I work in a field where urgent response is the entire purpose. My employer became suddenly budget conscious which led to them becoming much more stringent about our (frequent) overtime.
We were told that all scheduled overtime had to be approved…cool…no issue there. However, when it came to unscheduled overtime, which is where the bulk of overtime came from, the problem arose.
Any unscheduled overtime would be reviewed after the fact. If it was determined that overtime wasn’t justified, we could either be faced being forced to take comp time within the same pay period so that the extra time would be negated, or they would attempt to not pay or claw back money (which is illegal).
Cue malicious compliance in two ways:
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I tend to work earlier hours than our main office, so it’s not uncommon for me to get phone calls once I’ve returned home. Normally not a big deal. I handle the call and go about my day. Most times because it’s only a few minutes, I don’t even request the overtime pay. This all changed once the policy went into effect. The very first day under the new rules I received a call form our main office about 10 minutes after I got home. I answered the phone by stating “Hello, my work day ended 10 minutes ago, would you like for me to continue this call on overtime, or can this be dealt with to tomorrow?” The response was, “no overtime, this will only take a minute.” I ultimately ended the call and dealt with the issue the following day. This occurred about a half dozen times over the span of a few days.
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I really made my point on this one. I received a phone call after hours that I was needed for an urgent (not emergent-I wouldn’t have jeopardized anything to make a point) response. I listened to the details of what was occurring, and informed my supervisor that I’d be happy to get on the road…just as soon as they’d send me an email stating that an after hours response was required, and overtime for the night was authorized. Nothing crazy, just a sentence or two. The response I got was “Just get on the road, I’ll send you an email later or tomorrow.” But I refused. I informed them that I was off duty, and they could either send me the email as requested so I’d be covered, or they could have someone from outside my territory respond in my place (which would’ve delayed the response over an hour). This back and forth continued for about 3-4 minutes until they relented, and sent me an email, which I received in about 30 seconds, before I’d even had a chance to use the restroom or grab my keys.
My points (along with my coworkers who took similar actions) were made. Our leadership only pressed forward with requiring approval for pre scheduled overtime, and even that has gone by the wayside.