A chief operating officer went undercover at his own company to see how employees were being treated by a manager—and quickly discovered a workplace policy he said he knew nothing about.
In a video shared online, the COO is seen working alongside employees when one woman suddenly rushes to clock in. She later explains that employees can lose two minutes of pay for every minute they are late.
The boss secretly joins his own company as a new junior worker, and when he sees his real boss panicking like crazy to avoid a fine for being only two minutes late, he is shocked beyond words pic.twitter.com/cd1THSafe1
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) August 18, 2026
The Chief Operations Officer joined his employees for a day of work at his office. He pretended to be a junior employee working alongside lower-level employees at his company. He’s chatting with a woman about something when suddenly, she runs away from the conversation.
“What’s happening?” he asks as the woman makes her way down the hall. You see her approach the station where she clocks in and out of work. She runs past other employees, clearly stressed out about something. She quickly runs her time card through the machine and instant relief comes to her face.
When she comes back, she explains what happened. “Just on time,” she says. “I had to punch in. I only have a half hour lunch. I had to punch back in or I get docked.”
She explained that employees have time deducted from their pay for every minute they are late.
“You get in trouble?” The COO asked the woman. She replied, “I can get docked 2 minutes for every minute that I’m late.”
The man tells her that doesn’t seem fair. She responds by saying that’s the way Kevin, the manager, treats his employees. “There’s cameras up there, so he is watching us constantly,” she tells him.
He asks her if that was the most frustrating thing about working at the company, and she nods her head. “I wish they didn’t have it,” she adds.
The COO is interviewed on his own, where he shares how much he dislikes the policy. “The policy states for every minute that you’re late, you’re docked 2. I’m President Chief Operating Officer, I ought to know about things like that.”
Although he has a bigger title within the company, he was unaware of what was going on between the manager and employees at the location. “This is precisely why I wanted to go undercover,” he continued.
Some Employees on X Could Relate to the Treatment
It was clear that the policy was unfair to all employees at this company, and he wanted to change them. X had a lot to say about this, finding the manager’s behavior unbelievable.
“This is why every CEO needs to do a trial run at the bottom level,” one commenter wrote. Others questioned whether this was even legal: “I'm pretty certain it is against labor laws not to pay people for the time they actually work.”
Sadly, many people in the comments said they have had experiences with people like the manager. Overall, they thought all the employees deserved a kinder working environment.
The video does not provide additional information about whether the company changed the policy or whether the manager faced any consequences. The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the claims made in the video or determine the company involved.
