Chapter 4

It was now the eighth day since that meeting. When I walked into the office, everything was as usual.

Michael rolled his eyes at the sight of me, his expression scornful. Paying him no mind, I went straight to my desk and turned on my computer.

I logged into my company email account and drafted an email. The subject line read, "A Friendly Reminder on Standardizing Attendance Management."

Then I attached the "Attendance and Working Hours Compliance Self-Check List" that I'd compiled from the employee handbook.

The email itself read, "Hello, everyone. Recently, the company has once again emphasized the importance of adhering to attendance policies. Mr. Larkin made it clear that rules are necessary to maintain order, and every employee must abide by company policy.

"After carefully studying the employee handbook and the attendance regulations, I discovered many details that are easily overlooked, which may have resulted in unintentional violations.

"I found 32 items in particular, such as failing to submit a request for approval for compensatory leave after working overtime, failing to submit approvals for flexible clock-ins within the required period, forgetting to enable location tracking when traveling on company business, exceeding the lunch break, and leaving work two minutes or more early.

"To prevent everyone from repeating my mistake, I have compiled this self-check list for your reference. Please be sure to review all of your attendance records from the past year. If you find any issues, do reach out to HR and take proactive action to handle your violations, lest you end up facing even more serious consequences."

After reading the entire thing, I was satisfied with what I'd come up with. It sounded like I was just a model employee trying hard to prove myself after losing my promotion.

Without any hesitation, I sent the email to everyone in the company.

At first, no one paid much attention to the email. Some deleted it without even reading it, while others merely glanced at it and decided it was too much trouble.

However, a few people opened the attachment and saw the list I had carefully prepared as a spreadsheet file. There were 32 attendance rules that were particularly easy to violate. Each one included the specific page number and section in the employee handbook.

The first row of the spreadsheet contained a line bolded in red.

"Violation Example: Exceeding Lunch Break by 1 Minute. Penalty: Revocation of Previously Announced Promotion Eligibility."

The first person to open the spreadsheet was Howard Reed from the tech department.

He had worked overtime for several days the previous month. Exhausted, he had forgotten to submit the required overtime approval form through the employee portal. He went through the spreadsheet while checking his own attendance records, and his expression grew increasingly grim.

Howard was now discovering that, based on company policy, his instances of overtime qualified as unapproved overtime. Not only would he not receive any overtime pay, but they would also be counted as attendance infractions.

And considering the precedent Patrick had set with my case, those attendance infractions would be enough to wipe out Howard's entire performance bonus for the year.

He snatched up his phone and rushed toward the HR department.

With Howard being the first to catch on, more and more people started getting antsy about it. No one could focus on work anymore. Everyone was discussing the list I'd created.

"What the hell? Flexible clock-ins have to be followed up with an approval within 24 hours, or it counts as an absence? I didn't submit mine this week!"

"Forgetting to enable location tracking while out on business means losing half a day's pay? I forgot last week!"

"The clock-in machine malfunctioned for two days last month, and I forgot to get my clock-in times corrected. Do those count as absences?"

"Oh, crap. I arrive ten minutes early every day, but I leave two minutes early. Does that still count as leaving early?"

Fear quickly spread throughout the entire office. In the blink of an eye, almost every desk was empty as everyone hurried toward the HR department, including Michael.

I raised my hand and checked the time. It was exactly 12:30 pm. I pulled out my blanket and watched with a smile as the tornado swept through the entire company.