Factory management holds a meeting to report record profits and tell employees that they won't be paid between Christmas and New Years, doesn't go as planned: 'We didn't even feel heard. But hey, green number get bigger'

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Oct 24, 2025 7:00 PM EDT

It's easy to imagine yourself to be the hero, and for everything to go exactly the way you want it to. But, well, that's not always the case. Everything isn't going to go exactly as you pictured it, which was something this employer was about to find out. 

They sought to hold a "town hall" with the entire workforce, a sort of meeting with everyone before the start of the shift to share updates and information. They probably thought they were going to move right along with this and hoped that the workers would take the information and move on with it. 

Like a lover with cold feet who is attempting to get out of a relationship ("You're great, really!"), The employer sought to soften the bad news by sharing some good news first. First sharing that record numbers of the factory's units were being produced, and following that up with more good news that the assembly line was going to be closed during the holidays to allow workers to spend more time with their families. While this was still sinking in, they tried to slide in the fact that employees weren't actually going to be paid for this time. They would either need to use their PTO to be paid during the closure or take the time as unpaid leave.

This, of course, got the workers worked up, but when questions shifted to moving shifts around in order to equalize who was getting time off, management balked and resorted to redefining what a "weekend" was.

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  • 01

    "My work's "town hall" didn't go as expected and management didn't understand why."

    Context: I work in a factory. We build heavy industrial equipment and it takes. between 50-60 clock hours to produce a unit. We have several areas to produce these units so we average like 1.5 units a day. Units sell for about $300k/each. It's a specialized industry. The work shifts are 6am-6:30 pm and 6pm-6:30am daily (I work the overnight shift for the
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  • 02
    Factory workers gather around to look at information on a tablet
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 03
    $3/hour differential). There are 4 total shifts. Each shift works 3 days a week, then work 4 days the next week. All the shifts are offsetting so the factory can operate everyday of the week. My shifts are Sunday night through Wednesday morning and every other Saturday. My shift puts out the best quality and the most units of all the shifts.
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  • 04
    At the start of the shift, we have a town hall meeting with all the staff from the shift. We have the executives from the factory there to speak. Each of the department execs starts off by thanking us for the hard work in the last week. We produced more units last week than at any time in the factory's history (20 years). They show us graphs, they show us numbers, yadda, yadda, yadda. It's
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  • 05
    whatever to most of us. They splashed up the holiday schedule to us showing that we'd be closed for Thanksgiving. Christmas is different. We're closed from December 24th through January 2nd. Sweet! Paid week off! Oh no, no, no. Not entirely paid. They will pay for the legally required holiday pay, if you
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  • 06
    want your fully paycheck during the shutdown, you'll need to use your PTO to cover the difference. Our shift is lucky in that the holidays cover this shortage without needing to use PTO. Well, that's fucked.
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  • 07
    A worker points out something to his manager on a tablet
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    The image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 08
    We go through other stuff and they open the floor up for questions. Someone asked about changing the shifts so that our shift can stop working every other Saturday and move it to Wednesday. We're the only shift that works an entire weekend. The suggested change would make it so
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  • 09
    each shift works one weekend day. One of the execs gets on the mic and says, "that's where the difficulties are; some people disagree on what days the weekends are. Some say it's Friday and Saturday, others say Saturday and Sunday." Oh my lawd! How dense are you, my guy? It's Saturday and Sunday.
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  • 10
    That's a typical weekend. The exec got grilled a little on it but not too hard since we know not to trust anything they have to say. A little later on, the superintendent revisits the topic knowing what was given was the wrong answer. They go on to say that, "anytime there's a shift schedule adjustment, it's going to piss people off." We were sitting there thinking, 'yeah, we're the pissed off people that work full weekends.'
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  • 11
    I'm at a loss as to what to feel beyond exhausted fuming. It would've been better if they said they would consider the suggestion, look into it, anything else than what they did. We didn't even feel heard. But hey, green number get bigger.
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  • 12
    Edit: I emailed the local operators union. My state has decent union laws. Edit 2: Just for clarity, every unit we build is already sold. Last I heard, we had contacts for the next 5 years, and we can't be outsourced/relocated due to investments and geography. The company can't close the factory without global devaluation.
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