Isn’t it insane when companies expect you to work overtime and don’t compensate for it?

This guy shares how he had to be on call after work and his boss refused to pay for it.

Check out the full story.

Don’t want to pay be for being on call? Ok I won’t be

Hey there,

just wanted to share my compliance with you. Its been a few years but I still am proud of it.

He explains how it works…

I worked in it in a medium sized company. We were a team of about 20 persons, with always 2 specialists for every topic. For example server / database and mine – network and firewalls.

Due to laws in our country we had a gentlemen’s agreement with our company.

As no one could be forced to be on call pretty much 24/7 every 2 weeks, but the company needing exactly that they paid us about 500€ per month, and we would be on call – but with less harsh rules (you were supposed to call back in a larger timeframe, it wasn’t expected that you could start working within a specific frame etc.).

This is where it gets tricky!

The calls were not frequent so this was okay for us. Every team was called like 2-3 times a year, so it was decent money for a psychic burden, more then for real work.

The problem: I was the new one. So I worked there for several years and my boss just left me out of the agreement.

At the beginning it was ok, because I wasn’t called and also wasn’t able to help immediately.

He was not expecting that!

But after 2 years my higher boss blatantly stated “well if there is a problem, we’ll just call him” to other colleagues and my direct boss when it came to my partner going into vacations or illness.

The first problem: As you might expect I was mad. And low and behold, the time came and they needed help from the whole department, because there was a computer problem with all systems.

The higher boss didn’t even have the nerves to call me himself, he made one of the other colleagues do it.

That’s INSANE!

I answered and it was hard to leave them hanging, but I declined, knowing everyone would have more work with less people.

The Solution : After being set into such a harsh spot, I chose to solve the problem myself. You don’t want me on call? You won’t be able to call me.

I switched my mobile number, only giving it to my direct partner, who also agreed with it being unfair, like my direct boss. He would simply lie that he didn’t have it either if he was asked.

UH OH…

Everyone knew I was mad, so they agreed with my solution. Then I turned off my home phone, which I didn’t use anyway and gave HR the number of my parents, telling them to only contact me, if there was a real problem, nothing just work related.

And then I waited. And waited.

The Crashout & Aftermath: And then my time came. Colleague was out of country on holiday. I had a nice weekend. On Monday I came in and everyone was like: everything crashed on the weekend.

He wasn’t going to give in!

Turns out the firewall as main gateway had a network interface going up and down. No one even had a login expect my colleague and me.

They had to get a specialist from the support to help them, which cost them the whole weekend to solve this, meaning critical calculations didn’t run as planned.

I was immediately called into my boss (unfortunately not the higher one again) office. He instantly promoted me to being on call, no matter the consequences.

He knew it was working for him…

Everything with HR and the bigger boss would be done afterwards, I just had to make sure I was on call when leaving the building this day. So I went ahead and gave them my number, and after that I was never even questioned about it again.

Bonus for me: Other departments always were MAD about our “free bonus money” and I was the only one who always just went ahead and told everyone I would actually give it up again, if I had my personal freedom and space back.

I actually prefer my space over the money.

Finally the icing on top!

Left some years afterwards for a 8-16 it job without being in the constant awareness that someone might call.

The money might sound great at first. But about 3000€ per year for always having your work in the back of your head just isn’t worth it for me.

Hope you enjoyed my MC

Have a good one

GEEZ! That sounds satisfying…

Why wouldn’t the company make better rules?

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This user knows it is not fair to be at work without being at work.

This user knows it is not worth the extra money!

This user thinks it is insane that the company didn’t provide an extra phone.

This user shares how they found their way around this insane policy.

This user has anxiety for extra wrok!

Only if the boss had realized his mistake, things wouldn’t have gone this far.

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