A man was baffled to learn in his new job that staff were expected to stay late for a team meeting, and when he got his wage slip, he learned the overtime was unpaid – so he decided to take action
A man grew so sick and tired of his manager scheduling work meetings at 5pm – when everyone was due to clock off – that he made a “petty” move to stop it from happening again. The 40-hour work week can make it difficult to juggle an ideal work-life balance, with many employees eager to clock out of work bang on time to make the most of their freedom.
One man was stunned after joining a small team of 10 and learning on his first day that a team meeting was scheduled, every day, for after work. The staff were to log off their computers at 4.55pm and then go to the meeting room.
But they didn’t actually clock off work until 5.15pm, despite their official workday ending at 5pm. At first, the man didn’t think this was a massive problem as he assumed he’d receive money for the extra time worked in his biweekly wage. This was not the case.
On Reddit’s popular Petty Revenge forum, the man explained: “When my first pay day came, I saw my full 80 hours, but the extra 2.5 hours were nowhere to be found.
“So I asked a couple of the guys if they only got paid 80 hours too. They all confirmed it. We were not getting paid for these meetings.”
The man decided to take action. He continued: “The shift ends and once again the manager called for the daily team meeting and to log off at 4.55pm then head to the meeting room. I do so.
“And so I sit there for five minutes. As soon as it hit 5pm, I get up and say, I need to be somewhere important (with everyone’s eyes on me), the manager says, ‘OK’, I leave the room, clock out and go home.”
The man did the same thing the next day and several days after that – and his manager “never” stopped him. The manager then queried why he had to leave at 5pm but the man simply said it was a “personal matter”.
His manager left it at that. Soon, though, “it catches on” and the man’s colleagues “start leaving right after [him]”.
The man added: “Eventually, within a matter of days of me starting to leave at 5, everyone else started doing it too.
“The manager started scheduling the meetings for 4.40pm. All it took was one person to not take this s**t anymore.”
In the comments section, people shared their thoughts. One person said: “Isn’t it sad when the new employee has to train the manager? High five!”
Another shared: “If it’s a work activity of any kind I’m either getting paid to be there or I won’t be there. End of story. Or if it’s after 5pm. Then I just won’t be there. Lol”.
Someone else asked: “Okay but I don’t get why managers would ever want to schedule meetings after the work day in the first place? Like do they not also want to go home?
“Do they really get so much schadenfreude from watching their employees suffer that they’d rather waste their own time? Who the fuck wants to stay in the office longer? Why would any manager ever do this? I don’t understand.”
The original poster replied: “Personally, I always thought that the idea came from higher up so they could ‘save money’ by having these meetings off the clock because the manager never fought against it when no one stayed anymore. Never underestimate corporate greed.”
Agreeing, another Redditor added: “If you’ve got 8 people staying in their own time for a 15 minute meeting that could have happened during work hours, that’s 2 hours you don’t have to pay them for – makes your books look good cos it doesn’t ‘affect productivity’. Absolutely corporate greed at its finest.”
