Through the discretion written policy leaves open, a manager gives allies flexible hours, remote days, and easy leave, while dissenters get rigid schedules, denied requests, and extra demands.
An example
When a digital media company announced its return to the office, the rule was four days a week for everyone, with exceptions "at manager discretion." A senior editor who had opposed the newsroom reorganization, and who had moved two hundred miles away during the pandemic with her manager's written approval, was told to be at her desk Monday through Thursday from the first week. Her request for two remote days while she sold her house was declined. On her first day back she counted six empty desks on her team. Three colleagues who had backed the reorganization were working from home under arrangements nobody had announced. Her on-call weekends doubled that quarter. When she asked HR, she was told exception approvals were not tracked centrally and that the policy applied to everyone equally.
Why it works
Uniform on paper, the policy gives deniability, while the discretion it leaves open moves costs between people. For allies, the cost of being a loyal subordinate falls: no commute, flexible days, leave approved without friction. For dissenters, the same policy is read strictly, and the cost lands every workday as commuting, lost time, denied leave, and stacked on-call weeks. The precondition is a manager who alone controls schedules and approvals, along with costs that fall on things people value and have built their lives around, an HR team that reacts only to complaints, and nobody able to see who received what.
The thinking behind it
Oliver E. Williamson Williamson's The Economic Institutions of Capitalism (1985) explains that investments specialized to one relationship leave their owners exposed to the other party. Employees who moved house, built long commutes, or arranged their lives around an approved working pattern have made such investments, and a manager with discretion over schedules can exploit them. The more someone has committed to an arrangement, the more a strict reading costs them, which is why outside options are such strong protection.
Amos Tversky In Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model (1991), Tversky and Kahneman show that people judge options against a reference point and weigh losses more than equal gains, which makes them reluctant to give up what they have. Flexibility already granted becomes that reference point. Withdrawing it from a dissenter is felt as a loss far larger than the same flexibility would be worth as a new benefit, which is what gives the selective reading its force.
Warning signs
Remote-day, leave, and schedule approvals line up with political alignment and ignore role and tenure. People who disagreed with a recent decision find their requests deferred, their on-call weeks multiplied, or their deadlines set across known commitments. Exceptions exist but are never published. HR can describe the policy and cannot say who received exceptions or why.
How to defend yourself
Write down every request and decision: what you asked for, when, the answer, and the reason given. Where calendars, rotations, or schedules are shared, compare your treatment with peers in similar roles and save the comparison. Ask for the criteria for exceptions in writing. With that record, escalate to HR, and where the pattern touches protected situations such as medical needs, to legal or an employment lawyer. Keep your own compliance clean while you do. Outside options help too: people with a market for their skills are much harder to pressure this way, and a credible offer changes the conversation.
How a leader shuts it down
Publish who holds remote, flexible, and leave exceptions, and on what basis. Move routine approvals into a mechanical process, such as blind leave approval or a visible on-call rotation. Have HR audit approval patterns by manager without waiting for a complaint. A manager who bends schedules by allegiance is likely doing the same with expenses, training, and assignments, so look there as well.