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When a company you work for gets bought out, you can be certain that things are going to change.

What would you do if the company that bought the one you worked for promised that nothing would change, but shortly after that, they retroactively cancelled paying commission on sales?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, and when he tried to push back on it, they fired him. So, he documented his sales and left, bringing the software credentials with him.

Not long after, the company called to get those credentials, and he refused to give them to them unless they paid him for the commission he already earned. They quickly cut him a check.

Unfortunately, he got fired, but at least he was able to find a way to get paid what he was owed. Read through the full story to see what you think of it.

Buy out our company and then fire everyone before you change the system? Works for me!

I had worked at a small end rural internet company for nearly 6 years.

Family-owned companies can be great to work for.

It was family owned and they paid us all really well for the work that we did. Barely anyone ever left the company.

In my position, I was head of sales and I controlled all software that was associated to clients. This had everything in it including billing addresses, service addresses and leads for new clients.

This type of thing is always scary.

It was an outdated program for sure, but it got the job done and it worked for us. Fast forward time and we are still doing our regular jobs when there was an unscheduled meeting thrown at us.

We walked in and there were several new faces sitting on the other end of the table. They announced that they had sold the company to XYZ.

Good, things seem to be working out.

XYZ seemed like an okay place to continue working, because they too were local and the team seemed nice. I was told everything is business as usual and to not do anything different.

The transition took place and every so often, someone from the new company would come to me and ask how we would do things and get a feel for it.

Or, maybe things aren’t going to work out.

I could tell they were trying to weed us out, so I went balls to the wall with renewals on old accounts. They announced to me that I needed to go to the HR department around closing time.

Having anticipated this, I saved all of my commission files and emailed them to myself.

They are going to try to get out of paying him for his sales.

I went to the office and they laid me off on the spot because they do not pay commission to their staff. I said okay and that I plan on them still paying me commission for the time I was there as they had not discussed anything pay related with me yet.

She said again we do not pay commission. I emailed my commission statement to the manager I was working with and basically was told the same thing.

He knew he held a bit of power in this situation.

Fast forward to the next week when they realized they no longer had the credentials to get into our system and they called to ask for the information.

I let them know that I would be happy to do that when I come up there to get my check for commission. I did not hear anything the next day, and then I get a call that my commission check is in the office.

This will surely help him while he is looking for a better job.

I went up there, grabbed the biggest commission check I had ever made, and gave them the credentials.

Never tell someone business as usual when you do not intent on things being business as usual.

He was put in a bad situation, but he made the best of it. Good to see that things worked out well.

Check out what the people in the comments have to say about it.

I don’t think there is anything they could do.

This is a great way to handle it.

Never fire the IT guy without a replacement.

I think this is illegal as well.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a contractor who flew along way and spent 3 days on a fix only to find a breaker that needed to be flipped.

This commenter has a great idea.

They thought they could deny him his pay, but he didn’t let that happen. He should have been filing a complaint with whatever governmental offices are active where he is as well.

It was almost certainly illegal to retroactively change his pay structure. He might have been able to sue them.