Boss Offers Staff Unlimited Overtime Pay For Mother's Day Then Gets Mad At Them For Taking Too Much
"Why would she green light unlimited overtime just to walk it back midweek?"
Martin Lauge Villadsen | Shutterstock No one really wants to work around holidays, but one boss thought she cracked the code to keeping her staff incentivized to work hard. For Mother's Day, she offered her employees the opportunity to make some extra cash with unlimited overtime. However, she didn't anticipate the enthusiastic response she got, and soon walked back on her offer.
The boss offered her staff unlimited overtime pay for Mother's Day, then got mad at them for taking too much.
"Our district manager told us before her vacation that on the week of Mother’s Day, we could work as much overtime as we wanted," an employee shared in a post to Reddit's r/antiwork forum. "So my co-workers and I planned to hit 50-plus hours."
They obviously put in a lot of work to make this happen. "Some came in early, others worked doubles," she said. "Normally, people just clock in and out without pushing [overtime], so this was a big change."
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Everything was going fine until they reached the halfway point for the week. "Halfway through the week, the district manager suddenly told our head manager we were doing too much [overtime],” she recounted. “I think the shift leads were in on it too, because they’re used to being the only ones with heavy hours.”
“I didn’t quite hit 50 hours total (only 10 hours overtime) because of Cinco de Mayo,” the Redditor added, “but my friend did, and now they’re side-eyeing him. Why would she greenlight unlimited overtime just to walk it back midweek?”
Commenters shared theories as to why the employee’s boss reneged on her offer for unlimited overtime.
The original Reddit poster seemed downright confused as to why her boss would do what she did, but others had some pretty good ideas. “Probably hit normal staffing levels for the first time in forever,” one person argued. “They did, and they were shook,” the employee replied in a comment.
“Poor management,” another commenter wrote. “They expected less people to do it. Ten hours is nothing, though. Not sure what they expected. Particularly without putting a cap on it.” A third user added, “This eagerness for overtime is just a sign that you aren’t properly compensated.”
"Sometimes people make offers with the expectation to get a no, but they can say they tried, and you can’t complain," another user suggested. "It’s backfired."
Legally, these employees did nothing wrong.
There are laws in place that govern overtime practices, but they do so to protect employees, not to make it harder for them to receive proper pay. "The [Fair Labor Standards Act] requires nonexempt employees to be paid time-and-a-half for all time worked that exceeds 40 hours in a workweek," Bloomberg Law explained. "Some states have their own requirements for overtime pay that supplement federal labor and employment law."
These employees did nothing wrong by taking their boss up on her offer, and they certainly don’t deserve to be punished for merely following her instructions.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
