‘I cut into their profit’: Advising contractor punishes a big company's project foreman with copious overtime hours after managers mandate attendance to trivial daily 'stand-up' meetings

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Feb 28, 2025 6:00 PM EST

This contractor proved the value of his time by invoicing a company for wasting it. 

Higher-ups in the company always seem to think that meetings are more important than they are, but have you ever considered why? While the workers—the ones in the field actually doing the job of the company—are the ones with their boots on the ground, familiarizing themselves with every nuance of the job site. The suits in hardhats have no clue what's going on on a daily basis, so they need those meetings to catch themselves up to speed. Alas, once again I'll say it—most meetings can be summarized in a quick email. But for the big bosses, that's just too much effort. 

So when an advising contractor was told he had to be onsite for every team meeting every day, he decided to see if the company he was working for truly believed their meetings had value… Monetary value. Keep scrolling to see how this guy spent weeks billing his foreman for overtime hours, expensing his malicious compliance and ultimately earning his freedom to work at his own discretion. 

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  • Cheezburger Image 10473582848
    via mnbb

    (The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.)

    While there is some value in having a daily meeting with your coworkers, oftentimes they only turn into hype fests, getting everyone excited to work their tails off for the day only to come back tomorrow and do it all over again. So if you're an offsite manager needing to be present for a 45-minute kumbaya session, you might try to get out of it too—especially if there's a 2-hour commute. 

  • "Mandatory meeting"

    A few years back, I was contactor for a state agency whose job it was to 'advise' other state contractors on environmental laws, regulations, policies, and best practices.
    via ImpulseBimmer
  • Yes, Dear Readers, I was a contractor telling other contractors who, what, where, when, how and how much they could do their jobs. The only stick that I carried was that the agency that I contracted to was regulatory. I.E. It could impose
    via ImpulseBimmer
  • fines/remediation. To make matters worse, I was a middle-aged clean shaven white dude with clean boots and a bright white hard hat showing up in a state-owned vehicle that was just as clean.
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  • How this works is that my agency bills the other contractor with a set rate for hours. The other contractor had to work this cost into the contract with the state. I.E. the more hours that I worked, the more I cut into their profit.
    via ImpulseBimmer
  • Cheezburger Image 10473582592
    via Sneksy

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

  • One project that I ended up working on was a larger project with a national construction company. This was unusual as bigger companies usually had their own environmental compliance people. I had been working with
    via ImpulseBimmer
  • that company for a little over a year when they broke ground. I email the lead foreman (whom I had not yet met) to let him know that I would be on site the following week. I get a response saying that to be on-site | had to attend the "stand-up" meeting at the yard every day that I
    via ImpulseBimmer
  • was to be on-site. I, of course, let him know that had all my certs, both federal and state, and had already attended the company's bi- annual safety meeting and would not be at the "stand-up" meeting and that it would cost the company to have me attend. I cc'd my point- of-contact (POC) with the company.
    via ImpulseBimmer
  • Yes, you all see where this is going. I was told that I "had to." No response from my PoC. Que malicious compliance. My time started when I walked out the front door. The yard was over an hour away (depending on traffic), plus
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  • the meeting (usually forty-five minutes to an hour, none of which was applicable to me), then travel to the jobsite (again depending on traffic), two hours, then travel back home. That added roughly four hours a day to my day, which meant
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  • that I usually went more than eight hours, which is billed at time-and- a-half, and well beyond projected time. Plus the milage and fuel on the state-owned vehicle. Oh! BTW, occasionally, the cell service would be terrible, and the hotspot wouldn't allow me to do my work on site, so I would have to do it at home...
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  • I sent an invoice over to accounting every other week. (Also billable time.) First billing cycle, nothing. Kewl. Second cycle I get an email from VP of Operations with the PoC cc'd demanding an explanation. I forwarded email, invoices, milage logs, and my timesheets, cc'd PoC and Foreman, to VP.
    via ImpulseBimmer
  • In less than an hour I get an email from PoC with VP and Foreman cc'd that I could do what I pleased, when I pleased, (including total stoppage of work on site!) and the only person that I was accountable to was the PoC. I, I was wish that I could have been party to that conversation. I took the spouse out to a nice dinner.
    via ImpulseBimmer
  • XR171 Sounds like the foreman was trying to discourage you from being on site.
    via XR171
  • Academic_Nectari... That's hilarious. Would have been funny to go into the next meeting and just tell the foreman that you really like getting the extra pay and listening to the fount of wisdom bubbling forth from his lips.
    via Academic_Nectari

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