Imagine working as a contractor for a company, and you get paid overtime. If business travel is involved, you’d be right to imagine that those overtime hours would quickly add up!

Would you ever want to be hired by this company, or would you prefer to stay a contractor and continue to rack up the overtime hours?

In this story, one contractor works a lot of overtime, and he doesn’t seem to mind. He seems to appreciate how much money he can make by not being an actual employee on salary.

One time, the company tells him not to work overtime, but they quickly realize that if they refuse to let him work more than 40 hours, the work will never get done in time.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

You want me to stick to 40 hours a week with absolutely NO OVERTIME? Are you sure???

I work for a major Silicon Valley tech corporation. They are big. You have heard of them, and you probably have some of their hardware in your computer right now.

I am involved in creative marketing. We support the top level officers in the company and I have been on the road many times developing presentation materials for people that you have heard of.

I have been working there three years, but they have not converted me from contract into a full-time employee.

Which means that he gets paid overtime.

In that time, the stock has soared and I could have made quite a bit of money but they refused to bring me on board because they said “you are already here and we are focusing man-power dollars on people who are not in the door yet“.

They passed me over several times so that they could bring in people from the outside.

No worries, I understand, I can remain hourly as long as they want. Add my rate, I bring in a decent amount of money and I bring in an absurd amount of money when overtime is involved.

And overtime is involved often, as these large events require an incredible amount of work and I am the only guy here that does what I do.

He really can make a lot of money in a week!

Now for the story…

In the past, when we have large events, I have worked upwards of 80 hours per week. That’s a lot of extra money.

In fact, when they put me on the road, they need to pay me my hourly rate plus overtime for travel time, so a 12 hour flight is eight hours of pay and four hours of overtime. Just to sit on the plane.

Naturally, the higher-ups (VP level and execs) in the company had a heart attack after a couple of these events went by and I raked in upwards of $10,000 in one week.

They brought this on themselves.

Totally understandable, but they could have avoided all this if they just hired me. Oh well.

They came down hard on the two or three people that are above me in the hierarchy. N

Naturally, they freaked out as well.

I was told, for our most recent show, I was not to work more than 40 hours a week. No exceptions. No overtime, and no budgetary overruns.

Being told not to work overtime can actually be a blessing.

I replied “no problem, I will do as much of the work as I can in my 40 hours.” I even said it with an honest smile. And I worked my butt off 40 hours every week. No more, no less.

The four weeks leading up to the show were insane for everyone but me.

All of my salaried coworkers were spending vast amounts of overtime and not getting paid for it. Nights and weekends were the standard, and I just went home every day at 5 o’clock and told them that I wish I could help.

Our immediate team totally understood, and they thought it was great the way I was handling everything. We have a pretty good team for the most part.

But the work wasn’t going to get done in time unless OP worked overtime.

In the last week before the show, I was told that I needed to complete a pretty large amount of work.

I told them that this amount of work is unachievable in 40 hours, and they had a choice to either bring someone else in to help me or pay me for the hours I would need to spend to complete it. I don’t work for free.

Because the department is so poorly run, many contractors have decided to no longer work with us. It was damn near impossible for them to find anyone to come in and help me. So it really came down to this; my bosses could please the top level management by allowing me to get the work done, or explain to them why they could not deliver.

I think you can see where this is going.

I can’t even imagine working this many hours in one week.

I worked 119 hours that week.

That was 40 hours of regular, 40 hours of overtime, and 39 hours of double overtime. That came to a grand total of somewhere around $17,000 for one week of work (before taxes).

It was glorious, but it also was extremely exhausting.

Although, I must admit, cramming all that work into one week was much better than spreading it out and sweating for a full month.

It seemed like nobody got in trouble for that week of extra work.

At the end of the show, I was praised personally by the CEO for all the great work that I did.

They are still freakish about overtime, but they realize that they need to either hire me or continue to pay my overtime rates.

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Personally, I don’t care which one they choose. Stock is worthless to me at the price it is at right now.

He would not be willing to take a pay cut if he’s hired.

I have since told them that, if they bring me on board as a salaried employee, I will demand $180,000 a year.

They said “that’s outrageous, why would we ever pay you that much!“

“You have been paying me that much for three years now. That’s my price. If you’d like to talk, I sit right over there.”

Im still hourly, but in sitting on a beach in Belize sipping some awesome rum and smoking a Cuban cigar as I write this.

It’s funny how management doesn’t seem to be doing the math. They have no clue how much money they’re wasting by not hiring him. Although, I assume as a contractor, they’re not paying for benefits like health insurance and vacation time, so maybe the company actually is better off not hiring him. Either way, good for him!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person shares their favorite part.

Another person thinks his salary request is reasonable.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post this story about a woman who reports her manager after they had zero compassion for a family tragedy.

This person rants about management.

Another person did some math.

You get what you pay for, and in this case, it sounds like this guy’s work is worth every penny. He’s a hard worker, and he’s willing to put in the hours to get the job done as long as he’s paid fairly. Honestly, I think his desired salary request is low. If they’re going to hire him, he should get a raise, not just make what he’s making now.