When you work for a company, you need to do your job well and try to move up if you want to become successful.

What would you do if the company offered you a promotion, but they wouldn’t give you the actual job title or other perks?

That is what happened to the young man in this story, so he kept his old job title, which happened to come with one very good benefit that he took full advantage of.

If you want the promotion, you’ll have to be willing to work without the benefits.

The entry level position at my old company is a revolving door. The pay is low, the work is unrewarding, and the expectations are unattainably high for the vast majority of the staff.

The average time in that position is 6 months.

While not fun, this does sound like a good entry-level job.

This is by design.

It’s a position that requires minimal training and there are plenty of applicants willing to work for minimum wage. It’s actually a really great entry into the field and uses all of the industry standard practices and tools.

Most people use it as a launching point for a successful career and move on to a higher paying job after half a year.

One of the cool things about the position is that they offer a great perk for paid time off. You get 1 hour of PTO for every 30 hours worked.

There are no caps on accrual or limits on usage.

That is kind of shady.

It’s a great way to attract recent college grads to the position. They feel like they’re getting a great benefit, and the company knows that they’ll be gone in 6 months anyway, so they don’t end up paying for a lot of time off.

I took the job fully expecting to be gone within a year, but I ended up thriving in the position. My bosses were impressed, and they offered me raises if I would stay with the company and increase my scope of responsibility.

Every time I started to think that my career was stagnating, they would make staying in that position worth it.

He is advancing in her position.

After a couple of years, I had learned enough that I felt confident in my ability to take on a mid-level role, so I asked for consideration. The mid-level role comes with benefits and a salary, along with a title that would look great on my resume.

The drawback was that this position has a cap of 4 days of PTO usage per year. Still, it would be a great stepping stone in my career, so I was eager to move up.

The only problem is that the mid-level position hires from a pool of candidates with an MBA, which I don’t have.

My boss told me that they would love to have me work on that team, and would give me a good raise, but I wouldn’t get the title, salary, or benefits without an MBA.

It sounds like the company is taking advantage of him.

Works for me.

I know how to write a resume and present myself in an interview, so the title is meaningless as long as I’m doing the work of that role. The pay increase would be great leverage while I search for a new job.

And I don’t need the benefits. I don’t need to be on the company’s health care plan because I get free healthcare from the VA.

I don’t need their 401k plan because my wife’s company has a better one. I don’t need their student loan repayment benefits because the GI bill paid for my degree.

Oh, he will definitely take advantage of this.

So, I took the promotion, but I kept my original title. I don’t think they realized that this means I also kept my original PTO structure, and at my new pay rate, giving me that much PTO would be kind of expensive.

After about a year in that position, I was ready to move on. I told my boss I wanted to use all of my available PTO and he said, “No problem! Enjoy your 4 days!”

I bet his boss was shocked.

“No, you don’t understand. I’m still a [entry level job title]. I’m off for the next 6 weeks.”

I actually did take a month off and had a great time. Then I started job hunting full-time and quickly got offers.

When my PTO was over, I came back to the company with my two-weeks notice.

Not likely, companies never learn.

The timing was bad for the company because they didn’t plan on spending that much on PTO that quarter.

I hope they’ve revisited their decision to tell me that I was capable of doing a job but not qualified for the benefits of that job.

He played that perfectly and took full advantage of the situation, which is exactly what he should do.

Let’s see what the people in the comments think of this fun story.

The company is clearly preying on entry-level employees.

I agree, this is horrible.

Yeah, not even a week?

Yeah, this sounds awful.

This commenter says the benefits are terrible.

This guy is getting mistreated in his role. Hopefully his new job is a lot better.

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