Nurse Hilariously Breaks Down How to Get “Free” Minutes to Co-workers With Clock-in System “Hack”

A nurse went viral on TikTok, racking up over 3.8 million views on the popular social media application, after sharing a clip of her explaining to co-workers how the company's time clock system works.

Cdub's (@coolernperson) breakdown was a relatable one, judging from the comments left in response to her clip.

She begins the video standing in front of a time clock with some co-workers:

"After every quarter of an hour, rounds down to the nearest quarter of an hour. Eight minutes after every quarter of an hour, rounds up to the next quarter of an hour," the nurse says in an attempt to explain the way the clock-in system at their job determines the amount of time an employee works.

"So, 7:07 rounds down to 7, 7:08 rounds up to 7:15. 7:22 rounds down to 7:15, 7:23 rounds up to 7:30. 7:37 rounds down to 7:30 —"

At this point in her description of how the clock-in system operates, someone off camera asks the nurse: "How do I do that?"

"I just told you how," she says, throwing her hands up.

"No who, who does that?" the other employee asks.

"The computer," the nurse states.

"The computer does it automatically?" the coworker asks.

"It's 7:38, let me finish, rounds...up to 7:45, 7:52 goes down to 7:45. 7:53 goes up to 8:00," she says, before adding, "that's why you gotta clock in by 7:52," she explains.

If you're following along, she explains why getting in at that time is so important: "You clock in at 7:53 you late."

"Past 7?" the co-worker replies.

"No, what?" the time-clock-obsessed nurse asks.

"You're past 7," the co-worker repeats.

"No..."

"Yeah you said it rounds up."

It quickly seems like the nurse is picking up what her co-worker is putting down: "It'll round up yeah 6:53 rounds up to 7 on the dot."

She then goes on to say, "You're supposed to be here at 6:45 so 52 goes down to 45 so right now if you clock out right now you're going back to 7:15," the nurse tells her co-workers.

"So we're clocking out...?" the co-worker asks before the Time Nurse says that they're going to wait to clock out at 7:23 so the time system officially counts their clock-in as 7:30.

However, her lecture on the particulars of time-clock etiquette didn't seem to resonate with the other nurses.

She looks into the camera and asks why the other employees don't understand what she's trying to say and then begins pointing around the room to ask people if "they get it."

"They cheating us, out of time!" the one nurse says loudly, but Time Nurse was there to defend the practice, stating that "it makes sense."

"If you think about how many employees the hospital has and whoever's doing that payroll, if they had to do it minute by minute plus everybody's individual pay, uh-uh they gonna f--k something up I don't trust. It's a lot easier to say one-hour point 25, one-hour point 5, one-hour point 75," she said in defense of the time code practice.

"If it was minute by minute it would be 1.56 or 1.32," she said, indicating that a person's check would be a "random a--" collection of numbers and payouts.

"You're welcome," she tells the ladies.

"Time," the person off camera says, indicating that it's 7:23. Time Nurse is excited by this development.

"Let's f--king go," she says as she swipes her card through the clock-in/out system. "Thank you for coming to my TED talk," she says, laughing before the video closes out.

There were several TikTok users who speculated that the timing system in question was Kronos: "The way I knew this was Kronos. Everyone knows to wait to clock out at 7:23 so you get paid til 7:30"

Another replied: "She’s been in the streets! She knows how to work the system lol."

"Oh the joys of KRONOS!!" someone else responded, echoing that they, too, are familiar with the time in/out system the nurse in the video was referring to.

"I don’t know her, but I trust her to do my taxes," another replied speaking to the nurse's ability to comment on the ins and outs of her job's clocking system.

Someone else wrote: "I was at my job for SIX YEARS before I figured out why all the seasoned nurses would always say '7:08' then get up to clock out!!"

One TikToker said that their own place of work ended up adopting a down-to-the-minute clock in/out system and that these kinds of clock in/out systems can rob workers of overtime pay: "A lot of employers have been sued for unpaid OT because of this. Our company changed to the minute. I'm surprised Kronos hasn't encouraged HR to make the switch."