'I was being punished for being faster ': Productive employee crushes quotas during business hours instead of completing mandatory overtime, boss gripes and is forced to put their money where their mouth is

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    Font - Posted by u/AdMinimum3886 16 hours ago Boss wants me to comply with her mandatory overtime policy. M OC
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    Font - Years ago I was working a call center job for a well-known e- commerce site. We were first and foremost phone or chat customer support, but also would respond to customer emails that would come in the form of tickets.
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    Font - During the holidays we would get absolutely wrecked with emails as people were doing their holiday shopping. The company would routinely understaff during the holidays and then require us to do
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    Organism - mandatory overtime to compensate for the extra calls and emails we received (we are in Texas which is an at-will employer state, so this is totally legal btw even though its still kinda morally c 1.
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    Font - Anyways, I was consistently one of their top ticket closers, averaging between 120-150 tickets a day whereas some other employees might average 60 or 70. Mandatory overtime season rolls around and my boss sends out an email that
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    Font - every employee will be assigned 25 extra tickets each day this week, of which they are expected to stay past their scheduled shift time to complete. During the workday we were expected to close the same
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    Font - amount of tickets we would normally close, outside of the additional tickets that were assigned. Those tickets we would pick out of a shared ticket queue and assign to ourselves.
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    Font - Monday I come in, knock out the 25 tickets that were pre-assigned to me, and go on my merry way closing the additional -150 ish tickets I normally close, finish by the end of my shift, and leave. I
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    Font - was the top ticket closer that day by a wide margin. Boss would leave at 5, but would be checking our time clocks from home to see when we clocked out. Tuesday morning first thing my boss pulls me aside for an impromptu meeting, which went like this:
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    Font - Boss: "I noticed you didn't stay late last night to complete your tickets like everyone else". Me: "Correct. I completed the assigned tickets in addition to my normal workload without needing to stay late, so I left".
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    Font - Boss: "Well if you finished all those tickets within your scheduled work day, that doesn't count as extra work. Those tickets would count as part of your normal work, which means you are in violation of our mandatory overtime policy."
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    Font - Me: "Well as you can see, I am the top ticket closer by a wide margin, and you can also see that I completed the extra work that is expected of me and then some. So what is the expectation going forward?"
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    Font - Boss: "The expectation is that you'll stay late like everyone else to do the extra work." I didn't feel like arguing much further, and things were getting a bit heated in this discussion. I made
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    Font - it known that it didn't seem fair that I should be punished for being faster at closing tickets than most of my colleagues, and that I am still completing the extra work while closing twice as many tickets as everyone else.
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    Font - We seemed to be at an impass between my having finished what was expected of me, and what was actually important to her, which was me being clocked in after hours like everyone else. I
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    Font - welcomed her to assign me an additional 25 tickets a day (bringing the additional total to 50 extra tickets a day), since it seemed as though 25 extra tickets was no problem to complete, and agreed to stay late to work on them.
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    Font - Every day that week I came in, knocked out the extra tickets and closed my normal amount of tickets, sometimes working through lunch as well. By the end of my shift I had averaged around
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    Smile - 200 tickets each day. I then sat at my desk and off on my phone for an hour while still clocked in. Had a nice little bit of overtime pay between staying late and working through lunch.
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    Font - If you want me to "work late" then "work late" I shall. Thanks for paying me overtime to do the same thing I would be doing while sitting on my couch at home after work! Just goes to show that efficient employees will always be punished with more work.
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    Font - Empty__Jay 16 hr. ago The real malicious compliance would have been to reduce your "regular" daily ticket load to match that of your coworkers, then do the extra 25 in your extra hour at the end of the day.
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    Font - CuteSharksForAll 15 hr. ago Took me years to realize that extra work is seldom rewarded in most organizations. Realistically, if you just stay in the top 3rd in terms of productivity you're generally safe. Seems like you just need to lower your regular workload going forward, especially if going into the holidays.
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    Font - Alexis_J_M 14 hr. ago True malicious compliance would have been to work the mandatory overtime but to reduce your overall productivity to that of your colleagues.
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