'Guess who woke up to 17 emails from the company?': Team leader pressures employee to work on their day off, demands employee 'write a review by the end of the day'

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    Cheezburger Image 9910694144
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    Want me to BS a review to get more business? Have fun losing money.
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    Several years have passed since this incident and the people involved have either forgotten about this or don't lurk around this subreddit. Either way, names have been changed for privacy reasons.
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    Background I was working as a contactor for a big firm where clients go to for specific services and then we are assigned to that company on a sub-contractor basis. The firm charges the clients an arm, a leg and a kidney or two while paying us a tiny tiny percentage of the sales. Business is business and I can't complain about that.
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    When it's time to renew the contract with the client (every 3 months), we are supposed to write a review about what's going on and what should be done in the next term. Now for the story.
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    I worked on that project for 2 months and I had a very good relationship with the employees and their CEO and everything was peachy until.....
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    My company wanted the client to pay double for "additional services" and wanted me to write a bogus review stating that their current situation was absolute sh*t and they should go for the "new and improved" plan. Moreover, I was supposed to do it by 7 pm (1.5 hours away and it was my day off).
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    I was in the middle of a trip with friends and I said "No can do" and hang up. It was Friday. I didn't check my emails until Monday morning. Guess who woke up to 17 emails from the company and 2 from my client?
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    I checked the client's email first and the CEO had personally emailed me asking what was going on and why was my company pressuring them to sign a new contract when the old one was still active. I didn't say anything and told him that I'll check it out and get back to him.
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    Not a minute passed before I got a call from my the team leader. TL: Why didn't you write the report on Friday? Me: On my day off? TL: You should be available whenever we want you to do something. Me: What if I was sick or in the hospital? What would you have done then?
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    TL: But you were not, and we expect you to do as we say because you are bound by employee rulebook. Me: As you may know, I'm NOT one of your employees, but a contractor. We have specific dates and times we work and you CAN'T just call me on a day off and ask me to work out of the blue. That would be against my contract with your company. By
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    the way, since the client's current contract is still active for a month, the review has to be written AFTER the contract ends. Not before. It's even written in the contract you signed off. TL: I don't care about semantics. Write a review by the end of the day. Me: I'm not going to BS the review.
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    TL: You have to do as we say or else you're fired. Malicious compliance time. He said I had to write the BS review, but didn't mention anything about the real review.... So, I wrote the real review and under that I wrote "The review Mr. asked me to write" and wrote the BS review.
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    Send it to the client and CC'd the TL, all the other contractors, the execs and anyone who had the faintest idea about the project. I wish I was there to see their faces when they received the email. Best part?
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    They tried to fire me, but couldn't due to the terms of the contract. So I had no work, but full pay for 4 months. My pc was locked, so I went to the office everyday, brushed up my resume and started sending emails all day while having free coffee/tea.
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    The client I was working for hired me the next week as a freelance consultant. So I was getting double the income (though for 4 months), and stopped going to the company all together.
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    The CEO was a powerful guy and he immediately sent an email to all the businesses he knew and no one renewed their contract, resulting a net loss of a couple million a year per company.
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    I heard one or two companies took them to court for falsifying reports, but not sure what happened to them.
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    TLDR: Company asked me to write a BS review to scare a client into paying more for the same services. It cost them dearly in the end.
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    KC-Anathema What price, integrity? With a sweet slice of schadenfreude on the side.
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    Testsubject276 I love how people in powerful positions always chalk up logical rules they don't understand as "semantics" to sound smarter than they actually are.
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    Alecthar More great evidence that the "contractor" designation needs to be vastly better defined and regulated. Too many companies are out there doing like this, where they demand the commitment and working time of an employee from a contractor, and refuse to be held to the terms of a contract.

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