'[They] asked me if I felt guilty for destroying their lives': Salesman quits and starts their own company when employer changes commission structure to avoid huge payout

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Nov 8, 2023 12:00 PM EST

Rules that aren't enforced or followed might as well not exist at all, especially when the rules aren't enacted fairly for all parties—and change at a moment's notice to favor the one making them. As they say, all's fair in love and war… and—if you're not willing to play by the rules—don't expect anyone else to either. 

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  • When this salesman started with a new company, he hit the ground running, smashing the company's weekly records and targets in his first week on the job. The stunned owners of the company hadn't imagined that signing that many contracts in one period could even be possible. They had set an aggressive commission structure on an exponential scale that resulted in a higher payout per contract the more contracts were signed and had clearly never anticipated anyone managing to sell this many. Panicking, and with the salesman's impending commission payout looming, they decided to change the commission structure immediately, cheating the salesman out of his massive payday…

    An opportunity to get even immediately presented itself. The sales manager, seeing the writing on the wall and an opportunity for themself, approached the salesman, proposing that the two strike out on their own. The pulling of this thread would unravel the entire company.

  • 01
    Posted by u/HuntingTheWumpus They screwed me out of my pay, I screwed them out of their company Many years ago I got a job with a marketing company during phone deregulation. It was the wild west and a lot of small long distance companies sprang up, all trying to get a piece of the pie. Eventually they all got bought up by the bigger fish, but at the time they were all paying hired gun marketing firms very well to score contracts for them to lock people in.
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  • 02
    I got a job with one of those marketing firms, a New Age Capitalism company that insisted we all do yoga and breathing exercises while they rang a little bell and gave us affirmations about how many contracts we were all going to sell and how much money we'd all make. The job was 100% commission, but I was always good at sales so I looked at the pay scale and noticed that it was exponential, presumably to entice people to work hard with impossible pay-
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 03
    outs. We were allowed to work as many or as few hours as we wanted, with the pay-out based on your weekly sales numbers. I decided I would give it a shot for one week to see how much I could realistically make before deciding whether I was willing to put up with the tasteless vegan snacks and mandatory voluntary yoga regime.
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 04
    For the next week, I pushed myself as hard as I could. For seven straight days, I worked 14+ hour days every single day and used every trick and technique I had learned doing sales to score as many contracts as I possibly could. I figured this would tell me my maximum possible income and could decide on that basis whether to stay.
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 05
    At the end of the week, I had blown everyone else out of the water. In fact, I had not just gotten more contracts than anyone there had ever seen in a week, I had gotten more than any of them had seen in a month. Because of the exponential scale, I realized that I was making absolutely ridiculous amounts of money, $10k+ a week. They had never expected anyone could actually hit those kinds of numbers.
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 06
    Coming in the next week, expecting a huge payday, I ended up with about 5% of what I expected. They told me there were problems with a lot of my contracts, and that I would be allowed to fix them and submit them a few at a time over the next several weeks. These "problems" were things like an apostrophe wasn't quite clear or the dash in someone's phone number was slightly crooked. They were going to screw me.
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 07
    That night I got a phone call from the company's office manager, Frank, who wanted to meet up for a drink. Curious, I agreed. Over beers, Frank told me that the owners of the company were in a panic because I would have bankrupted them. He said they spread out all my contracts on the floor of the office, then they crawled over them, inspecting each one and trying to
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 08
    figure out if I was committing some kind of fraud. When they comprehended that all my contracts were legit, they decided they had no choice but to screw me over. Frank told me he realized at that point that if they would screw me, they'd screw him too and, besides, he was tired of doing yoga. He asked me if I would be interested in going into business with him and go head to head with his bosses.
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 09
    I thought it sounded intriguing, but I asked him how he thought we could compete. Frank explained that he had found out they didn't actually have the contract for our city. They were acting as independent contractors for another company who had the contract to market the service in an entirely different city. They were poaching here, because the person who did have the contract wasn't actively using it.
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 10
    We put together a pitch and approached the guy with the real contract, Joe, and told him about the people poaching his turf. We agreed that we'd split with him; we'd take the up-front money for each contract, and he'd get the back end money down the road. It was a good deal for everyone, so Joe contacted the phone company and had them threaten the poachers with a big lawsuit if they didn't stop.
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  • 11
    A week later Frank and I strolled into the offices of our old employer. Most of the furniture (and all the yoga mats) was gone, and there was just a table, a couple of filing cabinets, and a file box with the final pay envelopes for everyone. I made a show of counting my money to make sure it was all there, and the two owners, husband and
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 12
    wife, told Frank and I bitterly that they'd had to take cash advances on their credit cards for this money, and asked me if I felt guilty for destroying their lives. I smiled and said, "nope," and left. Our marketing company made us a lot of money over the year until the company got bought up by Sprint and the gravy train ended.
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 13
    nive3066 People doing illegal things thinking they deserve sympathy for the consequences of their actions. Pathetic. 1.2k Share MononMystic Buddha I believe that is a classic narcissistic trait. 201 Share
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  • 14
    LaiDR "Mandatory voluntary" - someone speaks corporate 293 DeathWalker Lives "Voluntold" 121 Share 52 ●●● Share reverendjesus Someone speaks military Share
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 15
    luigithebeast420 I like the "nope" part. 515 Share Just_Aioli_1233 "That was my favorite part!" 8 Share
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus
  • 16
    EL_overthetransom I read this whole thing in Ray Liotta's voice, and it was glorious. 573 UsgAtlas1 RIP. 93 Share Share
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  • 17
    mildOrWILD65 Every time I read anything on reddit with the word "marketing" in it, I know somebody- probably lots of somebodies- are going to get screwed. 345 Share ●●● HuntingTheWumpus OP There's a reason why the entire staff of the anti-capitalist AdBusters magazine are ex- marketing. It's probably the sleaziest, most dishonest 271 industry in existence outside of politics. Share
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  • 18
    Quirky-Nature5291 Bastards never care about screwing people over but the second you get one over them, they wanna hit you with "don't you feel bad you're screwing me over?!" Tale as old as time. The boss screws you as long as they can with no remorse. Fuck em 33 Share
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  • 19
    mustrelax1675 In the future, stock up on some Slim Jim's in the break room 431 31 Share haroldthehampster stock them up but maybe not in the break room bc i will definitely find those bitches im like a bloodhound for hidden, secret food 1 Share
    via u/HuntingTheWumpus

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