Employee uses loophole in company's half day policy, ends up working just one hour a day every Friday: 'Half days entirely depend on the set lunch time? Alright then!'

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Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jan 31, 2026 8:00 AM EST

All this employee wanted was to take a half day. 

When he was met with resistance, he uncovered a company loophole that no one could do anything about.

This author's friend has been working in finance and at the same company for a few years now. After his company enforced a return to the office policy, in which employees were required to come into the office three days a week, he requested that his hours be adjusted to better suit his schedule. This request involved shifting his hours earlier so that he could get home sooner, since he lived farther away. 

His request was accepted without any issues. Moving forward, his work hours were now shifted to 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM. After this change, things were going smoothly for a while, and no one's workflow was affected by these changes. Recently, the employee requested a half day to kick off a long weekend, since he needed to travel on a Friday afternoon. His boss responded that half days can only begin after the designated company lunch time, meaning that his half day could not begin until 2:00 PM. 

Naturally, the employee tried to push back. Since his workday began three hours before everyone else's, he had hoped to begin his half day at around 11:00 AM. Still, his boss refused to accept this, implying that the company has already made far too many exceptions for him.

That's when the employee concocted an idea…

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  • Instead of quietly accepting this half day policy, the employee decided to use it to his favor. He realized that if he submitted a request for a half day in the mornings, according to his shifted work hours, he only needed to begin work at 2:00 PM and end at 3:00 PM. 

    Now, when most people have epiphanies like this, they don't necessarily have the guts to follow through with the ideas. This dude deserves credit for actually pulling it off. He proceeded to work half days according to this loophole for several Fridays in a row, and no one even batted an eye. This just goes to show that most work policies are arbitrary, and sometimes, it's up to us to prove that.

  • Two colleagues clink glasses as they laugh.
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    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • "Half days entirely depend on the set lunch time? Alright then!"

    My friend used to work in finance for a company which generally treated him pretty poorly. He was paid far less than he knew the company could afford, and was generally overlooked. They had home working for a while because of and then were allowed to come back to the office 3 days a week,
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  • working from home 2 days. Whilst working from home, my friend loved missing the commute. Being an early riser anyway, he decided to ask his boss if he would be allowed to start work at 7am and finish at 3pm so as to get to and from work quicker, and because the office was open at that time anyway.
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  • This was okayed, and so he started to work 7am-3pm, which he then extended to his work from home days as he enjoyed having his late afternoons free.
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  • Now, so that everyone was available at the same time, lunch time at the company was set at 1-2pm, no leeway. One Friday my friend wanted a half day to begin the start of a long weekend.
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  • Because he would usually finish work at 3pm, he asked if half day for him could be earlier around 11am - since he would be putting in more hours before lunch than anyone else.
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  • "No," he was told, "half day means finishing at lunch." So he had to work from 7am-1pm (6 hours) despite it counting, holiday-wise, as a half day. This annoyed him for obvious reasons, until he found a great benefit to this.
    via PigeonLass
  • Working from home on Fridays, he started booking mornings off work, meaning he didn't have to work until 2pm. Then he worked for one hour from home and that was it. His colleagues thought it was genius. His
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  • boss had very firmly told him that half days revolve around lunch times, so couldn't do anything about it! So my friend enjoyed a few months of practically doing no work on several Fridays for the cost of a half day at a time, until eventually he left the business and moved on to a job where he was treated a lot better!
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  • zEdgar Hoover Still trying to get my head around fixed lunch hour "so everyone is available at the same time" in a company where WFH exists. I mean, in manufacturing, maybe, but this isn't that. That's so stupid it can only be a "leadership" decision.
    via PigeonLass
  • Two colleagues clink glasses as they laugh.
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • Cow Launcher. I can visualise the cogs whirring in the boss' head, as he tries to work out how he can have it both ways.
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  • nalanajo Brilliant, and awesome.
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  • CoderJoe1. A classic case of the halvsies and the have-nots.
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  • purgruv. MC to the letter!
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  • RemLazar911 Is the PTO not hourly anyway? Wouldn't you still be using 6 hours of PTO to take the morning off?
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  • Hello JoeyJoe Joe ⚫ I need a job when I can take multiple hours off every week and not have it affect my performance.
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  • EarlyGoose9284 Isn't the "lunch break" effectively a legally mandated break in the middle of a shift? It is in the UK, I am not allowed to work (from memory) more than 4 hours without a break
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  • KTB1962. So between 1:00 and 2:00 there's absolutely no one working at that time?? That's not productive...
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  • FoolishStone Some offices, especially medical practices, close for lunch, which means everyone needs to take the same lunchtime. This helps avoid a situation where, say, a nurse has to cover for someone at their regular lunchtime, and end up getting no break at all.
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workplace discussion employment issues remote work employee malicious compliance coworkers finance human resources money
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