if you supply your own paper which I'm not sure if you do or don't.”
HR lady – “'Biotech' shouldn't be covering the cost for your personal documents and that the printer usage should be deducted from what you're charging the company”
Me – “Noted”.
Said 'Biotech' never got a minute more of free time out of me. My billing rate was $100 / hr at the time. Over the course of the next month or so I probably billed an extra 20 hours.
The guy I worked under 'Bill' who approved my timesheet actually sent me a friendly email wondering why all the sudden my timesheet was “so accurate” where as before it was just a rubber stamp at 8 hours. He wasn't questioning me, he was just wondering if I was getting push back from my parent company or something.
I replied and CCed the HR lady saying that it was brought to attention that all billing practices need to be accurate. I also mentioned that I left a quarter on top of the printer because I was unable to reduce my bill by 5 cents because of software limitations.
Bill came over and asked what that was all about and I told him the story. His face turned bright red and he walked away. I'm still not sure if he was angry or if he thought it was funny and was trying to hold it in.