Knowing when to jump off a sinking ship is a vital skill in the workplace.

How would you handle your toxic job messing with your payroll? One person recently shared a wild story about this on Reddit. Here’s what went down.

was told to ‘de-couple income from work’ when checks have been late

I work for a startup where I basically wear 5 hats and am expected to do a lot of things.

Pay is meh, but we’re surviving.

However, recently our leadership has been engaged in some weird game of roulette with our pay cycles.

That’s never a good sign.

One month I got one check, next month two, then last month one check, and then current check was late for this month.

It was explained as a ‘glitch’, and then a ‘change in pay schedule’, that was not announced to the rest of the company.

One of the founders called me and was kind of nonchalant about it, even giggled a few times.

Not a good look, dude.

“My bad, don’t worry if you don’t see a pay run on time it’s just a glitch”.

My coworker in a similar role told me he got the same call.

I told the guy I was pretty unhappy because they have me doing all of this stuff that would normally be like 3 separate people, and then can’t pay me on a steady schedule, want me to travel, etc.

Getting paid on time sounds like the bare minimum here.

I basically live life on the edge financially like a lot of Americans, struggling to save even $100 a month, while at the same time they flip-flop on objectives and requirements and work and I’m pretty sure everyone is AI-slopping each other.

Anyways, after I told him I was struggling with work load and just financially in general, and they made it worse, he literally told me “you have to de-couple the work from income”.

I was unsure of the meaning so I teased it out of him, and he literally meant I shouldn’t worry about money so much and just focus on the work.

What kind of advice is that?

I learned later this dude is from extreme wealthy and has probably never had to make the ‘do I eat or do I pay rent’ decision ever in his life.

Anyways. What else is new I guess.

This kind of nonsense really is a tale as old as time at these types of places. Let’s see if the good folks of Reddit could offer any consolation.

The comments section emphasized the red flags immediately.

One person forced him to face the music.

Another called out the boss’s insanity.

Someone else kept it short and simple.

But someone else raised an interesting point.

You always have to be one step ahead of people like this to survive.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a carpenter who was shocked to find the police waiting for him after his last day of work.