Sometimes at work, you don’t do every single thing by the book and use shortcuts or just know that your way of doing things is just more efficient and simpler. Until someone tells you to do it how you’re supposed to, but this is a perfect opportunity to show why your way is better. Or something else unexpected may come up.

Like for Reddit user icydee, who had his way of filling in timesheets just for everyone’s convenience and to save time because he worked odd hours and decided that filling in the usual ones was the best way of doing it. When icydee was asked to report on every hour spent working and on breaks, he realized that the extra time filling in the timesheets really paid off when he received the check.

More info: Reddit

A freelancer signed a very favorable contract that, in the end, brought 40 percent greater pay just for filling in the exact hours he worked

Image credits: Michael Coghlan (not the actual photo)

Malicious Compliance is a subreddit where people tell stories of “conforming to the letter, but not the spirit, of a request.”

Very often these stories tell about people who do everything they were told to exactly by the book because they know it will bring chaos or at least cause inconvenience for someone who asked them to do something they felt they shouldn’t.

The freelancer worked from home, so he had to fill out timesheets so the client knew how much he was working

The freelancer always put 09:00 – 17:30 no matter what hours he worked because of the timesheet format

Image credits: icydee

A few days ago, a different kind of story surfaced on the subreddit and people really liked it because it had a happy ending, like most of the malicious compliance stories, but this was exceptional as the poster of the story didn’t know what a pleasant outcome he would get for doing what he was asked.

The protagonist of the story is 65-year-old Iain C Docherty from the UK, who has worked as a freelance computer consultant for 30 years. Bored Panda got in touch with the redditor and he told us that he was contracted until March 2020, when he took on full-time employment because “of the way the contract market has been affected by changes in legislation over the past few years.” And now he is planning to retire in the next 12 months. The story he told on Reddit took place about 10 years ago.

Reddit user Iain got a contract from a client which would guarantee six months of work. Because he could work from home and he was a freelancer, his working hours were not standard; however, Iain had to fill out a timesheet to show how much he worked.

Apparently, the timesheet was a pain to fill out if he wanted to show all the hours of work and the breaks he actually had, so the freelancer decided just to put in regular hours from 09:00 – 17:30 as he knew that he was putting in the work.

However, after some time, the client required the timesheets to be more detailed, but that caused unnecessary work

Image credits: icydee

Out of the blue, the client representative wanted the freelancer to record the hours he worked in more detail. This was not a huge problem for Iain, because he did that anyway, but it meant that the timesheets were going to be a mess. The man informed us that this request was made when there were only six weeks of the contract left.

Turns out, it was worth filling them in with precision, as the contract promised daily pay no matter the actual hours spent working

Image credits: icydee

Iain still complied to the request and, turns out, he should have started doing that earlier as the extra time dedicated to filling in the timesheet exactly how he was working paid off as he got paid 40 percent more for those six weeks than he expected. He told us that he noticed it only after the contract had expired and he was checking his finances and saw that the amount was £2,500 ($3,500) bigger.

The poster of the story explained that in the contract, it was stated that no matter how long in a day he would work, he would still get paid the same amount for each day. Iain went into more detail: “the agency provided the contract that ensured I was paid a full day rate irrespective of the number of hours worked, 1 or 10. Other contracts with other agencies state a day rate for any number of hours over 8 hours, but pro-rata for less than 8hrs so this ‘problem’ would not have happened.”

Because Iain sometimes transferred his work to the weekends and had to record all that in the timesheets, this resulted in him getting paid more.

The freelancer revealed that he never heard anything from the end client after the end of his contract. Also, he guesses “that [the company’s] budget that they had approved for my six-month contract was exceeded, but by then it was too late.”

What do you think of this slightly different and accidental malicious compliance? What would have you done in icydee’s shoes? Maybe you have a similar story? Share your thoughts in the comments!

The original post was edited for clarity purposes so if you would like to see the full story, you can click here.

Here are some of the reactions people sounded in the comments under the story

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