Update: 'Don't start a meeting by ending the meeting': Employee demands 20x their pay after boss accidentally fires them

Advertisement
  • 01
    Human - 'Well, Kiddo, I'm sad to say that I was wrong. I shouldn't have hired you. You're fired.' -
  • 02
    Font - My work environment is less an environment and more-so a conglomeration of duct tape, spit, and cussing. I managed, among many things, a set of rentals, accounts receivable, and customer database analysis. Essentially, our company's bus factor was far too highlow. Another important bit that I handled were various legal documents that the State requires meticulous processes to be followed, and allows for a digital or physical paper trail. I opted for digital. Now, my boss kindly provided m
  • 03
    Font - management and analytical software to boot up - more or less process a dataset, so I called up our IT guy. Who worked for the boss's friend's sister-in-law's business. 200 miles away. I go, "Hey Tim! I need to add my personal laptop to the company network. Can you make that happen?" "Sure, I'll be down to that location in a week or two. Can it wait?" "Sounds perfect, Tim." So Tim shows up. We get the boss to rubber stamp that this is all OK, and I have remote access to the servers and som
  • 04
    Font - We didn't have anything like a software policy, either. I think some computers had Office 2007 installed, but that's clunky and makes data transfer complicated. It's the 20 teens, there's no need for that. I do all of my work on a google drive account tied to my work email. This is great, because I can hot-swap my work station to wherever the boss wants me today. Sometimes he likes to pretend I'm a secretary and throws me in his office. Sometimes he thinks I'm a technician and puts me at
  • 05
    Font - automating things, and was doing the job of about 6 people. How can I do the job of 6 people without the boss knowing? Easy. He likes to manage by the seat of his pants. One day he fired a maintenance person and just "rolled" that job into the receptionist, driver, and technician jobs. One day he decided that the sales team could handle marketing - surely buying a single $2000 camera is cheaper than having a professional do shoots each week. Besides - guerilla handicam sales pitches are i
  • 06
    Font - So the time comes. We all know its coming - one of the suits tipped me off that the particular suit who's payroll is wasted on chumps like me had propositioned the boss that a pair of receptionists can do the work I do, for cheaper. Just hire some college kids, work 'em each 18 hours a week, it'll be grand. Knowing that, I backed up everything to my personal google.drive account - but of course did not delete anything from the company owned one. Like I said, the State has a vested interes
  • 07
    Font - locations" on my Google account and tuck my laptop into my car before heading upstairs. The meeting starts with the boss saying, "Well kiddo," yes, he calls me kiddo. Since I'm not 60 years old, I'm obviously a child. "Well, Kiddo, I'm sad to say that I was wrong. I shouldn't have hired you. You're fired." Well... that was blunt. And rude. So I stand up, extend my hand across the table, and prepare to thank him for the last few years. "NOT so fast. Sit down, we have things to discuss." Ha
  • 08
    Font - interests. All things that, as his competent employee, I could have printed and sitting on his desk in moments. I decide to comply with him starting the meeting by saying I'm fired. Where I live, either of us can stop the employment situation for any reason. He had legally fired me. I counter him, "Well, Boss, I don't feel particularly comfortable accessing your network since I'm not an employee." He exploded. Think of Karen, a millionaire Karen with little-brother syndrome who wants to b
  • 09
    Font - public wifi hotspot. I carefully removed my laptop from their network. I drove home, unpacked my work lunch. My phone hasn't stopped ringing - he probably had a receptionist being paid minimum wage to hit the "redial" button. Eventually I answer a call from his cellphone. He makes some demands. I very flippantly offer to come to work for him at 10x my rate. He yells some more. An hour later, he's pounding on my door. I don't want to deal with that, I know he carries a loaded pist I in his
  • 10
    Font - But that's not my concern. My concern is collecting my unemployment. And wouldn't you know, I was fired a few days before fall college class selection begins. I decide to take a few master level classes - I've had my BA for awhile, might as well get some more school in on the Boss's dime. Classes go well, and I coast through spring semester by tapping into a bit of savings. And wouldn't you know it? The pand mic happens, and my unemployment benefits are extended. Guess I'll take some summ
  • 11
    Font - firing me without cause a year ago, and let him know I made the Dean's list last semester. He tells me to f off, he called to take me up on my deal - he'll hire me at 5x my rate to give him some information. I remind him, "Wasn't the deal 10 times my rate?" F you, 5x is too much. And I only need you for an afternoon. "Well, I've been thinking about it. My unemployment benefits run out in a week or two. So I'll do it. I'll contract for you. I want 20x what I was making. 40 hours minimum. P
  • 12
    Font - I hang up. He calls back an hour later, just moments before I started writing this, actually. It's actually his daughter, the comptroller of the company. She says she spoke some reason to the boss. He'll hire me at 20x my rate for 40 hours of work, half paid up front. "Actually, it was 100% up front, not half." Fine. she starts telling me what needs done. Turns out, they're failing a State audit quite badly. Like, "Boss is not a millionaire if this isn't fixed" kind of badly. They have al
  • 13
    Font - Really, the man couldn't have been nicer. He's already covered me going to college full time for over a year, and is about to cover another two semesters. I should buy him a cake. Edit / Update: I got a call. They seem to have decided that the daughter/comptroller would be the best point of contact, which is fine with me. We got along fine, she has a nice kid that used to run around the office. It seems like the bulk of the issue is the information that they can't find. That's roughly zer
  • 14
    Font - surprised, "Heh" of a chuckle and said no dice. Contract first, and I'll have them pass the audit perfectly, like I always used to. "But there's a deadline." I work fast. "You don't understand, we only have until the end of the month. This needs started on today." I work fast, and it sounds like you should hire someone who knows how to write contracts fast, too. "Whatever. If you don't fix this you're.... you know what, nevermind. I'll email you something in the morning." Sounds like a pl
  • 15
    Font - Well, here we are. Sorry for the delay - I had to do the work while also preparing some pretty heavy coursework for my degree. In any event, here we are. The short and sweet of it is that I got paid significantly more than the Boss thinks I'm worth and the Boss gets to keep his business. Unfortunately, the Boss decided that I should be under an NDA. So, I am. I can't really discuss much. But there are some details that I can share. There was an audit that failed due to my replacement's ab
  • 16
    Font - I did manage to get Tim to reinstate my company's email account (and therefore my Google drive). They had just changed the password, so that was easy. The account was never deleted. Tim explained that their email address system is based on a package of users. They can't go over N total users (Let's say 500), but they comfortably sit well below N users. So they just keep old email addresses unused since it doesn't cost them money. Once they need to activate a new person and then just delet
  • 17
    Font - When my replacement couldn't handle the workload, the Bossman hired a part time high school kid to help around the office with easier tasks. You know, sort incoming documents, photocopy everything two or three times and put the photocopies into the right folders, create new folders, purge ancient folders once a month, shred documents, all that boring time consuming stuff. WELL. Highschool kid thought that was a waste of time. Their filing method involved starting in cabinet 1 and putting
  • 18
    Font - And photocopies? Don't even get me started. I spent more than 20 hours contacting outside companies, customers, clients, etc to have them pleeeease send us a photocopy of the original. And the few times that an original was missing (or shredded, I would bet), of course I had to reach out to the government or whatever issuing entity was in charge of that to jump through their countless hoops on getting it re-issued. Sometimes to the tune of hundreds of dollars. Eventually I had all the doc
  • 19
    Font - Well, mostly the end. At this point I had worked for a bit over two weeks and had collected what amounts to about 18 times my weekly pay. Somewhat fair, considering that employees get fully paid health insurance and quite a few other perks. I hadn't seen Bossman once while I was there, and I was to stop working either at the end of the month or when the audit passes. Well, the audit passed before the end of the month, and the comptroller approached me to make a standardized set of procedu
  • 20
    Font - roughly 5x what I was making while I worked there, and things went surprisingly smoothly. I spent a few hours the first week creating a slideshow of what my idea was (which was basically to give them my code). The second week I billed them for 'development' and shared some screenshots of a basic function. I managed to stretch that out for quite some time, eventually writing some high-quality instructions on how to use the code, and why it works. But finally, I moved my code over to their
  • 21
    Gesture - Jentamenta. Beautiful. Masterful. Enjoy that bike, you've earned it!
  • 22
    Font - SupergOid Well, good way to get them to finally realise what you were worth... lol
  • 23
    Font - TheBritSOCO Wait until boss finishes work and ride past his car and shout thanks for the bike one day haha
  • 24
    Font - SeizureHamster Buy a nice shiny new helmet with good safety ratings to match 25 exie610 OP Reply Share TBH I'm interested in getting a full face downhill helmet, but I'm looking into the local used groups for that. They're hella expensive.

Tags

Scroll Down For The Next Article