Denied Overtime Backfires on Manager

My company had a rule that overtime needed manager approval. Our department head denied every single

request while piling extra work on us last minute. His favorite line was manage your

time better right before blaming us for missed deadlines. When a massive project came up,

he denied overtime for everyone. So we did exactly what he said. Worked our scheduled

hours only. No staying late, no early arrivals, no off the clock emails.

The project fell behind immediately. Upper management started asking questions. He tried blaming

us for being lazy. HR pulled the time logs and saw we followed policy perfectly.

Then they noticed he denied every overtime request despite documented workload pressure.