Have you ever worked for a company where you had too much to do in too little time but your manager refused to pay overtime? Would you work overtime anyway to get the job done even though you weren’t getting paid for it, or would you refuse to work overtime for free?

In this story, one employee is in this exact situation, but that’s just one of the problems he has with this particular company.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

You want me to do your job, off the clock, and expect me to be thankful?

When I was working at a big blue store, as the assistant manager of the home theatre dept, the dept manager would make me write all of the schedules for the dept, and write up the business plan for his weekly meetings, which were both supposed to be his responsibility.

The problem was that he also required me to be selling on the floor for 40 hours a week, and wouldn’t authorize overtime.

I got written up for saying “no…isn’t that your job?” when he asked me to write the schedule and business plans off the clock.

He went so far as to tell me that he wanted me to be a manager, but the only way they could promote me up to that spot would be for me to “show initiative” and to “prove to them that I want it.”

It’s not like he wasn’t qualified.

Keep in mind that I trained the entire dept, and most of the district managers, on product knowledge, as I had been working for a few years at a crimson competitor that actually trained their sales people.

I complained to the store manager, who said that I should do as asked, if I wanted to keep my career on track.

When I graduated from college and moved to a bigger city an hour away, they refused to transfer me to a store that was a couple of blocks from my new house, but they refused.

The store manager said he didn’t want to lose me to a store that they were in competition with.

Enough was enough.

I ended up telling them I had a college degree and didn’t need their nonsense, and got an IT job.

The manager showed up at my door a couple of weeks later, at 12:30am (I had to work at 6am, and my stupid freaking roommate let him in, he thought it was funny) and proceeded to walk into my room and drunkenly SCREAM at me until I threw a bottle at him and threatened to call the cops.

I ended up going back to the Crimson Competition part time, as I had felt bad about leaving the company (the blue store was much closer to my college) for the competition. I worked there until the company went belly up (a result of them hiring the ousted CEO of best nonsense).

I stayed with them because the store management was awesome to the employees, and went out of the way to make sure we were treated like people, instead of peons.

Here’s how it all played out…

Corp did eliminate my sales lead job, but they were able to throw me into the flaming canine tech support dept, where I would actively undercut the nerd brigade from the other company, or, even worse, tell the real bad customers that we couldn’t deal with their virus infected pc, but the nerd brigade across the street would love to help.

When the company got liquidated, I actually paid the guys that were waving the “store closing” signs on the road to go across the street and point to Big Blue.

Now I have a good career and a great life, due in no small part to me telling the manager to back off and deciding to try a different career direction.

I’m glad he got out of that job and ended up moving on to bigger and better things. Nobody should be expected to work overtime without getting paid, and it can be really frustrating to work for a company where your hard work is not appreciated.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person points out two things about the manager.

Someone who worked at the same store shares their perspective.

This person has a question.

Here’s some praise for not being a doormat.

Nobody should be expected to work overtime without getting paid.

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