Would you be willing to do extra work if you weren’t paid for the extra work? For example, what if you were asked to do the work of a supervisor or manager but made the same money as a regular employee instead of the money a supervisor or manager should make?

In today’s story, that’s pretty much the situation an employee at an airport faces. This employee works as a baggage handler but sometimes also does the work of a lead who brings in the airplanes. A lead gets paid extra, and this employee wants to get paid fairly for the extra work.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

the time the airline I worked for lost thousands because they didnt want to pay me 10.50$

So the year before covid hit the U.S I started working for one of the major airlines at my local airport as a baggage handler.

I absolutely loved the job, I just enjoyed being around planes from the ground level.

When i started, there were no full time positions available, so i was working part time 6 hour nights 5 times a week.

This person was a really hard worker!

The way it usually works is each gate has a lead (the person with extra training to do the load planning and scanning and towing the planes to the runway as well as guiding them in) and a few baggage handlers.

Now i had only been there a few months, but i was working my butt off and showing that i was a team player.

I decided i was gonna try to become a lead even though they usually want you to work a year or so as a handler first.

I was confident and ended up passing the training course with ease.

The job was going really well.

The problem was they had no availability for more leads so i was put into what was basically an on-call lead kind of thing where they could upgrade me for the day if they needed more leads.

Now whenever they upgrade you to lead even if its for a single flight they have to pay you the extra 1.75$ hr leads get for your whole shift (remember i work 6 hour days so 10.50$ is the cost to make me a lead for my shift).

Now for a few months everything was great.

I was a part time baggage handler, but i was working as a lead for my whole shift every shift and i was loving every second of it, something about towing huge planes full of people to the runway was just awesome to me.

Covid changed everything.

Enter everyone’s favorite virus good ol covid-19.

Within months the airline industry is tanking pretty hard as nobody wants to travel and get stuck somewhere.

Supervisors are being told to cut costs everywhere they can which makes sense given the circumstances.

Cue up the night of my MC.

A flight was coming in…

Its maybe 11pm and I’m on till 1am.

Supervisors have sent a large chunk of workers home and those of us left are being sent all over the airport to cover the flights we do still have coming.

I get a call from the office that assigns your flights and am told to go grab a box and a walkie (the stuff needed to plug into the plane to talk to the flight deck).

They tell me head to the gate the flights landing in 5 and to just put in my request for lead( when asked to be a lead you put it in on the company app and a supervisor approves your pay raise for the day).

They can’t afford to make this person the lead.

I get to my gate, check the load coming off the plane, brief the handlers on whats coming down. and we all get to our spots to bring the plane in.

I see the plane coming down the lane to my gate and at the same time my zones supervisor drives up to my gate and asks me to come over.

He then tells me something along the lines of “hey man we cant upgrade you to lead right now we just can swing that extra expense right now”

I respond with okay so who’s going to bring this plane is nobody else on the gate is lead trained and supervisors are not allowed to do any of our work because of the union rules.

He then tells me he is going to go find another lead to bring it in and to just assist him when he arrives.

So I’m like sure whatever.

This person refused to do the lead work without being paid for lead work.

Now its important to note that planes have very tight metrics for how long it can take to bring a flight in, unload and reload for the next flight.

The flight pulls up to the edge of my gate and comes to a stop as there’s no lead there guiding them in, so the flight just sits there waiting, and the entire gate crew are also just standing around waiting.

20 minutes go by and my radio i still have on me goes off and the office is pissed.

They want to know why the hell I’m holding this flight short and not bringing it in, to which obviously i reply with “what do you mean X supervisor told me they couldn’t afford to pay me for lead work today and that he would find someone else”

He then asks me if i can please just bring it in for him and i said “sorry but if your not willing to pay me to do the lead work then I’m only going to do the handler work I’m being paid for.”

The airline was out a lot of money from this 45 minute wait!

As it turns out they sent too many leads home this night and the ones they did have were all busy on flights already.

After about 45 minutes a lead from 2 terminals over finally strolls up and were able to unload the plane as usual, but that 45 minutes the plane sat idle at the gate cost thousands in extra fuel plus O.T for flight attendents forced into mandatory overtime from the situation, not to mention all the passengers who were pissed off from the extra wait who all were comped some credits with the airline for the trouble.

I also come to find out the supervisors bonus were based on flight turn time and this 45 minutes short hold probably cost him his bonus and a write up.

The $10.50 extra in lead pay would’ve been a much better deal for the airline than making a plane wait for 45 minutes!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

This reader approves of the malicious compliance.

This person would’ve reacted completely differently if they were the supervisor.

Here’s another story about a flight delay.

This is why it’s important to stand your ground!

An airline pilot weighs in…

Nobody should be expected to do work they’re not getting paid to do.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.