Imagine working as an independent contractor for a company who has you do work for various vendors. The vendors are responsible for paying you, but who is responsible if the vendor doesn’t pay you?

In this story, one person’s ex-coworker invited a bunch of people over for a BBQ including the boss that the ex-coworker used to work for. During the BBQ, the ex-coworker mentioned that she never got paid for a project she worked on for a vendor, and the boss’s reaction was quite rude. She took zero responsibility.

Now, the person who wrote the story is wondering if she went too far by confronting her boss about the situation and her belief that it is the boss’s responsibility to make sure the employees get paid.

Keep reading for the whole story.

AITAH for challenging by boss about her “disparaging” comment about contractors.

We were invited to a barbeque by an ex-co-worker who left the company I work for 3 months ago and we were all having a good time until the ex-co-worker mentioned that she still hasn’t been paid for her last month of work before she left.

Most of the attendees of the cookout myself included are contractors who work for the company through “trusted” vendors, hence my boss’s answer to the ex-colleague was that it’s not her problem since the company already paid the vendor and it’s the vendor who is responsible for this.

I gave my opinion saying that the company is also responsible for this since the person was working for them and they have to hold the vendor accountable if they don’t take care of their employees.

Her boss seems pretty rude and uncaring.

From here the conversation went downhills and my boss was so offended and the conversation continued like this.

Boss: The reason I work for contractors is to not worry about things like this and I don’t even have to worry about firing people or anything of that matter, I just write an email to the vendor saying due to budget cuts release employee X and that it.

Myself: If you don’t hold the vendors accountable for abusing employees, you will lose top talent.

Boss: Contractors come and go all the time and I don’t care about losing talent and you are free to leave anytime, and she mentioned that I am entitled and self-important or something to that nature.

Neither one of them backed down.

Myself: I don’t think it’s an entitlement for me to ask that an ex-employee get paid for the work that she has done.

Boss: Since you don’t have any visa restrictions or what-so-ever why don’t you leave and work somewhere else that makes you happy

All this happened in front of all our co-workers who are contractors and have visa dependencies and they were all in disbelief that I talked back to my boss and asked me to keep quiet.

I might have come as arrogant but it’s just who I am and I can’t stand people abusing their power just because my paycheck comes from them.

She thinks she might get fired if she doesn’t quit first.

This happened a week after I was offered a full-time job with the company but I plan to quit my job after this incident or I might also get fired on Monday(who knows, as she said she just needs to send an email to the vendor to release me due to budget cut).

I plan to bring this to someone’s attention before I leave and I need to hear your verdict and advice on how to handle this.

Her boss sounds awful. Everyone there should look for another job. She doesn’t care if her employees quit, so quit.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who got promoted, then realized they set her replacement up to fail.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person thinks this was not the time or the place for this discussion.

Another person thinks she shouldn’t be fired for discussing work at a non-work event.

This person thinks getting paid is a reasonable request.

But this person calls OP an arrogant know-it-all.

I had to reread the first line of the story just to verify, but I have a theory. The first line reads, “We were invited to a barbeque by an ex-co-worker.” That means the ex-coworker is the one hosting the BBQ. My theory is that the co-worker threw the BBQ and invited ex-coworkers and their boss on purpose to have this conversation with all of them present. OP took the reigns, but maybe the ex-coworker knows OP well enough that she knew that would happen.

It seems odd to me to throw a BBQ and invite a bunch of people you don’t work with anymore. I’m sure it was intentional that the ex-coworker brought up not getting paid. It was probably all a master plan to try to get paid.

The plan didn’t seem to work, but I don’t blame her for trying, assuming my theory is correct.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a hotel guest who complained about noise from an event, then reported the employee who agreed with him.