‘Tripled their revenue; denied a raise’: Crumbling company pays $300,000 to customers after ambitious employees who tripled revenue quit, due to being denied a raise

Author image for Eleonora Bader
Eleonora Bader
Aug 28, 2023 8:00 PM EDT

Is there some kind of company playbook that we are all unaware of? Where the rules state, 'Never give your employees a raise, especially if they are critical to your business success'? Beats me, to be honest. All I know is that so many bosses are clearly incompetent and not fit to make decisions that will effect the company's revenue. Corporate always intervenes when it's unnecessary, sticking their nose into everyone's business, yet ironically are nowhere to be found when their help is actually required.

According to OP, 'Back when PCs were the domain of the nerds', he got hired by a company that rented out a hall, then filled it to the brim with vendors who sold everything from PCs to floppy disk holders. Remember those? Yeah, this was a while ago. OP's job was to sell as much space as possible at these events, and then fly to wherever they were taking place, and manage them.

As the story goes, OP and his coworker tripled the number of vendors buying slots, which meant that attendance went way up. In other words, they were making the company big bucks. All they wanted in return was some compensation, in the form of a raise. They approached their boss and asked for an extra $100 a month.

They got a big fat 'No' as an answer, and luckily, they were smart enough to walk away from the company and look for a workplace where their efforts would be appreciated. The aftermath of their quitting resulted in the company losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Scroll down to read what happened. Then, you can check out this head mechanic who removed all the tools from his store as 'punishment' to his employees for eating 400 bags of chips in only 3 weeks.

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  • 01
    Colorfulness - TLDR; In denying us a modest raise that would have cost them $2,400 a year, they ended up re-paying all their customers back nearly $300,000.
    via Canva
  • 02
    Font - Posted by u/Aiku 15 hours ago I and my coworker quit over being denied a $100/mo raise. The guy they hired stole >$300k from them.
    via u/Aiku
  • 03
    Font - TL:DR, Bosses deny us a $100 raise after being epic performers, have to pay >$300k bc they got scammed. Back when PCs where the domain of the nerds, I got hired by a company that rented out a hall or county fair building, and then filled it
    via u/Aiku
  • 04
    Font - full of vendors in 10'x10' 'pipe and curtain' booths, selling everything from full-blown PCs to floppy disk holders. Our job was to sell space at these events and then fly down and manage them. The company also made income by charging $5 admission.
    via u/Aiku
  • 05
    Font - Over the course of a year, my CW and I literally tripled the number of vendors buying slots, and resultantly, the the attendance also went way up. I would frequently fly home from these shows with $6k in a paper bag. (On one flight, when the flight attendant
    via u/Aiku
  • 06
    Font - asked if anyone had change for a hundred, as a joke, I pulled out the bag full of st ds of money and made change. Then got stopped by airport security when we landed, as a potential bank robber, swear this is true:)
    via u/Aiku
  • 07
    Font - Anyway, we both asked for a raise of $100/mo for our efforts. Refused outright, so we both quit and got better jobs. They hired a guy called Reggie, (Not "Reggie", Reggie was his real name, what do I
    via u/Aiku
  • 08
    Font - care :) who turned out to be a con artist. fi Reggie absconded from the show with over $6k cash in his paper bag.He also took all the pictures, pillows and lamps from the hotel that we regularly used for this event.
    via u/Aiku
  • 09
    Font - Wait; it gets better. He also took the entire customer list on paper, about the size of a decent Yellow Pages, which included all the customers' credit card info, and then he proceeded to order high- price items and have them delivered to ghost addresses in Fresno, CA.
    via u/Aiku
  • 10
    Font - In denying us a modest raise that would have cost them $2400 a year, they ended up re-paying all their customers back nearly $300,000.
    via u/Aiku
  • 11
    Font - SealingCord. 10 hr. ago You tripled their customers and they denied you a tiny raise. What idiots. 4 1.6k 1.6k Reply
    via u/SealingCord
  • 12
    Font - +3.9 hr. ago I saved 4 companies over $1 million a year. All of them refused to give me a $5000/year raise afterward. PRMan99 ✩ 724 724 Reply Share
    via u/PRMan99
  • 13
    Font - Spacefreak 9 hr. ago "Well, part of your job description is to make improvements, so that's just part of your normal job..." I was literally told that by one of my managers when i asked for a raise. 485 Reply Share
    via u/Spacefreak
  • 14
    Font - 1235813213455_1 - 8 hr. ago My teams continuous improvement goal is 500k/yr savings. We get bad reviews for not saving that much and of course nothing for doing more. 159 Reply Share
    via u/1235813213455_1
  • 15
    Font - shangheineken - 10 hr. ago What's Reggie up to nowadays? Reply Share ↑ 26 26 OldnBorin He goes by Creed now +1. 10 hr. ago 68 Reply Share
    via u/shangheineken, u/OldnBorin
  • 16
    Font - . 9 hr. ago Sounds like the company you NG worked for was following the same playbook as everyone else. Rule #1 of the playbook, NEVER FI GOVE YOUR EMPLOYEES RAISES! ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE CRITICAL TO YOUR BUSINESSES SUCCESS! RedditAdminsLick 29 Reply Share
    via u/RedditAdminsLick
  • 17
    Font - FakeAs FakeCanBe 9 hr. ago I was working in accounting for a large oil and gas company. A vendor was complaining that an invoice wasn't paid. It was for a "tank rental" which was common. The amount was $500,000. I had to walk the paperwork around to get two signatures due to the amount.
    via u/FakeAsFakeCanBe
  • 18
    Font - I was new there and I had to get the VP to sign. I asked him why tanks cost so much to rent? Well it turns out they don't and it was $5,000. "Good catch" is all I got. ↑ 47 47 ↓ Reply Share
    via u/FakeAsFakeCanBe
  • 19
    Font - AndroidREM 10 hr. ago · edited 4 hr. ago Ha! Reminds me of when I was laid off from a software company. I was the last person in the marketing department for a company doing $250million in sales/yr (my boss quit and the other person was re- assigned to tech support). I created all of the brochures, all of the direct mailers, did all of the targeted
    via u/AndroidREM
  • 20
    Font - mailing... everything. So when I was the last person on that final day to be called in to be let go (20% of staff was laid off), while many people left their meeting in tears, I was like Who the F is going to do what I do? Well, they gave my job to the newly hired Director of Sales' wife! She had been a nurse and now they made her Director of Marketing??
    via u/AndroidREM
  • 21
    Font - Only 1 week goes by and I start getting the calls. How come the mailings stopped? How do you target property managers in Northeast Ohio? How do I add a new report to the brochures? My reply - I'll come in once and answer whatever questions you have. After that it's an hourly charge (can't remember the absurd
    via u/AndroidREM
  • 22
    Font - amount I quoted, it was more a joke than a serious offer). F g du s. They ended up hiring another marketing person - who after 3 months on the job states she is 6 months pregnant and going on maternity leave!!!!
    via u/AndroidREM

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boss vendors workplace-stories nerds county-fair-building pcs admission revenue new hire coworkers customers domain raise floppy disk company quitting
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