Employees working grueling 12-hour days are told they're not allowed to leave 5 minutes early and must stay until 6 pm, they comply but stop doing extra work, bringing productivity to a standstill for 3 weeks: 'The manager only lasted another 6 months'

This employee worked a job with a FIFO (Fly-In Fly-Out) arrangement, where the workforce quite literally "flies in" to a usually remote work location with no local availability to hire a team with the necessary skills, or where there is no one living there at all.

These jobs are quite famous (possibly infamous) for their rigorous work requirements, which involve demanding work in harsh environments for long hours. In this case, workers were expected to work 8 12-hour days in a row before having 6 days off. Understandably, by the end of each period, and likely well beforehand, everyone was spent and at the point of exhaustion.

After starting early for most days, to ensure they were already ready to go when their shift at work actually began, one day the team decided to leave 5 minutes early. This, unfortunately, drew the ire of their boss, who pulled them up for leaving before the end of their scheduled shift.

Predictably, after this, the frustrated and dejected team stopped doing the extra time and pulling the extra weight that they had been handling, leading to a drop in productivity that saw their boss backpedaling in only a few weeks.