It can be tough out there to get paid what you’re owed….

What a concept, right?

But you hear about it all the time!

And here we go again, friends…

Check out what this Reddit user did when they had a big conflict with their employer.

Don’t tell anyone you’re leaving.

“I once wound up working for a company because it bought up small competitors (including my employer) across multiple states, and then smushed them together into one big firm with lots of clients.

Each of us had different retention bonuses to stop us from walking out. The whole thing was a **** show, so the CEO appointed a new VP to lead my division, “BigBoss” and a new “HRDirector”.

BigBoss was really interested in my specialism – he told me face to face I was doing all the right things for promotion, big things etc. But others started demanding big pay rises to stay, and BigBoss was pretty ****** off about this, because it screwed up his finance metrics.

They didn’t get off to a good start…

He gave in a couple of times, and then wrote a memo saying no pay rises were permitted outside of annual review. HRDirector told everyone they wanted honest opinions about what was wrong and how to fix them, then started sniping people who’d told the truth and blaming them for the issues.

Great start.

Big shock, I didn’t get the promotion. A couple of insiders told me he’d just bad-mouthed everyone who was up for promotion to justify not offering any. I met him and said if I wasn’t promoted maybe I wasn’t a good fit and should leave, but he disagreed. Said I was a great asset, and he’d figure something out.

My manager came back with his offer – it pushed the retention bonus further into the future, added some withheld stock perks, pay rises that would build over multiple years and BigBoss would “support” me for promotion next year.

Basically nothing now, but maybe in the future. The shrug as my manager handed it to me said everything.

BigBoss then got a surprise opportunity to make a sale personally to a client he knew and impress our CEO. We had no experience in the area, but I had a reputation as being versatile and I was available so he asked me to head up a group of four contractors and make it look like a joined-up expert team from our company.

I decided this was a dead end, and given that my retention bonus was due (although no idea when they would actually cut me a check), I agreed to take a similar job at an unexciting but stable competitor.

They had to let them know they were leaving.

I wrote BigBoss with my two weeks, it had been a pleasure working with him, and what did he want me to do. It was standard in our industry to get people off the premises ASAP, especially when joining a competitor.

So I was a bit surprised when he told me to “carry on at the client” and “don’t tell them you’re leaving”.

Truth was, he had nobody to replace me with.

Apparently he then went to HRDirector and my manager, and lost his **** when it turned out I never actually signed his new retention offer. He tried to blame a couple of people for telling me not to sign, which wasn’t true and upset them as well.

HR Director then met me for an exit interview, and as I’d heard was pretty stressed because so many people were leaving, and their remit was to retain staff. I told them everything was amazing and I loved the company but this was a huge opportunity.

Then they said that because I was quitting, I wouldn’t be getting my retention bonus or performance bonuses.

“It’s just industry standard”, they said.

Not quite…

I explained that the wording was very clear, I had met every requirement, and they said it didn’t matter because that wasn’t what the words meant, and “if you want to argue terms, get an attorney.”

Hmm.

So I stayed with the client for the next two weeks. I told the contractors I was leaving, and asked what help they wanted, but they wanted to promote themselves direct with the client so were happier if I kept out of their way.

I just met colleagues for coffee and caught up on old times, talked about my new employer, what would be their final straw and so on.

A couple of days before I was due to finish, the client lead asked me if we could help out on something. Well, I couldn’t tell them I was leaving, so I replied “Unfortunately BigBoss has said I am not permitted to discuss my future with you, so you’ll need to ask him directly.”

The client immediately knew what was happening, and was fuming that he’d kept them in the dark. Even more when they found out no replacement had been identified.

Then, as HRDirector had requested, I took an employment attorney friend out for lunch. She was laughing her *** off when she saw the contracts, said they were some of the worst worded she’d ever seen.

They were gonna get paid!

I was totally right, they owed the bonuses and HRDirector was just hoping I gave up. She helped me draft some legal docs, tacked on a bunch of additional fees she reckoned we could argue I was owed, and I sent them off.

I left the company without ever speaking to BigBoss or HRDirector again. I bumped into one of the contractors in a parking lot, and he told me the project had completely imploded.

They replaced me with another contractor a month after I left, but by that point they’d stopped working collaboratively and were competing with each other to win contracts direct with the client.

Two of them got terminated for performance issues, another quit, and the client decided not to continue using my old company so took on the only remaining specialist contractor direct.

I caught up with a former manager for coffee, and they said BigBoss became increasingly paranoid about all the people resigning, and started trying to run office loyalty tests to identify disloyal staff, which of course made even more people resign.

Allegedly the CEO was getting angry, because the financial and sales metrics were getting worse and the big target client he’d heard about had turned into a huge embarrassment.

It worked out for them in the end.

Eventually, I received a satisfactory offer from the company’s law firm. It wasn’t a big settlement, but I was so happy that I’d seen it through. My attorney friend said she knew the firm, and it had probably cost triple the amount I’d asked for in legal fees.

I wish I could have seen BigBoss’s face signing that check. I checked LinkedIn a few months later, and HRDirector had been terminated. One colleague still at the company said it was officially because there weren’t enough permanent employees to justify them staying.

BigBoss then vanished a few weeks later, his office was just emptied and nobody spoke about him again.

I still work in the same city, but haven’t seen either of them again. If I did, well, I was told to keep working, not to tell the client what was happening, and to get an attorney.

So that’s exactly what I did.”

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