Man Realizes the Penalty for 6 Minutes Late Is the Same as 3 Hours Late, So He Chooses Bacon

Every family has its messy, chaotic, but also incredibly meaningful side. But what about our work families? Sometimes, they’re just plain messy.

A Redditor, who by his own account is always early, found himself in the crosshairs of a manager who cared more about the clock than common sense. After a massive traffic jam made him six minutes late, his boss didn’t just understand.

He publicly shamed him and wrote him up, pointing out that the penalty was the same whether he was six minutes or three hours late.

The employee quickly realized his boss was right. And he decided to use that rule to his full advantage.

Now, read the full story:

Wow. That feeling of being a model employee, of always doing the right thing, only to be publicly humiliated for one tiny, unavoidable slip-up… it’s a special kind of frustration.

You can almost feel the OP’s pride in his punctuality curdling into pure, cold logic. His supervisor wasn’t managing a person; he was managing a number on a clock. So, the OP decided to give him just that.

This story is a perfect, bite-sized example of “malicious compliance.” It’s the inevitable result of rigid, punitive policies colliding with human reality. A productive, motivated team should have been the supervisor’s goal. By focusing on the letter of the law, he created a disengaged employee.

Worse, he incentivized the employee to work less.

The supervisor’s public shaming was a critical error. It was a direct hit to the company’s bottom line.

Christine Porath, a Georgetown professor and an expert on workplace incivility, detailed this very thing in the Harvard Business Review. After polling 800 managers and employees, she found that 48% of employees who experienced rudeness “intentionally decreased their work effort.”

The OP felt bad, and he actively decided to stop giving his full effort the moment the system punished him unfairly.

This all boils down to a single, simple concept: trust.

A good manager would have seen a reliable employee, heard about the traffic jam, and said, “Glad you made it in safe.” This manager chose punishment.

As psychologist Dr. A.J. Marsden explained to Thrive Global, this is a classic symptom of micromanagement. “When employees feel like they are not trusted, they become disengaged,” she says.

The OP was engaged. He was the model employee who left an hour early for a 30-minute commute. He was engaged right up until his boss treated him like a truant child over six minutes.

The OP’s 2-hour breakfast was the only logical response. The company policy created a bizarre loophole by setting the same penalty for a minor infraction (6 minutes) and a major one (2.5 hours).

It removed all incentive to hurry. This story is a potent lesson for managers everywhere: treat your employees like responsible adults, or they might just start following your dumb rules exactly as written.

Check out how the community responded:

The OP was far from alone. The comment section immediately lit up with people sharing their own stories of “malicious compliance” against ridiculous, clock-watching bosses.

From skipping an entire first period in high school to turning around at the time clock to call in sick, it’s clear these policies backfire constantly. People celebrated the OP’s clever, and tasty, solution.

Other users pointed out the sheer absurdity and terrible business sense behind these kinds of rules.

They highlighted how much productivity is lost, not just from employees taking their sweet time, but from the simple, everyday acts of disengagement that follow, like letting a computer run a long update on company time. 

A final group shared chilling tales of bosses who seemed to get a personal thrill from enforcing these rules.

These stories ranged from CEOs personally berating late arrivals in the lobby to managers threatening to fire their entire staff for being late during a blizzard. It’s a stark reminder that for some, management is all about control.

It’s clear the Reddit community stands firmly with the OP. His story is a satisfying, if frustrating, look at what happens when managers forget they’re dealing with human beings.

The supervisor wanted respect for the clock, but in the process, he lost all respect from his employee.

What do you think? Was the OP’s 2-hour breakfast the right move? And have you ever been tempted to use a company’s bad policy against them?