For some people, working in sales is a dream.

Communicating with customers, travelling around, and making commission – what could be better?

Of course, it’s an introvert’s nightmare, but there are other reasons why sales might not be all it’s made out to be too.

And as the guy in this story found out to his detriment, that commission might not look so great after a while.

Read on to find out what happened to him.

Make This Make Sense

I work in sales: we’re a smallish company making ten million in sales yearly, but we’re definitely growing every year.

There’s fewer than twenty people employed at my company.

It’s the end of the year and management has been hosting meetings and sending emails about how they’re changing a lot of the structure for how sales will be working next year.

Let’s see how these changes are affecting this employee.

For one, our CEO has been trying to cut costs and save money for the company. In an email he sent last week, he said, “You must help save the company every penny they can.”

This is all while my boss drives a G-Wagon to work and lives in the richest part of my city.

Just today, we receive another email from accounting saying that they will no longer reimburse rideshare expenses and it’s “highly encouraged” to use our own personal cars. They said they would consider reimbursing you for “adequate parking expenses”.

So basically they want me to use my car, my gas, park my car at the airport and on top of that pay for flight tickets, food, and a possible rental car at the destination because ride share is no longer reimbursed… How does that make any sense?

There’s good reason why he’s feeling frustrated about this.

I feel as the year has gone by our CEO has seemingly gotten more stingy about reimbursing employees for their travel expenses as if that isn’t a requirement in our jobs.

From the time I started working here, there’s been no written statement about employees having to pay for their own travel expenses when traveling – I just feel like the CEO is being super cheap.

While he’s sending out passive aggressive emails about how we need to make him more money but cut spending costs for the company and use our money for company travel expenses, he’s showing up to work with a brand new car and proceeding to brag about it to everyone…

I don’t know, it just comes off really entitled to me.

For this employee, the discrepancies are huge.

On top of that, does management not know how much we make in our salary?

Aside from our sales manager, regular sales reps don’t make much just on salary – we get most of the money from commission, but commission is every quarterly period.

We have rent, food, bills, and kids to factor into our monthly finances. After my salary I have a little bit to put into savings, but not enough to front a $1,000+ buisness trip up front.

We don’t have a company card, so we can’t even use credit to book everything.

And it’s leaving him feeling quite stressed and confused.

It’s my first year in sales, so I’m relatively new to this industry and traveling for work.

Is it normal for companies just to force you to front everything up front and using our personal cars and money to fund these work trips normal?

How do we afford to pay our bills and be expected to pay for all of our travel expenses when they’re cutting what we get reimbursed for?

It is clear that this employee really is getting an unfair deal from his employers.

Sure, he gets commission, but the infrequent nature of these payments really aren’t helpful when he’s being asked to pay expenses up front.

Sometimes it really feels like bosses just don’t get it.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person thought this was a clear sign that the business was not good to work for.

But others said that unfortunately, this was how many companies work.

Sure, we all know that some companies put profits first and their employees’ wellbeing last.

And that’s really not fair at all.

It feels like this guy is being really messed around by his company’s policies, and it’s putting him in a worse off financial situation as a result.

No one should lose money by going to work.

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.