'I don't know how that makes sense from a business perspective': Employee discovers loophole in company's time-tracking policy, extending sick leave

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jan 28, 2024 2:00 PM EST

Occasionally, employees discover a loophole within their company's various policies that will make the experience of working at said company all the more palatable. When one discovers a loophole like this, it's important to tell no one. You don't want people catching on, not even your work husband/wife. You just keep doing you, until your scheming comes to light. Most of the time, management is so clumsy and disorganized that nothing ever really does come to light.

This thread was posted to Reddit's r/MaliciousCompliance subreddit by an employee who had to call in sick for several days. When they felt well enough to work half days remotely again, their manager started giving them a hard time about not filling their time-tracking sheet well enough. That's when OP realized that this business just so happened to prioritize sick days over working half days because of the messiness of the time-tracking policy. Cue malicious compliance!

Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions in the comments section. For more, here's a story about a former employee demanding their overdue final payment.

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  • 01
    r/r/MaliciousCompliance Posted by u/throwaway1337_acc 20 hours ago Time tracking policy encourages sick leave S OC So, in my job we need to track explicitly our effort and the time that we spent on which tasks. Each day must have at least 8 hours of recorded effort, and if there is not enough work or for some other reason you are not working productively the whole day, you'll have a hard time to think about where to put your efforts. If you record less than 8 hours, your bonus for the quarter wi
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  • 02
    Lately, I took sick leave for some days as I was really not well. But after a few days, and as I had a bad feeling about letting the team down, I continued to work, even though I was sure that I could easily get another medical certificate to extend my paid sick leave. However, I was only able to work some of the hours and needed to rest/sleep the other half of the day (I was working from home). Remember the rule about time tracking? I didn't know where to put the remaining hours and actually di
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  • 03
    On the other hand, if you just report sick, you don't need to worry about the time tracking as the whole day will not count. So I just decided to go the doctor on the next day and extended my sick leave for a few more days, without worrying now about where to put my hours. The company apparently prefers people to not work at all instead of only working half-days without correct time tracking. I don't know how that makes sense from a business perspective, but its not my business.
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  • 04
    TL;DR: The company enforces stupid time tracking policies where it's more encouraged to take sick leave for the full day than working half days and not knowing where to register your effort.
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  • 05
    CoderJoe1 21 hr. ago Whenever my employer decided I needed to account for minutes, I would waste hours doing so until they changed their minds.
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  • 06
    Prof1959 20 hr. ago Fairly common, actually, even though it is dumb. And hey, the only "team" you are letting down is a few millionaires way above your pay grade, because your coworkers are still going to get paid either way. Don't fret about that.
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  • 07
    beerbellybegone · 20 hr. ago I'm not sure about your company, where I used to work we tracked time in 15-minute intervals to charge to customers.
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  • 08
    throwaway1337_acc OP - 20 hr. ago We also Track 15 min intervals.. and everything that is not booked on customers must have some justification.. for example, I cannot book too many hours on internal stuff
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  • 09
    soap_coals 20 hr. ago So... You are complaining that your employer wants you to have more time off? You'd prefer to work while sick rather than spend time to recover properly? Why?
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  • 10
    DaBooba 17 hr. ago Billable hours are important to track correctly. I know you're thinking "I don't want to let the team down" but you're ending up being less productive for the same amount of time, which is not super desirable for a company that bills by the hour to clients.
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  • 11
    Yes, take the time to be back to full capacity. Both for your company's sake, but also for your sake. If you can't work a full day because you're not feeling up to it and they're giving you the option not to, take the leave.
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  • 12
    Zoreb1 17 hr. ago I worked for the gov't and we had telework. Theoretically if i was sick and had my computer at home I could work an hour or two just answering emails and not use sick leave for that time.
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  • 13
    Tikki_Taavi 16 hr. ago It encourages me to do things the slow way rather than the fast. I can do this in 4 minutes but if you want to waste time I can justify a 1/2 hour on the same task all within the company guidelines. This is just another way for management to justify having 3 bosses on every employee. and of course they all want different things prioritized.
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  • 14
    Captain BaoBao 10 hr. ago . Where I work, we don't care how and when you do the job. We have an app that sums up our tasks and when it is due. You do it home at night or on the desk at 11h. If you won't get there, you call the boss and HD extend the target date. The motivation is high, and the mood is good. Now my boss considers you adults. It changes all.
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  • 15
    voidtreemc 10 hr. ago In the early 90's I worked for a company that implemented a very primitive, very stupid time tracking software package. I had admin privs on it because I was in IT, so I added a category for tracking the time you spent using the time tracking package. Because it had performance and you spent a lot of time staring at spinning beach , that category got heavy use.
    via u/throwaway1337_acc

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