This is not my story, but it was related by a friend; we’ll name him John. He was an IT contractor for a company. When he got the gig, they initially dangled the contract-to-employee carrot but never followed through, so after five years, he was still a contractor. His contract had provisions for annual increases, overtime, weekend and holiday rates, on-call, and fixed time off. All was well until he got a new boss; we’ll call him Richard.

Richard set about marking his territory and crapping on everything. He decided that John was going to become the permanent on-call person. He sent an email to that effect, to which John replied, “Sure, you have read my contract, right?”

Richard fired back a not-nice email explaining that John wasn’t getting out of this; he was on-call immediately, and that was that. On-call response time was thirty minutes from notification to being in the office.

At the end of the month, John submitted his monthly invoice… for 672 hours.

160 hours at regular rate, 80 hours at time and a half, 240 hours at double time, and 192 hours at weekend overtime rate – triple time. Instead of the normal bill of about 190 hours (with overtime, equal to 205 hours of pay), this bill was for over 1,300 hours worth of pay, once you multiplied out the overtime.

The fallout? Richard fired John, who was the only guy working on a particular project that was 90% complete. John enjoyed his thirty days of paid termination vacation. The CEO called John to find out the status of the big project and found out that nobody was working on it. Richard found a new job; John was rehired with a bump in pay, and he never had to pull on-call again.

I’m a physician, and my coworker is also a physician. We practice nephrology somewhere in the USA. We make a lot of visits to eight dialysis centers located along an interstate, and it involves a lot of driving to see the patients while they’re on dialysis. The system we work for pays us mileage plus a good salary.

Originally, we submitted our own mileage reports, and they always approved them. We were not trying to maximize the money; we both just wanted about $1,000 a month to offset the wear and tear and gas costs on our vehicles. We were actually just photocopying the same report each month, signing it, and turning it in. The original company we worked for was totally fine with this arrangement.

Well, the system was bought by another system that apparently believes all its doctors are thieves. We were told we were scamming them and that, from then on, a middle manager would review our billing and use Google Maps to calculate our mileage each month. This person would make sure we adhered strictly to their reimbursement policy. It starts from the office each day, no matter where you actually started; it doesn’t pay you to drive somewhere if you didn’t see a patient and only went to sign forms for nurses; and there was other stupidity.

Now, I don’t like being accused of thievery, especially when I was sure we’d been underbilling for the mileage just to keep things easy and simple.

These people didn’t know me, but I had an Excel sheet containing all my patients, their clinics, and a schedule that allowed me to drive out and see them all using as little time and mileage as possible. It was really efficient.

So, I dove into their travel policy and reconfigured my schedule, not to minimize mileage, but, within their policy, to maximize it. As a bonus, the new schedule actually had me home each day for lunch on the days I did dialysis rounds, so it saved me a little money and improved my mood.

For example, since they started and ended the mileage at the office no matter where I actually began and finished, I started my day at the clinic close to my house but far from the office. I ended my day at the one on the other side of town by my girlfriend’s house, where I’d usually hang out after work anyway. Midday, I’d go home for lunch, get a nap or a nooner, and then see a couple of people in town so I’d get paid to drive back. Then, I’d head out for the regular visits scheduled for that day.

Altogether, my average mileage, far from being lower as they expected, was actually 90% greater. On top of this, they were paying a middle manager to take a deep dive into all our billing, examine the locations, and compile the reports. She said that just processing the two of ours took almost eight hours; an expense they never had before!

For background, our store had display-only boxes for certain high-theft items. The premise was simple: put them on the shelf, the customer takes it off the shelf, finds a staff member/bring it to the front cashier, and we ask the shift manager to check the back.

The drugstore I worked at had these boxes for oral care (i.e., electric toothbrushes and their heads, and in this story’s case, whitening strips). Each of those items had one or two things that made them different from each other, and so people would look for them. Otherwise, if it was on sale, people would try to ask us if they could buy it.

A customer comes up to me with a huge order. No biggie; we were really slow at the time anyway. I scan his stuff, bag it, and ask how he would like to pay.

Customer: “Actually, I need to buy some whitening strips.”

Me: “Oh. Okay, that’s fine.”

We stare at each other uncomfortably.

Me: “Did… did you take the display box from the shelf?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “Oh, it wasn’t there?”

Customer: “Well, I thought you guys would’ve had it behind the counter.”

Me: “We, uh, don’t.”

Customer: “Oh. Well, you guys would know what I need.”

Me: “Uh, dude, we have a bunch of whitening strips, and they have different uses. I can ask the manager to bring up the ones we have, and you can—”

Customer: “No, can you guys grab an empty box from the shelf for me instead?”

Me: “I mean, what I said is easier and—”

Customer: “Nah, you’ll know which one I need.”

I am honestly baffled by this customer’s… well, actually, I can’t even think of the best way to describe this. I try radioing a stocker; unfortunately, he was too busy flirting with one of the cosmeticians (indicated by him looking at me from the perfume department and mockingly shaking his head at me). Annoyed, I decided just to embark on this customer’s quest to… find a fitting whitening strip for him?

In the aisle, I’m looking at the display boxes and wondering to myself just what possessed this customer to assume that we would know which one we needed when something caught my eye. It was our store brand’s whitening strips.

Now, the other brands were on sale, while the store brand wasn’t. However, the other brand’s prices were roughly $30 to $34, while the store brand’s were $35. Not that much of a price difference, but still a higher price for generic quality-especially since the strips that were on sale were the higher-quality ones.

It’s at this point I knew what to do.

Me: “[Shift Manager], come in?”

Shift Manager: “What’s up?”

Me: “Can you see if we have store brand whitening strips in the back, and if we do, bring a pack to the front counter?”

Shift Manager: “Store brand? Are you sure?”

Me: “Yes, store brand, please. Also, can you check on [Stocker]; I radioed him earlier, and he hasn’t answered!”

Shift Manager: “Got it, I’ll meet you at the front.”

I head back to the front, where [Customer] was waiting.

Customer: “Is it coming?”

Me: “Sure is, he’s coming with them in a moment.”

No sooner had I said this, [Shift Manager] came up to me with a box of store-brand whitening strips. He handed them to me.

Shift Manager: “Here you go; luckily, we had a bunch in the back! Now if you’ll excuse me, I saw [Stocker] goofing off again and have something to ask of him.” *Turns to leave.*

I scan the whitening strips and throw them into a bag. At this point, [Customer] is looking at both the whitening strips and the price in confusion. He turns to me and is prepared to say something, but stops himself.

Me: “How would you like to pay today?”

The customer simply pays and leaves with his bags. He stops, takes his receipt and the whitening strips out, looks at both of them again, and slinks off in defeat.

I never saw the customer again, nor did I know if he ever bought any more whitening strips the more practical way, or if he returned the ones I figured would fit him. What I do know is that [Shift Manager] forced [Stocker] to stay in the perfume department, help any customer that came by, and put out the order of perfume and makeup that came in that day.

[Cosmetician], meanwhile, was mysteriously absent while [Stocker] was there, but always came back to cash out customers before disappearing again, to [Stocker]’s chagrin and [Cosmetician]’s and mine’s amusement.

I used to work as a supervisor of a security team at a large industrial facility. I had a good relationship with the manager (we will call him Dave) until he appointed his friend as a middle manager (we will call him Steve) between the supervisors and himself.

I did not have a good relationship with Steve at all, and suddenly, Dave started rejecting ideas, suggestions, and requests out of hand. The friendly guy I used to sit down and chat with regularly became standoffish and outwardly hostile at times.

The staff all noticed this as well and would frequently comment that they didn’t know what I’d done to Dave and Steve, but it was clear that I was being “bullied” all of a sudden.

It’s entirely fair to say that I couldn’t do right for doing wrong, and every little thing I did or did not do resulted in a lengthy email conversation with Dave and Steve. There is a lot I could add to this, but for the sake of brevity, I’m going to move on to the point of my story.

The site we had to patrol was about five square miles, so vehicles were provided to allow us to patrol effectively and carry equipment and personnel to the required locations.

Part of my duties at the start of each shift was ensuring that the vehicles had not been damaged during the previous shift and that all vehicles contained the required levels of equipment.

The first patrol went out the moment our shift started, and as this was a regulatory requirement, it could not be delayed or skipped.

This was the start of a night shift, so it was dark. Very dark. We had Maglite torches, but after six years of use and abuse, they weren’t exactly brilliant.

I didn’t find any new damage, so I recorded that the vehicles were okay and noted their mileage on our check sheets.

The next night, when I came in, I had an email from Dave with a very angry tone, demanding to know why my team had damaged one of the vehicles during the previous night. Apparently, the vehicle looked as if it had been reversed into a wall.

I immediately went to check the vehicle and found… two extremely small divots in the rear bumper. I found them not by looking, but by feeling the bumper. I simply could not see them at all using the light available to me at the time.

I then asked everyone on my team, and all of them insisted that they had not even used the vehicle. I checked the vehicle check sheets and found, true to my team’s word, that the mileage on the day shift’s sheet was identical to the mileage on the night shift’s sheet.

The vehicle had not been moved.

I sent an email back to Dave informing him that the vehicle had not been used by us and apologised for missing the damage; however, the lighting had made it extremely difficult to spot.

This was my last shift before my scheduled days off, so I was certain that Steve would be pushing Dave to punish me for “something” by the time I returned.

Sure enough, on my first day back, I was summoned to Dave’s office for what we British politely refer to as a “b*llocking.”

Dave insisted that he could see the damage in the dark and could actually spot it from about ten metres away. For context, all of my guys had been shown the damage, and every one of them, without fail, had said, “Where?” when I pointed it out at close range.

Not only that, but there was now additional damage that I hadn’t spotted, and my team was supposedly responsible for that as well!

Luckily, my boss had included a photograph of the damage I had missed, such as a very light scratch.

For Dave and Steve, however, this was enough to justify being punitive towards me and my team. They told me that unless a culprit was found and named, I would be held personally responsible and would have to “pay the insurance excess to get it fixed.”

Dave also insisted that the lighting was more than sufficient to spot any damage to the vehicles.

I told Dave that this was ridiculous and that he couldn’t enforce financial penalties over damage to a vehicle that had, again, not been used by my team.

Dave was insistent, though:

Dave: “It is your job to report 100% of the damage on the vehicles, or you will be held responsible.”

At this point, something clicked in my mind. Luckily, Dave decided to back up his instruction with an email, which Steve was CC’d into.

The next shift, I refused to allow my team to use the vehicles until they had all been fully checked: inside, outside, underneath, mechanically, and for equipment levels.

Each vehicle took about two hours.

I photographed every single small bit of damage I found, no matter how insignificant it was or whether it had been reported previously. Remember, the instruction was to report 100% of the damage, not 100% of the unreported damage.

I sent it all in an email to Dave, with a text description of the nature and location of the damage for each photograph.

There were 162 photographs in total.

The first patrol could not be skipped, so I had to send one of my officers out on foot to patrol the site. This meant that the site patrol took nearly three hours, and he was not available to fulfil other duties afterward.

It’s worth noting at this point that my team also saw this as a direct attack on them, rather than just on me, so they were fully supportive of the measures I was taking.

This resulted in the site shift manager demanding answers. I was able to tell him about Dave’s instructions and explain why I was having to send officers out on foot.

I had (and still have) a great relationship with all of the site shift managers, so while he was frustrated, he understood the predicament I had been put in, especially when the instructions were shown to him in black and white.

This resulted in a financial penalty for my company.

Dave was off the next day, so I did the exact same thing again, with the exact same number of photographs, all taken again during a fresh inspection.

On the night shift after that, I came to work to find Dave waiting in the office for me. I was allowed to finish my handover with the off-going supervisor before Dave shut the door and refused to let me leave before discussing why he had received multiple emails totalling over 800 MB (I hadn’t compressed or reduced the size of the photographs) how the company had received a financial penalty, and why the regulatory body was coming to speak to him.

I reminded him that he had demanded that I report 100% of the damage to the vehicles and that this had taken time. I couldn’t allow any member of the team to use any vehicle until it had been checked, as there could be financial penalties involved.

Frustrated, Dave pointed out that many of the pictures were too dark to see anything anyway, so most of the photographs were pointless.

I apologised for the lighting but pointed out that he had said the lighting was more than sufficient to spot any damage, so he should be able to see the damage I had reported easily.

Dave insisted that I had deliberately misinterpreted his instructions and that he would be taking the matter to a disciplinary.

I informed him that this was no problem. If he could just let me know the date and time, I would inform my union representative, who had been fully apprised of the situation and was 100% behind my suggestion that I report every single tiny bit of damage to the vehicles.

Dave was ultimately left with no choice but to drop any attempt to discipline me, and he left Steve to deal with me from that point on.

Steve then took up the role of disciplinarian for the next three months, until I left the job. However, every time he tried, I was able to shut it all down due to briefings with my union representative.

I left the job in February 2019 and still, to this day, receive complaints from members of staff who remained there about how terrible the job has become because of Dave and Steve.

The company sends a shiny HR email, with the subject line in all caps: USE IT OR LOSE IT. We had to burn our remaining PTO by the 30th, or it evaporates into the sun.

The same day, my manager announces that due to quarter-end, “no one can take time off until the 1st.” I ask how to reconcile that; he shrugs and says to talk to HR. HR says talk to your manager. Cute loop.

So, I opened the handbook, because I am a petty librarian when annoyed. Page fourteen has this little sentence I never noticed. “PTO requests not explicitly denied in writing within forty-eight business hours are considered approved.” There is also a note that partial-day PTO is allowed in one-hour blocks. Thank you, legal team.

I submitted ten separate requests. Two hours every morning next week, two hours every afternoon the week after, a random Friday, 3 PM to 5 PM to watch a plumber, and one full day to visit my mom.

I sent the requests in our HR portal, which auto-emails the manager and CCs a shared mailbox nobody watches. Then I went back to my tasks and set reminders. Forty-eight business hours pass. No denial. The portal changes each request to approved, green checkmark, confetti GIF.

Monday comes, and at 9.58 I put a cheerful note in the team chat. “Heading out, see you at noon.” Manager pings me to hop on a client call; I reply with a screenshot of the policy and the portal approval. Silence. Then three dots typing, then nothing.

By Wednesday, our calendar looks like cheese. Half the team remembers they also have PTO sitting around and start filing it in little blocks. Meetings keep colliding with green bars.

Finance realizes that if we do not use the days now, they will be paid out at separation later, which they hate. HR writes a new post saying we should “coordinate,” but that approvals already granted stand.

My manager calls a huddle to ask why productivity has dipped. I say we are following HR’s instruction to use PTO. He sighs and says he never thought anyone would actually read the handbook.

I used every hour, took my mom to lunch, and my plumber fixed the cursed sink at 3.40 while I drank tea.

Next week, a new policy appears. PTO must be requested in full-day increments during quarter-end, and managers must respond within twenty-four hours. Thanks for clarifying, truly.