Tl;DR at bottom
So I used to work for an undisclosed finance firm – I can talk about this now I do not work there, but obviously going to keep the identifiables to a minimum.
So in our system of making payments out of the company, this was done specifically through the course of one day, for payments to leave the building in the morning the next. So if I was given legal documents today, for example, I had to finish them off and send the payment to be authorised before 5pm, in order for the checker to co-sign it, and the money leaves for our legal firm to complete on things like mortgages etc. So very time sensitive. For reference, checking and completing on a single case can take thirty minutes being meticulous, and about twenty if you're being quick (but diligent).
I'd been doing this for 18 months now, so I knew I was pretty confident at these. And we had just had a new manager appointed, promoted internally. He was made one of the heads of our team.
He was absolute stickler for taking telephone calls. He insisted your phone system had to be available for at least 80% of your working day. Anyone on payments (like myself) was understably exempt from this. But this wouldn't stop him from sending a department wide email EVERY TWENTY MINUTES to remind people there were phone calls waiting, and that you MUST log into your phone. It made everyone understandably mad. I ignored it of course, and kept making payments for about two months.
Until this asshat took over (Let's call him Bill).
I get my monthly review come up, and in my otherwise glowing review, he puts me on an improvement plan because the number of calls I took was absolutely shameful that month (literally 3 calls in 30 days). I calmly explain that I was doing payments and have been for the last month because I am the only one trained to do it. Nope, not good enough, it must be at least 80% (even though his entire side of the team literally refuse to take calls, and never get reprimanded). I politely remind him that I do not have enough hours in the day to take telephone calls, AND get payments out on time as if they're not done by 5, we will not pay out, and peoples mortgages will get delayed and we will breach compliance.
Still not good enough. He told me specifically that “no job is too important to be off the telephone lines.”
Cue malicious compliance.
“Okay boss, sure. I'll log in at 9 o'clock, and I'll make sure I don't log off the telephone until 5pm when my day is completed.” We both leave the meeting happy.
The very next day, I do exactly that. Log my telephone in at 9am when the phone lines open.
INSTANTLY – one call comes in. I take it. 10 minutes later, resolved. 5 minutes to write up the interaction and document the call on the customer file. Set my phone back to “available”, INSTANTLY, another one. Again, he told me that's exactly what I need to do, so I take the phone call. 10 minutes to complete, 5 minutes for writeup and post-call action.
Fast forward to 4pm, I was given 21 pieces of completion paperwork to do (so literally a full 7 hour day if I was doing them all one after each other without interruption). At 5pm on this day, I've done five of the 21.
But you know what, this is what he told me to do. So I keep working after 5pm when the phone line has closed (as we were wfh), and I go all the way until 12am (the payments won't go as it's after 5pm, but it makes my job easier tomorrow). All 21 payments are done. Since the work that is time sensitive is absolutely essential to the business was done after my contracted hours, I put in an overtime claim for 7 hours, paid at 2x time (our rate for OT).
Next day, Bill is messaging me at 9am, asking why there's a 7 hour overtime claim in. I calmly inform him, and send him a log of the department phone statistics from the day before (those were public in the mornings) that I was required to log in for 80% of my shift at minimum, and that “no job was too important to be off the phone line”, as he had emailed me to remind me. I forward him his email for reference. I inform him that since those payments are business critical, and my time is not free, I had no choice but to do it during evening hours which are mandated to be 2x pay. He tries to flat out deny that claim, but he has no way to refute it, when my entire time schedule for the day before is well documented and accounted for in recorded phone calls and logs.
Turns out I had taken a whopping 60%+ of the departments phone calls single handedly (amounted to just over 31 calls, almost all of them back to back to back), and his entire side of the team of nine had taken 6 between them.) My total time actually on calls amounted to 5 hours and a half hours of constant speaking time. (31 calls x avg 8mins per = 248 mins, then about 90 minutes wrapping them all up collectively (some 5-10 mins, some no wrap up req.)
Not to mention the 16 compliance breaches which got filed that morning for non-payment of tens of thousands of £ of delayed mortgage and loans we were legally obligated to pay out. And yes, I threw Bill under the bus with his email requiring my phone use to compliance, and my email refuting that it will cause breaches.
Bill was not the manager for much longer.
Next time, learn how your department runs BEFORE you start making stupid rule changes.
Needless to say, the “no phone calls while on payments” rule was swiftly re-implemented.
TL;DR – New manager (tl;dr) scorns me for not taking phone calls while on payments, doesn't understand they have to be done the same day to avoid compliance, makes me go on phone calls. I take more than 70% of departments calls, over a dozen loans go out of compliance, department falls down over his own head.