Posted by u/FMLitsSML
3 days ago New finance manager accidentally increases
our pay when trying to cut it back. XLOC
TLDR at bottom. Note the story takes place in the UK but I changed the £ for $
to make it easier for foreign audiences to follow. This story goes back a few years now. I worked in
graphics design, I was salaried, but was paid to be on-call one week every month. The company had a
long-standing structure of on-call payments, where we get paid $200 a month to be on the on-call
rota, and if/when we get called out, it's paid at around 130% of our calculated hourly salary
rate for the time we clock in and clock out of "work" on a callout. This worked fine for us, and
is important to note for the rest of this story. One day we had a new finance manager introduce
himself. He was in his early 20s and had been hired as part of a "graduate leadership
programme". We knew instantly he was going to be a pain because within the first
3 minutes of his half-hour long speech, he talked about "cost" and "value for money"
and "expenditure" multiple times. He didn't even mention "graphics design" at all, which is
what we all did. Let's call this guy Mr Asshat. To begin with we gave Mr Asshat the benefit of
the doubt - new guy, new company, maybe he was just sticking to his comfort zone. Nuh-uh. Within
two weeks he'd mandated that all expenses had to be sent to him for approval. Cue queries like
"you're driving a Transit, why did it cost you $60 to go 100 miles?" and "why did you fill up
at Shell, Morrisons is cheaper". This eventually led to "I don't want the trucks going home with
you, please leave them at work and pick them up." Well, the reason it cost us $60 that
one time was that we had 1.2 tons of product in the back and we needed to run
the engine whilst the pallets were being loaded/unloaded. Mr Asshat didn't understand,
in his finance textbook there was no mention of logistics. The vans were going home with
us was because it'd save 30-60 minutes of a commute either way to get a van when we were
moving products from customers/suppliers. Again, this was confusing to him, because his textbook
didn't say that everybody didn't actually live at the company and had that odd requirement to
go to some weird place called "home" at 5pm. Naturally, none of the employees
were happy about this arrangement, but it all fell away because of
Mr Asshat's second brilliant idea. Mr Asshat also decided that we would
get our on-call payments docked. A system that had worked since 1988; over
30 years of a perfectly working system, but of course, some idiot has to
come along and try to change it. His big idea was to lose one hour of on-call.
It was an easy saving on paper, since we all claimed one single (extra) hour on-call every
week. The way it worked was that whoever was handing over the on-call duty would claim half
an hour to get the van fuelled and valeted, and whoever was about to go on-call would also
claim half an hour to take a stock check of what was in the vans and reload as necessary.
Every week a different van would go out and, as we had 4 vans, this meant they also all got
their monthly clean as mandated by the company. We'd worked this for years, and it was actually
the idea of a retired director, who'd previously worked as a paramedic. A weekly van refresh was
worth the nominal amount that was paid out to one employee per week, and was also an incentive
for being on call. Even if nothing happened, the on-call employee would get the equivalent of
a free meal, and the vans would be stocked every Thursday (our on-call handover day) and good to
go. During quiet periods the vans (we had 4 of them) all got a run at least once a month so they
didn't get flat batteries, and as whoever was on call got that van washed, cleaned and fuelled
etc, we always had one presentable van 24/7. Anyway, back to Mr Asshat. So, when everybody
heard they were losing an hour of on-call pay, because "it's our job to make
sure we're ready no matter what", there were a lot of questions asked.
Our senior finance manager doubled down, having been Mr Asshat's referral into the
company, he agreed, saying "you all drive, pick the van up from work. You can load it in
company time whilst you're here. You have gate codes so if you're on call, you will need
to take a van from your place of work." Sure. Dumbo. Time for some malicious compliance. Coincidentally, the next 6 weeks
were very busy on call. As mentioned, Mr Asshat's textbook didn't cover how people
don't live at the office. So instead of taking a van home and being ready to go at 3am when
the overnight press has our samples ready, or our client has just published their final
design markup that they want reviewed and on the machines for 6am, or (most commonly)
having to drive to an event with some extra flyers/bags/lanyards/etc because the client was
overbooked, we were spending anywhere between 30-90 minutes commuting to the office to pick
up a van, driving to wherever the issue was (sometimes it was directly back via the on-call
employee's house). And then the same time back. Whilst we weren't paid fuel mileage for driving
to work for our normal hours, we were given the standard $0.40 a mile when we had to drive our
own cars outside of working hours, if we couldn't / didn't want to drive (e.g. the spouse needs the
car in the morning for the school run, insurance doesn't cover driving after 11pm, car needs a
service etc), the company would pay for a taxi. If we were driving one of the vans, we weren't
paid mileage, just our standard on-call payment. Mr Asshat very quickly went from our enemy to our
best friend, when we realised we'd be getting paid significantly more to drive to the office, pick
up the van, and then head to wherever we needed to go. Plus, after the job, coming back to the
office and then driving home again. One of my colleagues lived about 60 miles away from the
office and, on one occasion, where he'd had 9 callouts in one week, each time having to drive to
the office and back, he'd effectively doubled what he'd have been paid weekly. We realised that
this was costing the company money but, hey, them's the rules, so we happily kept up this new
routine. The extra driving was a bit of a pain, but the knowledge that we were getting paid
extra for it made it a very easy rule to follow. Mr Asshat probably realised that as we weren't
complaining, something must be wrong. He checked and was shocked to find out that his massive
saving of about $250 per month (4x 1 hour on call payments) was instead leading to about $500
of extra monthly mileage payments, and an extra $1000 in monthly on-call payments. Not to mention
that customers were complaining that what was a 20 minute response time was now about an hour, and
one customer had noticed that one of the on-call employees would drive past their facility in
his car, only to come back 40 minutes later with a van. Then, 40 minutes after he'd left, they
saw him driving back the way he came in his car. We'd initially complained about this for
a while, but it fell on deaf ears. As soon as our company director heard complaints
from the customers though, time for action. Suddenly we were allowed to take the vans home
again. Our on-call handover was reinstated. Mr Asshat was moved out of our team.I was naive
(I still am, tbh) so I thought this was fine. However a lot of the other people I worked
with said no, we have our new way of working, that's how it's meant to be. Some people
said that they'd bought another car or a bigger car now that they didn't need to park
a van at home any more so they were unable to take a van home again (I don't believe this was
actually true, but we stood behind the point). I worked there for another year and left
to pursue my career, but until I left, Mr Asshat's policy remained. Everybody who worked
on-call continued to leave the vans at the office, drive there to pick them up, do a job, drop
it off at the office, then drive home again. Mr Asshat disappeared for a while and we
never heard about him again. I checked the corporate directory and saw he was missing,
so I assume he was shown the door. The senior finance guy was still in the company but
had absolutely no say in what we did. He was moved down from "client manager" to
"supplier co-ordinator" which I assume means he's now living his life checking
contracts and financial statements. Ouch. Posted by
u/mechpaul 2 days ago
All-Seeing Upvote You want to have girls over all
the time? Ok. Have it your way. LOC
THE SETUP: I have a 2 bedroom house. I decided that I wanted
to rent out the other bedroom in the house to make some money on space I wasn't really using
after COVID. So I fixed up the place really nice: The tenant gets: Private, semi-attached bathroom (bathroom is
actually outside the bedroom, but I put up drapes between the bedroom and bathroom so
tenant can walk between without me seeing) Common consumables! (I pay for toilet paper, paper
towels, laundry supplies, kitchen supplies, etc.) I create the lease. The lease is very barebones.
It just says "you get a room at this property. You pay this much per month. Landlord covers
all utilities. Your lease is X months long." I created the ad. In the ad I mentioned how "it's
ok to have guests over, but keep it to no more than twice per month". I did not put this into the
lease agreement. You can see where this is going. I do a showing for a prospect, T. I tell him
the guest policy and he seems just fine with it. I do the rest of the showing and all seems
grand. He signs the lease agreement and moves in. THE PROBLEM: The first month is grand. Anyone can fool someone for a month. But eventually you return
to bad habits. His bad habit was women. He would have women over 4-5 nights
per week. I did not appreciate this. I pulled him aside to tell him "Hey,
you're having a lot of girls over. You need to reduce how many girls over or,
if you're willing to pay a bit extra for having all these girls over, I won't
say a thing." He initially agrees with it. The next day, he calls me down and asks to
speak with me at the dining room table. It's T and his girl du jour, G. T begins arguing,
"How can you ask for more money when that's not in the lease agreement? You can't ask
for that." I told him the guest policy was in the ad and that we spoke about it when he
came here. He said, "Yeah, but you can't ask for that. If it's not in the lease agreement
you can't do that. The guest policy isn't in the lease agreement either, so I pay rent.
I can have over whoever whenever I want." G piped in, "You just need to take the L on
this one and write better lease agreements." I replied to G, "You're
not on the lease agreement, so I don't give a crap what you
think about it." I turned to T, "It was in the ad. We also talked about it
when you came here. You knew about this." T replied, "Woahhh man calm
down. It's just six months man. That's my lease term. I'll be
out of your hair in six months." I replied, "Why can't you stay at her place?" G said, "That's none of your business." "Shut up, G. I don't care what
you think. You want a problem, T? You got one. This is not cool and you know
it. Why does she have to be here 5 nights a week? She practically lives here. I signed a lease
with you, T, not with her. Why is she here?" He shrugged, "Can't help it. Not in the lease agreement man. That's what
lease agreements are for." I was infuriated. We talked about
this. He's choosing to follow the lease agreement. Okay... fine...
what's a guy to do? I want him gone. I don't want T & G teaming
up against me in my own house!! They walked upstairs and turned
on the loud music in their room. Later in the evening, G was
downstairs cooking something on the stove by herself using my
pots and pans. She's cooking for herself in my house! She's not even a
tenant but she sure is acting like one. G tried striking up a friendly
conversation with me, but I just gave her absolute silence for 10 minutes
while I cooked. I took my food upstairs. This is war. I'm going to follow the lease
agreement TO THE LETTER. If I advertised a feature in the ad but it wasn't in the
lease agreement, that thing is GONE. THE COMPLIANCE Every day I took something away. I first started by removing all the common
consumables from the house. He texted me later, "Man, you removed all the consumables? You
need to come down on the rent." I replied, "Not in the lease agreement." He
said, "It don't got to be like this." I removed the drapes between his
room and the private bathroom. I took away the chairs for the dining room table. I then shut off the clothes washer
and dryer (circuit breakers were in my room) and left taped up the
location of a local laundromat. I also became an absolutely filthy
roommate. I didn't clean anything. I left bags of garbage wherever I felt
like. I never cleaned the kitchen and left the sink full of dishes.
"Please man can you clean up" "No." I had maid service. Cancelled that. I informed
him of the change. "Can you come down on the rent, man?" "Not in the lease agreement. You
agreed to a rental price." "C'monnnnnn" I turned off the breaker to
the stove and left out a wall outlet single pot electric plate for him to use. I turned off the microwave. Not
in the lease agreement either. I actually started feeling bad for him. G started coming around less and less as I made
the living situation worse and worse. Finally, he texted me, "Do
you want me to move out?" I replied, "Yes, when are you leaving my house?" He said, "End of the month.
You'll let me break the lease?" I replied, "Of course." He left at the end of the month.
I had my house back. I made for sure to make my next lease agreement
way more specific about EVERYTHING.
