‘30 minutes or 2+ hours, your call’: Paramedic drivers score 2 months of overtime pay when a nitpicky manager's decision to disband their workforce's ‘gentleman’s agreement' costs the company $1000s in overtime pay

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Jul 2, 2025 4:00 PM EDT

Hey, new manager—haven't you heard? The workforce always knows best.

Managers always come in thinking they have to prove themselves to the suits upstairs. Hungry for power and wanting to wield their new workplace capabilities, managers tend to step on the toes of the workforce, stomping down old traditions that were steadfast for a reason. Perhaps if the nitpicky manager in this next story had heeded the warnings of the senior paramedics he was attempting to control, he might have saved the company $1000s in overtime wages. 

These paramedics were no strangers to working hard. Regularly clocking 12-hour shifts, they'd come back from the field exhausted and ready to tap in their relieving EMTs. However, this manager seemed to think that the 30-minute "gentleman's agreement" that the teams had forged over the years was an entirely superfluous practice. But after abolishing it, the manager ate his words and found himself hemorrhaging cash every pay period in the form of absurd overtime hours. 

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  • "30 minutes or 2+ hours, your call"

    Context: I'm a paramedic that works semi rural (1 hour drive to hospital). We work 12 hour shifts from 6-6. Commonly we would arrive at 5:30 so the off coming crew could go home earlier after handover of equipment.
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  • O PARAMEDIC
    via GORODENKOFF PRODUCTION

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

  • Anyway. The 5:30 arrival time was a "gentleman's agreement" so that the off coming crew wouldn't have to attend a call out that would put them over their finish time and potentially breach
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  • their 14 hours maximum working time (Local driving laws can't be working for more than 14 hours if your job involves driving, at 14 hours you must stop driving no matter where you are unless you have a critical patient).
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  • Occasionally a job would come in during that 5:30-6 period which the new shift would take and then claim the early start as over time (standard practice here, normally never a problem).
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  • One day the Manager sends out an email stating that no staff should be turning up early and starting work before 6 because it was costing too much in overtime.
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  • Cheezburger Image 10523977472
    via Minerva Studio

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

  • So that's what we all did. Every single crew which was 30+ staff. At the peak of winter which is usually one of the busiest times of the year.
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  • It sucked finishing late a fair bit but making the boss pay us 2+ hours of overtime and giving them the headache of driving us back to station once we breached 14 hours instead of paying for 30 minutes was great.
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  • After 2 months of haemorrhaging money in overtime payments, we get another email "You can now go back to the 5:30 arrangement".
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  • asvezesmeesqueco You can now go back to 5:30 arrangement No. Thank you. glad we have this talk
    via asvezesmeesqueco
  • messyjames1 Obviously the email was sent by an admin not someone who had actually worked those shifts. Management, be careful what you wish for. You just may get it.
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  • Proud-Cat-Mom-2021. I swear, the utter level stupidity and lack of apparently any analytical thinking skills whatsoever of some folks promoted to management just amazes me. Don't look a horse in the mouth. Too dumb to figure out a gift was being handed to him on a silver platter. Staff should have refused to go back to the old policy.
    via Proud-Cat-Mom-2021
  • BoukenGreen ⚫ Must have been a new manager. As anyone with a medium amount of experience in EMS knows it's better to do handoffs like y'all did. Unless sh just hit the fan because the field doesn't work around a clock, even in rural areas. My Aunt worked a truck for about 20 years and I can't tell you the number of times she was later then normal getting home.
    via BoukenGreen

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