When you have two bosses who have equal authority over your work and your schedule, things can get tricky, especially if the bosses aren’t the best at communicating with each other.

That’s the situation in today’s story where an employee is overworked but also told not to work so much overtime. The bosses are not on the same page about her schedule.

Let’s see how the story plays out…

Boss “punished” me by reducing my hours, but didn’t tell the other boss

I was working remotely for a staffing agency, organizing and managing events.

When I was initially hired on it was due to the fact that 3 employees were quitting. They all seemed to be leaving amicably to pursue other ventures, so I didn’t think anything of it.

They had hired myself and 1 other person to replace them and everything was going fine.

Over time I started to notice little things here and there, like issues due to miscommunication between the owners (married couple), and a heavy workload.

She needed to take time off work.

A few months in, I was assaulted and had been injured pretty badly.

It was really difficult obviously but I worked remotely so I was still able to work.

I told my bosses I had an emergency and was injured, and needed to take time off.

Almost immediately one of the owners called and left an angry sounding voicemail.

She ended up having to work.

I called him back and ended up having to tell him I had been assaulted and went to the hospital and all that.

He seemed sympathetic, but near the end of the conversation he noted that I was supposed to be managing an event that weekend (Fri-Sun) and that they had no one else to manage it.

He didn’t do any of that but his wife did, however we always had at least 5 events we were organizing and managing at a time.

I was afraid I would get fired so I ended up having to work that weekend.

It got worse.

It wasn’t so bad but I was in an incredible amount of pain, and due to my injuries the doctor said they couldn’t prescribe me any strong pain medication due to complications that may arise.

I worked that weekend and pushed through.

Shortly after that, they fired another employee, and gave me her workload.

THEN they chose me to do a very long running (2+ months) event taking place in 2 different time zones.

She had a LOT on her plate.

They initially decided the event would be split between myself and another employee (she was pregnant, it matters for context), due to the size of the program.

So while I was dealing with the assault and healing (took 1 month for my injuries to heal), I was also doing the majority of the workload of this event.

I was also having to plan a move, put my stuff in a storage unit, and living in a longterm sublet while I looked for a place.

I was also organizing other events on top of that, so there were days where I would easily work 10+ hours.

How is she supposed to do this work without working overtime?

Eventually the employee who was helping me went on maternity leave, so the whole program landed on my shoulders.

One day I got reprimanded for working overtime.

I explained that the workload was heavy and since I was managing events in 2 time zones, I was having to wake up super early in the morning (4am), work during the day, take a long lunch, work some more, then wrap up the other event which ended in the evening (10:30-11pm).

They basically told me I needed to manage my time better.

She resorted to crying at her desk.

Well, I was not doing well mentally or physically, so my cognitive abilities weren’t the best.

I was making small (easily fixable) mistakes here and there, but nothing that was damaging or severely detrimental to the business.

There were days I would just sit there crying at my desk.

It was awful.

Another employee had also been reprimanded for working overtime, and she was as swamped as I was.

Her boss gave her a way to work fewer hours.

Eventually one of my bosses emailed me and said I was still working too much overtime, and that he wanted me to work only 5 hours on days where I wasn’t managing the big event.

I was relieved, honestly.

I was looking forward to having more time for myself so I could heal.

I made sure to email him back to confirm the non-show management days he wanted me to work 5 hours for the following week.

The other owner didn’t know she was only supposed to work 5 hours on non-event days.

Well, he didn’t tell his wife (the other owner) about my new hours, and she had a tendency to ramble about stuff during meetings, making them last way longer than they needed to be.

One day we had a meeting in the morning that lasted 3 hours, and it was the first day I was to only work 5 hours.

I didn’t even need to be in that meeting, but they forced me to stay and would get irritated if they knew myself or other employees were quietly working while listening to the meeting.

She filled the wife in on her new schedule.

After that meeting, the wife sends me messages on asking the progress of some things I was working on. She then added more things for me to do.

The back and forth with her took about 20 minutes.

I told her that I knew I wouldn’t have enough time to finish those things that day, because I only had a little over an hour and a half to complete the other tasks I had already been assigned.

She had no idea what I was talking about, so I told her that her husband had reduced my hours on non-management days, and forwarded her our email exchanges where he confirmed I was only to work 5 hours that day.

She refused to work longer than 5 hours.

She got an attitude with me and said “well, these are high priority things and we need you to work on them. You can go ahead and work longer today.”

I told her I couldn’t because I had confirmed a week prior and had made arrangements and was not able to work.

So once I hit my 5 hours, I clocked out, and put my phone on “do not disturb”, ignoring all the messages she was sending me.

Eventually, she did get fired.

She ended up having to work on all the tasks she had given me, late into the night.

I continued to follow the new schedule and they just dumped my workload onto other employees or had to do it themselves.

I eventually got fired because they said that was basically the “last straw”, but I was so relieved and also got unemployment benefits, even though they tried to fight it.

That sounds like a horrible place to work. The husband and wife owners really need to get on the same page and either hire more employees or be okay with paying a lot of overtime.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story…

Yes, this was a big red flag.

This is a good point.

This reader calls the malicious compliance “perfect.”

Another person can relate to this kind of workplace.

Getting fired is better than being overworked and underpaid.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.