'I quit on the spot': Rising star earns $600 in commission on his third day at work; manager collects the cash himself then forces him to work overtime instead

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Dec 27, 2023 6:00 PM EST

Working for a new company can be nerve-racking for a number of reasons. Although there's excitement in the air over new prospects, there's also the dread of learning new skills, meeting new people, and the ever-present fear of imposter syndrome. However, if you start a new job off the right way, you could be opening doors to tons of opportunities– and as a commission-based salesman, you could score some serious dough. 

In our next story, a rising star salesman crushes his training at a new job almost immediately. Although training was meant to take several weeks, u/nalorin was determined to launch into his new role with momentum, so he started on the sales floor immediately. What his training manager failed to mention, was that he wouldn't be entitled to any of the commission that he earned until his employee portal was set up– which he took his sweet time to do. 

Scroll for the entire story of petty revenge that backfired when a new hire quit on the spot after a number of failed managerial duties. After this, here's another story of another new hire that wasn't so talented. 

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  • 01
    "Have fun filling my shoes!"
    via u/canva
  • 02
    r/pettyrevenge Posted by u/nalorin Don't do your job so I have to work loads of unplanned overtime, then you refuse my day off? Have fun filling my shoes!
    via u/nalorin
  • 03
    TL;DR: i was working several hours of unplanned overtime each week due to my boss' incompetence, and asked for a day off a week in advance. He refused to reschedule my service tickets (part of his job), so I quit on the spot. Full story:
    via u/nalorin
  • 04
    home I worked for the fastest-growing security & automation company in Canada/USA a few years ago (it starts with V and ends with int). It was a job I loved (and I regret quitting, to this day). After spending a summer as an install tech, in which I had half the service tickets of the next-best person in the office (and 90% of my tickets were the result of one incompetent coworker who frequently "helped" me), I got a
    via u/nalorin
  • 05
    permanent position as a service tech. This was a job I loved, was great at, and was reasonably fast despite providing exceptional first-time-fix rates, customer service, and upsales. Service was almost identical to being an install tech, except 90% of my work was fixing or removing systems, instead of installing them. Enter my manager; I'll call him Vinny (not his real name):
    via u/nalorin
  • 06
    Vinny had been with the company 3 or 4 years longer than me. He hired me for the permanent position, after a recommendation from my summer manager. The only problem: the new manager was a classic fulfilment of The Peter Principle (he had been promoted beyond his level of competence).
    via u/nalorin
  • 07
    My first 3 weeks were "training," and Vinny put me with my team lead (TL), who happened to be a guy I grew up with. By day 2, I had already learned all the service tech software tools that install techs didn't have access to, and was ready to be on my own. (I literally didn't learn anything new for the rest of the three weeks.) They problem was that Vinny had not set up my employee profile yet. Fair enough. I'll wait.
    via u/nalorin
  • 08
    On day 3, my TL and I went to a customer's home to remove their system. TL just wanted to rip it out and go home. I listened to the customer and it sounded like she didn't feel the system protected her the way she wanted. So I upsold her $1800 worth of equipment, which we installed immediately. That's a $600 commission! The problem: this ticket, which should have been mine, was not "mine" because my profile was not set up yet. TL took the credit and got the $600 commission and "treated" me to MC
    via u/nalorin
  • 09
    Three weeks pass, and Vinny STILL hasn't set up my employee profile. So I start hounding him. Finally, on Friday, he says he'll get it set up by the next Monday (4 weeks from hire). He calls me 2 hours later to say that it's done and I'll be on my own, taking my own tickets on Monday. GREAT NEWS! So Monday comes and I'm on my own (finally!).
    via u/nalorin
  • 10
    NEW PROBLEM: none of the software tools are working for me. I end up having to call in to the software support centre on almost EVERY TICKET! This, of course, makes me take more time to complete everything from then on. So, for 4-5 days each week, I end up working 1-4 hours of overtime, when I should've been getting home EARLY 90% of the time, based on my workload.
    via u/nalorin
  • 11
    5 months into this sh**show, my church (which was the same faith as Vinny's and TL's) holds a major regional activity for singles in my age group, with about 2 weeks notice, on a Friday. For the first week after the announcement, I'm so busy with work that I completely forget to ask to get the day of the event off. So, at lunch on Friday, a week before the event, I email Vinny to make the request (so that I wouldn't forget again).
    via u/nalorin
  • 12
    Vinny calls me at the end of day on MONDAY, saying I need to reassign or reschedule all of my tickets for that day (which is actually Vinny's job), and then I can have the day off. But there's a catch: one ticket CANNOT be rescheduled (I had visited that consumer the week before,
    via u/nalorin
  • 13
    the last ticket of the day: she had had a huge clusterf*** of problems with her system for 3 months and, with my software tools STILL not working, it would take me around 2 FULL DAYS of work to resolve all of those issues, even after the 4 hours I had already spent there).
    via u/nalorin
  • 14
    Despite it not being my job to do so, I managed to reschedule most of my tickets for the following week. But I called everyone in my office (including my TL), and nobody would take that one ticket. I called Vinny twice that week to tell him that nobody would take the ticket (I even
    via u/nalorin
  • 15
    offered to pay my co-workers $50 out of my own pocket (on top of their regular pay)). I found out that one of my co- workers had rescheduled that ticket, week is why it ended up on my plate. With each phone call, Vinny kept saying "it's your responsibility to find someone to take that ticket and you CANNOT reschedule it."
    via u/nalorin
  • 16
    So, Thursday unsuccessful night, at 8 pm, having been in finding anyone to take the ticket, I left a voicemail on Vinny's phone that I would NOT be coming into work the next morning and would, in fact, not be coming in at all. Vinny called 20 minutes later, saying he rescheduled the ticket, I could have the day off, and begged me to at least finish out the two weeks. I told him that I'd only finish out the two weeks if I could rescind my notice. He refused, so I said, "then we have nothing else
    via u/nalorin
  • 17
    6 weeks later, he got fired. (F*** him.) I heard from former co-workers that he had basically been quiet quitting: he had been building a house in another city an hour away and was basically just collecting paycheques as long as he could.
    via u/nalorin
  • 18
    And as for my TL (that got MY $600 commission): he refused to give me a reference, despite me being a phenomenal employee in spite of Vinny's bullst. (F* him, too.) I heard he quit and moved to England to go to Oxford, it didn't pan out, and he got divorced and is working some entry-level job now (hahaha), back here in Canada.
    via u/nalorin
  • 19
    To this day, I regret quitting (I have a friend who worked the same role in another office. He eventually got stationed in Hawaii, for 5 years (!), and loved every minute of it...). That job would've been a great career option for me, had Vinny not been such a selfish, incompetent a**hat.
    via u/nalorin
  • 20
    DrTeethPhD 23 hr. ago Seems like if you hadn't quit, you could have ended up with Vinny or your TL's jobs.
    via u/DrTeethPhD
  • 21
    nalorin OP 22 hr. ago Honestly, I probably would have. And, I mean, I was making pretty good money in my role, too. IIRC, it was like $25/hr (when minimum wage was less than $10), plus commission, which averaged out to $30-35/hr.
    via u/nalorin
  • 22
    I only ever had to complete my tickets for the day to get a full day's pay, so on the days that I didn't have any software-based tickets, I was done between 12 and 2. And I had only started at 9. So, if Vinny wasn't incompetent, I could've been making upwards of $60/hr, effective wage.
    via u/nalorin
  • 23
    huffuspuffus 22 hr. ago Adding this to the list of reasons I hate that company and won't be using them again once I switch over lol 50 Reply Share master_dman 22 hr. ago So now that both of the useless chaff is gone why don't you go back? Or I'm sure there are other security companies.
    via u/huffspuffus
  • 24
    benzethonium - 21 hr. ago Your personal well being is ALWAYS worth getting away from those who would poison and destroy you. 28 Reply Share nalorin OP 21 hr. ago Agreed! I just wish I had known at the time that he was gonna get canned...
    via u/nalorin
  • 25
    Furrrrbooties 21 hr. ago $600 commission for a $1800 upsell? I am in the wrong business... or was it $18000? 14 Reply Share nalorin OP 21 hr. ago Nope you read that right... it was 1/3rd commission. The security industry is HOSING its customers.
    via u/Furrrbooties
  • 26
    saturngirlie 20 hr. ago NTA. Why don't you just reapply for the job?? 5 Reply Share nalorin OP 20 hr. ago It was a long time ago now (about 10 years), and I had moved on to another city & job a couple months before I found out Vinny got canned.
    via u/saturngirlie
  • 27
    Autumnwood 11 hr. ago It makes you wonder, did your quitting start a domino effect, or if you would have stayed on and stuck it through, would those things have happened anyway and you'd be free of the bad bosses and all. No one will ever know.
    via u/Autumnwood

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