It’s funny how fast people change their tune when they realize they’ve been underpaying you.

So, what would you do if you volunteered your time for years, but when you finally sent an invoice, your team accused you of fudging your hours?

Would you walk away?

Or would you start billing them for everything down to the last cent?

In the following story, one volunteer-turned-employee deals with this exact scenario.

Here’s what happened.

You think I’m fudging my hours? You’re right. Here’s my real hours…

I started working for a non-profit in 2019 after volunteering there since 2000.

The position was supposed to be temporary for three months or so, but the non-profit dragged its feet in hiring a permanent replacement.

I’m fairly well off (not filthy rich, but debt-free and comfortable) and didn’t need the money, so I never billed for my hours after working 15 months full-time.

It was supposed to be $25/hr (CAD currency), but I was willing to work for free if they just found a replacement in a reasonable time.

They were pressuring me for an invoice, so I finally invoiced them for 40 hours/week for 15 months, which was about $60k.

Then, they started questioning him.

They were livid for a variety of reasons I didn’t understand.

They accused me of lying about my hours because I was a new father and my wife had gone back to work after maternity leave, and there’s no way I could’ve worked that much.

When I told them I had my son in daycare instead of staying at home with him, they sarcastically said, “Now you know what it’s like to work an actual job like the rest of us.”

They were mad that I wasn’t volunteering my time anymore like I used to, but I insisted I was and that my billed time was only for the TV bingo fundraiser and not for any other non-profit activities.

When they wouldn’t listen, he started charging more.

They didn’t believe me. I tried to tell them my hours were actually more than I billed for, and my hourly rate was greatly reduced compared to what I normally charged for all the work I was doing (IT, e-commerce, Web design, marketing, HR, operations, bookkeeping, TV production, etc.), but they said they didn’t care about the rate reduction.

They insisted that I charge my normal rates for my actual hours, and then deduct 10 hours a week for volunteering, which is about ten times more hours than any of them volunteer for.

Ok, bet.

Depending on the task, I started charging them $40 to $125 per hour.

I recorded all my tasks and hours in great detail. I charged for any time I spent doing what was normally volunteer work for the non-profit.

Here’s where he came up with a plan.

Then, I finally deducted 10 hours a week. After the volunteer hours were deducted, I was billing an average of 50 hours a week.

I also took the opportunity to start hiring more people under me on their dime so I could work way less than I did in the first 15 months, but still get paid the same, if not more.

They couldn’t say anything because it was exactly what they asked for.

I was billing $1k/week before malicious compliance, and then about $3k/week after malicious compliance, which I started trimming back down closer to $1k/week after cutting my own hours.

After years of abuse by the non-profit, he walked away.

These guys kept doubling down and accusing me of incompetence and fraud over the next year and a half that I continued working, but I didn’t care anymore.

They turned my passion into a crappy job that I didn’t need, so I stayed until all my amazing employees were hopefully set up for success and wrote that non-profit out of my life for good.

I didn’t feel any guilt over being paid for my time with them because I had raised more money for them in 30 months ($30 million gross, about $20 million net) than they had raised in the 100 years before then.

Wow! No one likes being accused of things like that.

Let’s see how the fine folks over at Reddit feel about it.

This person can definitely relate.

Here’s someone who wants some advice.

According to this person, they’ve been in similar situations.

This makes a lot of sense.

He should’ve been billing them.

Not that the non-profit is in the right, but the $60k bill probably came with some sticker shock.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.