Imagine working at a company where you are really good at your job. You’re so good that you get promoted and are given more and more responsibilities. Would you be willing to take on all these extra tasks without a raise or overtime pay?

In this story, one employee was in this situation and was willing to do just that. However, everything changed when their boss pushed them from working from home to having to commute to the office.

Keep reading for all the details.

OK I’ll do what you say and not work 80 hours a week…

So this happened in 2017 almost a year after I started a new job.

To give some background where I had previously worked, I was mostly responsible for managing the costs of projects within a construction programme which, long story short was refurbishing a major banks branch buildings.

I had worked on this programme for almost 10 years and so when a competitor won the new programme contract I was headhunted by them for my expertise with that particular client.

The pay increase was significant and as part of the job offer I was told that due to the “local” office being more than 1 hour commute away that I would have the option to work from home when I was not required for meetings etc.

Things eventually changed again.

So this move happened in July 2017 and the first 6 months were uneventful. Carried on doing the role I had been doing for almost a decade.

Come January 2018 I was given a promotion so that I was now not only responsible for individual projects, but for managing the whole programme with a team of 5 people.

Let’s just say that this team of 5 were…. undertrained by the previous management.

This team was also based out of different locations to ensure national coverage meaning that the majority of my interactions with my team was over Skype/phone and if I wanted to spend face to face time with them I had to travel somewhere between 2 and 3 hours one way, but I tried to be efficient with my time and used it by travelling by train and continuing to work on my laptop (this will be important later).

Being a hard worker is fine, but don’t count on the company rewarding you for it.

But happy to be moving further up the ladder, I decided not to make too much of a deal out of the fact I would not be getting a payrise with this change in roles with my logic being; “I’ll let my results speak for themselves, then they’ll have to recognise what I’ve done for them”.

Over the next couple of months doing 70 – 80 hour weeks (my contract stated I was required to complete 40 but I didn’t mind the extra time as I again wanted to show them they’d made the right choice giving me the promotion) and with plenty of time spent training up the team further we were finally getting somewhere and after a particular successful presentation to the client (for which I was actually given a performance bonus for) everything started to go downhill.

The meeting I mentioned took place on a Friday and the following week my Manager, let’s call her Allison, was due to be on holiday for a week. Whilst she was off she had asked that IF her boss contacted me could I drop everything and assist with his request.

I said I would and went home for the weekend.

This request didn’t seem odd.

The following week I never heard from her boss.

Cue Monday morning of the following week. I was working from home that day and booted up my laptop and almost instantly got a Skype message from Allison requesting that I have a meeting with her at her office (approximately 2 hours away from where I live) the next day.

I thought nothing of it as I spent at least one a week at that office with a member of my team (as mentioned above).

When I got to the office the next day I was expecting the meeting to be a quick catchup of anything that had happened whilst she was on holiday (she wasn’t a very involved manager so the fact she didn’t need to know on her first day back didn’t surprise me).

Allison was furious.

However what proceeded was an absolute mess. She started screaming at me for “not doing anything” whilst she was on holiday. And that I had purposefully been negligent by not doing as she had asked, by not helping her boss.

I explained that he had never been in touch with me and so had thought the required work was delayed (again not uncommon).

She again said I was negligent and should have contacted him if I hadn’t heard anything.

When I explained I was extremely busy with an unexpected issue that had come up, she told me that I should have done what she asked me to and left it to one of my team to handle.

Time to comply.

To avoid any further arguing I said it would not happen again, however internally this was the beginning of my compliance.

Over the next few months I continued my working hours however would always prioritise her requested (some so mundane she really could have just done them herself in 15 minutes) and if issues came up whilst I was working on these told my team that unfortunately they would have to redirect the issue to my boss so she could prioritise my workload.

She did not like this, as I “should have done this myself”.

To take revenge on my petty compliance, she decided that my usual work pattern of 3 days a week working from home (where I would generally work at least 14hours) and 2 days working from offices based 2 or 3 hours away (I would leave at 6am and generally would not be home until 8pm) was no longer agreeable.

Allison was no longer okay with OP working from home.

The conversation went like this;

A – You need to work in the office everyday. The current agreement no longer works as it is causing delays in communication (it wasn’t)

Me – But my local office is more than 1 hour away

A – Well we’ll have to relocate you to a closer office

Allison was insistant.

Me – There isn’t a closer office, that is my local office and because of traffic it can sometimes take me 2 hours to travel one way (this had sometime happened when there was a train strike / road closure etc.)

A – Well you have to work in your local office then

Me – If you want me in the office, I won’t be doing any overtime, the only reason I’m happy working the hours I am is because I’m at home

A – I don’t care I want you working in the office

Me – OK, no problem

Here’s how OP handled work from then on…

Fast forward another 2 months and I’m doing exactly what was agreed, working my hours.

When travelling I do not open up my laptop (as this was outside office hours). I don’t look at emails received after I leave for the day and for me I’m enjoying having my evenings back

(Allison did not enjoy this as it meant late requests were completely ignored and usually ended up being late – there was one occasion where she emailed me 1 minute late requesting some information she needed for an important breakfast meeting she had the next day, but because of when she asked I wasn’t able to get this to her until an hour after her meeting started – I took particular joy in pointing out to her when she sent me the email and our previous agreement)

Time to move on.

But due to my treatment I had been receiving I decide to being looking for new employment.

Then came the day to hand in my notice.

She had the biggest smile when I gave it to her, I knew the whole thing was just a way of getting me out, however something she didn’t understand was how far removed she was from my day to day tasks.

So when I had a programme handover meeting with her a couple of days before I left (I finished 2 weeks early as I had holiday days that needed to be taken before my final day). I can’t remember the whole meeting however the below is a great example of how the meeting went.

Allison was about to find out just how many responsibilities OP had.

A – So who does ABC?

Me – I do that

A – OK. And who does XYZ?

Me – I do that as well

A – Oh that’s you as well….. And who does 123?

Me – Yeah that’s me

A – Wait you do that? How do you have time to do that?

Allison was clearly getting worried.

Me – That used to be one of things I did in the evening so no one could interrupt me. It doesn’t take too long, may 2 hours a day.

A – OK but who does 789 when you have to do ABC?

Me – Oh when that happens I used to start work early, finish ABC and then do 789

Please bare in mind that during this meeting she was becoming paler with every one of this backandforth’s to the point where I thought she was going to pass out. The look on her face as I left her with the giant mess to look after was almost the best thing I have personally felt.

It didn’t end well for Allison.

But the best thing is I have recently been in touch with a previous colleague where we discussed Allison and how things were going.

Turns out that after I left the entire programme came to a grinding halt.

Due to the fact that Allison had almost no experience with the client or their requirements it turns out that minor issues were becoming huge problems with the resolution taking way to long. This and the fact that Allison hadn’t trained up my replacement properly (found out he started a week after I left) the entire programme came to a complete stop, and that because of all the things that had gone wrong she was responsible for, she was sacked about 6 months after I left.

Still brings a smile to my face.

OP never should’ve worked such long hours without getting paid for it. I’m glad they eventually found a different job. Allison clearly didn’t understand the consequences of trying to push this employee to the point that they wanted to quit.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

A manager weighs in.

Too many people make this mistake.

Another person points out all the problems with working so hard.

This person knows a few people who have the same work ethic.

Overworking yourself isn’t benefiting anyone.

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.