Some bosses think rewriting the rules means rewriting reality.

So when one legal assistant was demoted on paper and paid per task by an incompetent boss who thrived on control, she leaned into his loopholes and tracked everything.

And the bogus contract he drafted became the very evidence that sealed her exit.

Keep reading for the full story.

Boss Tried to Be Slick Changing My Employment – Ended up Having to Pay Me More Than What He Thought

I was working as a Legal Assistant at a small law firm but started off as the receptionist.

This was a job I could get straight out of college while I gave myself some time to adjust to adulting life and getting ready to apply to graduate or law school.

From the start, there were signs this boss was a bit toxic.

He fired a coworker over her asking for a higher raise and immediately told me I was going to take over.

The law firm has eight employees and has a high turnover rate, which I didn’t realize until a couple of months ago.

There was a generational divide as well.

My boss is a stereotypical boomer and gloats about how he was in the army, how he’s a ladies’ man, even though his wife is literally our office manager.

He doesn’t train his employees, even though he forces his employees to sign a contract saying they will have to pay $2500 if they don’t complete one year.

The boss was also a harsh critic over her work.

Over the past months, he has tried to say my work is terrible.

Even though I used all of his templates and had to correct him with information I received from the court on how to do these exact family pleadings.

I have closed cases that have been with us for years in the span of one to three months.

He even makes up accusations that aren’t true.

He blames me for “being rude to clients,” even though the clients told him it was not me and was another coworker who he showed favoritism to.

He consistently asks me if I found the right man, would I be with that man after he met my girlfriend at the firm’s annual holiday party.

Luckily, her coworkers did their best to defend her when they could.

Overall, he hated anything about me, and my coworkers would often have to vouch for me because he would take out his anger on me.

She got into the habit of leaving extensive paper trails.

Because of this, I made sure to always send emails of our conversations and clarify things in order to keep track of all the shortcomings and issues.

I even had a meeting with my office manager and documented the fact that I wasn’t trained by sending a follow-up email and screenshotting an email where they made me train a new person one week after I started.

Someone please tell me if this looks like adequate training.

Then the boss stooped to an even lower level, even for him.

Three weeks ago, he changed my contract to being a nonessential employee and told my coworker, before she quit, that he lessened my hours because of my “poor work” and anything I did could be sent by mail or email.

Luckily, his lack of attention to detail would give her a bit of leverage.

He often rushes through his work and leaves a lot of loopholes in his contract, so cue malicious compliance.

The contract said that I would be a nonessential employee and, by the way he wrote it, he capped phone calls at .5 of an hour but I would get paid $15 per call, $45 for each family packet I did, and $15 per email correspondence.

So I did a couple of family pleading packets, but kept my coworkers in the loop.

Feeling bad for her, her coworkers tried to help out.

They told my boss that they were busy with other things and asked if I could make the calls.

They know I am the only one in my household working and felt the contract was terrible.

I also asked them how they would read the contract, and they interpreted it in the same way I had.

Since I was deemed nonessential and he could not be bothered to draft a letter letting me go into the office, I had to send various emails for him to print.

She started using his contract to get out of work she didn’t want to do.

When he would ask for me to place items on his desk, I referenced my contract stating I was a nonessential employee and could risk a fine or jail time.

She also drew tasks out a lot longer than they needed to be.

I ended up making so many calls, always trying to make them as long as possible by asking clients how they are and hearing them complain about what’s going on and how difficult it will be for them to make payments at this time.

The contract also created some confusion for the other employees.

When I sent my hours to my office manager, she CC’d my boss and asked to verify hours and explain.

I explained and broke it down with my contract.

But being as terrible at his job as he was, the boss was pretty much useless.

My boss couldn’t be bothered to go back to his email and asked me to forward the contract.

At that point, it took them forever to respond, and I was eagerly awaiting their response.

But when he finally did, he tried to start backtracking.

He attempts to spin it back and change the wording of my contract to say each call was only .75 and each correspondence was $1.50.

This would essentially make my paycheck less than $100, even though I had originally been paid $15 an hour and had worked 50+ hours in the past two weeks.

That’s when she finally hit her limit.

At that point, I sent my resignation and screenshots of all the times I asked how they wanted the timesheet sent, along with the governor’s stay-at-home order for “Nonessential employees.”

He attempted to change the story to say that I was an essential employee and finally offered to give me a letter.

The damage was already done, though.

But at that point, I had already sent my resignation.

After reading my email referencing the contract, lack of training, and mentioning the conversation with his wife, he conceded.

He made an agreement that I was leaving on good terms and is giving me the wages I deserve.

This sounds like a workplace no sane person would agree to work in.

What did Reddit think?

This user thinks she might just have an employment law case here.

Isn’t writing contracts a huge part of a lawyer’s job?

Sometimes jobs are so bad that the only thing left to do is just get out.

Some lawyers are surprisingly lax about the law.

The boss tried to cut her hours, but ultimately she was able to cut right through all the nonsense.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.