'You expect me to work an 18 hour shift without extra pay?': Overworked bookkeeper finds a way to get even with upper management after their refusal to allow changes in work shifts

Author image for Sienna Varady
Sienna Varady
Jan 23, 2024 12:00 PM EST

Working in a corporate setting sometimes means having to silently give in to senior management. Whether or not we agree with their business tactics is irrelevant; what matters is that we ease their burden by complying with all of their requests without causing any trouble.

The story below is an account of a bookkeeper who works for a huge home improvement store. For whatever reason, despite the rigorous hours, upper management insisted for years that bookkeepers close and open the store. To put things in perspective, the bookkeeper is expected to close the store at eleven p.m. and turn up for opening the very next day at five a.m. Put another way, considering the way they were conducting business, it would make more sense for OP to spend the night at the convenience store than to make the drive back home and come back a few hours later.

After a number of years and a series of events, the management was eventually replaced. But instead of making the bookkeepers' jobs easier, the new management felt compelled to misuse their power and significantly worsen the situation. Therefore, following years of inequitable treatment, OP and his associates finally decided to take matters into their own hands and, in a sense, 'trick the system' to obtain fair remuneration and benefits. Having said that, read the story below to learn about the clever scheme to exact revenge on senior management! After you're through, check out the story about the manager who fires an employee after a prolonged illness here!

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  • 01
    "That's how you want to play it? Fine by me..."
    via Canva
  • 02
    The Scheduler and Management Refused to Let Me Switch Schedules After Scheduling Me to Close at 11 pm and Open at 5 am. Okay, I Will Call in, and The Other Bookkeeper Will Not Answer Her Phone!
    via u/Honest_Star7348
  • 03
    Several years ago, I was a bookkeeper for a huge home store. As a improvement bookkeeper, I arrived at 5 am to prepare for the store opening and/or stayed until 11 pm for closing. There were two of us, but for some reason, the scheduler and management would have one of us close and
    via u/Honest_Star7348
  • 04
    open the following day. (We had a part-timer who worked 4-6 nights a month because she was in school. She did not open) The other bookkeeper closed and opened without complaining. But for me, that was absurd! Leaving the store at 11 pm and returning
    via u/Honest_Star7348
  • 05
    at 5 am is unreasonable. We spoke with the scheduler and management to no avail. So, whenever the schedule came out, we switched if one of us was scheduled to close and open. The scheduler and management noticed but kept quiet because someone was there to do the
    via u/Honest_Star7348
  • 06
    work, although they continued scheduling us to close and open for years. Eventually we got a new scheduler and manager who wanted to flex their authority over all departments and demanded the other bookkeeper, and I work the
    via u/Honest_Star7348
  • 07
    printed scheduled hours. We maliciously complied. The following schedule had me closing and opening. I closed and called in the next morning. They tried calling the other bookkeeper, but she did not answer (I asked her not to respond). The part-timer could
    via u/Honest_Star7348
  • 08
    not work because she had school. No one else was trained in bookkeeping (not even management). This meant they needed to contact me for instructions on opening the store. I was paid a minimum of 15 minutes for each call they made. If the call exceeded 15 minutes, I was paid a minimum
    via u/Honest_Star7348
  • 09
    of 30 minutes. You get the picture. By the end of the day, I was paid for a full day. After that day, neither the scheduler nor the management said a word about which bookkeeper was working, regardless of the schedule.
    via u/Honest_Star7348
  • 10
    DarthJojo 12 hr. ago That's crazy to scheduled like that! In California it would be against the law- here you have to be given 8 hours between shifts.
    via u/DarthJojo
  • 11
    TootsNYC 10 hr. ago it's also just stupid. wouldn't you both have rather had a consistent schedule, one of you opening and the other closing? My dad worked at Home Depot and they
    via u/TootsNYC
  • 12
    got a new scheduler who didn't make any attempt to tweak the computer algorithm, or didn't know how, and suddenly he couldn't know when he'd be working from one week to the next.
    via u/TootsNYC
  • 13
    I always thought that was amazingly stupid, plus greatly unfair, to keep switching people's schedules around as the standard procedure. Of course people end up suddenly needing a different schedule this one week, but
    via u/TootsNYC
  • 14
    those one-offs are easily handled. I can't imagine it was helpful to managers or to anybody to have people not even know when their schedule was.
    via u/TootsNYC
  • 15
    TaurusOH 9 hr. ago They are awful. At my old job, I was on the team that was responsible for straightening up the floor, putting out merchandise, and putting up sale signs. The signing was done on Fridays and Sundays. I
    via u/TaurusOH
  • 16
    had a manager who scheduled me two weeks in a row during the holiday season to work until closing at 9pm on Thursday and then come back in at 3am Friday to put up sale signs. I'm positive the only reason it stopped after two
    via u/TaurusOH
  • 17
    weeks was that she didn't have enough people on the team to cover the whole day.
    via u/TaurusOH
  • 18
    Honest_Star7348 OP. 5 hr. ago It takes a person who does not care about health and safety to make a schedule without considering a rest period for their employee.
    via u/Honest_Star7348
  • 19
    GKM72 11 hr. ago Many years ago, (late 70s) I worked in the banquet Department of hotel as a manager. We had one of these types of schedules. We would work one week on days arriving one hour before the first event of the day usually between 6 and 7 AM. We would then work
    via u/GKM72
  • 20
    one week on nights starting at 4 PM and going home after everything was set up for the next day. Each weekend we would flip schedules. The Day person would finish around 9 PM on Saturday because most of the banquets were on Saturday night and then would come back for 4 PM
    via u/GKM72
  • 21
    Sunday. The Night person would work Saturday night finishing as early as they could Sunday morning, get a dirty room in the hotel to sleep (dirty means not rentable not necessarily unclean), and then come back for usually 8 AM or 9 AM in the morning because there were rarely any events
    via u/GKM72
  • 22
    on Sunday morning. We would do this for weeks on end, only getting the occasional day off. We were well paid for this despite the ridiculous number of hours we worked. I earned enough at that job to take a 6 month
    via u/GKM72
  • 23
    trip around the world, go to graduate school for two years, buy a car, and still have more than $20,000 left after graduating.
    via u/GKM72
  • 24
    PomegranateReal3620 · 8 hr. ago Years ago I took over management of a used bookstore. I had a staff of 11 including me. I set the schedule so that everyone worked the same days and times every week, and saw to it they had 2 days off in a row. It really wasn't that
    via u/PomegranateReal3620
  • 25
    difficult. I was reprimanded by district and corporate management for trying to be friends with my staff. But what it really was that I had zero turnover for over a year and posted double digit sales increases year over year. I was making them look bad. The crazy thing is
    via u/PomegranateReal3620
  • 26
    if they asked my staff they would have told them I had high standards and expected them to follow them. I just managed to do it while treating them like people with lives outside of work. There is a theory of management that says if
    via u/PomegranateReal3620
  • 27
    your employees aren't miserable you are failing as a manager. Clearly I failed to meet that standard. The service industry is spoiled for choice in all the ways they ensure employees are demoralized and treated like garbage. Schedules are just the low hanging fruit.
    via u/PomegranateReal3620

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employee workplace-story malicious compliance goals reddit story petty revenge true story overworked-employees Horrible Bosses bad bosses malicious compliance reddit karen oddly satisfying
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