Changing an employee’s pay right before a major life event is a risky move that can quickly backfire.

What would you do if your boss suddenly switched you from salary to production pay because you could not travel for a job? Would you fight it? Or would you make the new system work to your own advantage?

In the following story, one engineer finds himself in this exact scenario and makes the boss pay for the decision, literally.

You want to change my pay from salary to production goals for 2 weeks? Fine by me.

I worked for a really small company straight out of undergrad, with about 3 employees and the owner. My degree was in engineering, but I wound up doing procurement, fabrication, welding, machining, shop management, site management, safety, etc, on top of my engineering duties.

Overworked and undervalued. I will say that it was a good experience for the rest of my career. Side note to you prospective engineers: an engineering degree is among the few where grades in college do matter and significantly affect your prospects for your first job.

I chose not to focus entirely on my studies and paid the price with this terrible job for 3 years.

Anyway, a big part of this job would be that I was out of town on a job site anywhere from 2-4 weeks a few times a year. Toward the end of my time with this company, the fact that I knew I was leaving soon (got a business graduate degree now) really empowered me to not back down on a lot of things.

While the boss understood the situation, he still wasn’t exactly trying to be fair.

Around this time, my 1st child was on the way, and sure enough, a job was scheduled near the due date. The owner, while he had a lot of shortcomings, understood when I told him I would not be going.

However, he refused to keep me on my regular salary while they were gone. There was plenty of work to be done, so it wouldn’t have been a vacation. He instead insisted he would pay me based on how many units of a certain part I produced while they were gone.

Inventory was low, and we actually did need the parts. Fine by me if that’s how you want to play it. For the 2 weeks they were gone, I only came in about 4 hours a day, 4 days a week, and busted out a ton of these parts.

Ended up costing him a substantial bit more to pay me his way, and a lot of other things that I did for the company were put on hold during those weeks. Should have paid me my salary, dude.

Wow! Didn’t see that turnaround coming!

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit have to say.

This engineering manager understands it from every angle.

This person’s boss stopped hiring top engineers.

Great thoughts.

Here’s a better way to look at it.

It worked out for him! Not only did he get to stay close to home, but that extra money probably came in handy, too.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.