When you take on a major new project at work, it is important to understand what type of compensation you will receive for the work.

What would you do if you were tasked with setting up and rolling out a major new system at the company where you worked, and your boss simply said that you would get extra money in your weekly paycheck, but the exact amounts weren’t discussed?

That is what happened to the guy in this story, but as the project was reaching a major milestone, he hadn’t gotten much compensation at all. So, he is thinking about taking a stand before the milestone, but isn’t sure if that would be out of line.

He does need to be careful with how he approaches this, assuming he still wants to keep looking good to his boss. That being said, he also needs to stand up for himself. Read through the full story and see what you think.

AITAH for telling my boss that I am no longer comfortable with working on this project without being paid.

I started working this job in December of last year, so about 9 months of working with them now, and things have been great!

It is great that he is enjoying the job.

I had been coming off of a couple terrible jobs that I was overworked or fired from (super toxic).

About 4 months ago, as things were doing really well, I went to my boss and said, “Hey Boss, I really enjoy working here and can see myself being here for a long time. That being said, I would like to take on some more responsibilities and roles. Is there anything that I can help with?”

You would think these two would get along well.

We are both Marines, working in a trucking industry. I (33 M) am a CDL A driver and have been driving for over 10 years, and hired on to his company.

Boss (40+ M) has been working at this company for over 9 years, his Grandmother is the owner and built it from the ground up, and he has stepped in to be the “COO” and run the business as she is in her 80s and has diminishing health.

The boss must be very smart.

Over the last year, Boss has been working on a driver management app and has built it from the ground up, incorporating over 13 programs into a seamless driver, dispatcher, and vender web based management system (the thing is stupid impressive).

Since he has been working on this, he needs to have someone in the trucks to test out the system, give feedback, and work out the kinks with it. I was that person.

He is putting in a lot of extra hours.

On top of this, he added in company tablets that would be used for this driver management app.

I was put in charge of learning the system, adding the 10 tablets, updating and setting up the tablet, and managing the MDM and tablet integration into the company with his app.

I did all this on my spare time while still driving between 40 and 70 hours a week, home 90% of the time and off most weekends.

This is no easy task.

On top of THAT, I was also tasked with creating a training video and driver pamphlets to show the drivers how to use the tablets. All on my own time and with my background of over 3 years video editing experience.

By the end, I had built up a system that was driver ready and is still in use today, 3 months later. In total my hours added up to 47 and some change.

Great, he will be compensated for the work.

When I brought this to him he agreed to pay me between $45 and $50 an hour for my work, it was above the scope of what he was expecting and he really liked the work.

Boss said that he was going to pay it out over the next few paycheck and told me not to worry about it, so I didn’t.

The rollout has gone smoothly.

As the tablets made it to the drivers, both Boss, Dispatcher, and I agreed that I would be the go to person for all the drivers to turn to when they were having difficulties.

The following month after implementation, the tablets worked great. We would have a kink here and there, but otherwise, smooth sailing.

Why didn’t they just renew the license?

Then the MDM license expired. The tablets still worked with the expired licenses, but they were essentially bricked.

No updates, no management, nothing. If the tablet ever exited kiosk mode, it was locked out. So, we left it as is and tried to figure out how to get licenses for the tablets.

It seems odd that he can’t find someone to renew these licenses.

Over a month goes by trying to get ahold of anyone to get these licenses and no one is taking my calls.

Boss has clearly placed this responsibility on my shoulders and I am running with it. After the month, and going through 3 separate companies and over 7 reps and 4 managers, I gave up on that MDM and moved to another one.

Finally, he found the right vendor.

Since Boss was bringing on 10 more devices, this time Apple iPad (so 10 Android and 10 Apple), we needing to find someone else anyways. Samsung Knox wasn’t going to work.

So, I started looking around and found a company that was eager to work with us, willing to show how to use their system and didn’t cost a rediculous amount.

He is moving forward well.

I reached out and we have had 3 meetings now and have almost pulled the trigger on these guys.

I have been talking with them for about 2 weeks now trying to get these tablets integrated into their system and finally managed to get one tablet fully integrated into their system and told them that I wanted 1 week with the tablets to make sure there system would work with our needs.

One problem after another.

During the week we experienced 1 issue and they don’t seem to understand what the issue is really, but they are working with me to fix it.

That being said, we have not been able to get the iPads added to the management system because they require an Apple Business account, which Boss has.

The boss really needs to be helping.

I have been talking to him this whole time and keeping him mostly in the loop on what’s going on, but he has been stepping back and letting me deal with it… until the iPads.

Today was pay day and I had a meeting with the MDM team to go over adding the iPads to the system, this is the 3rd time this meeting has taken place for this exact reason, and I have told Boss that I need him in these meetings because of the Apple account being needed.

This is not going to be as easy as he thought.

He has not joined any of the meetings so far. Well, today I had the meeting in the office and walked into his office when I needed the apple account.

Turns out, the apple devices are almost completely managed through Apple and require A TON of steps to add a device to the MDM, including having an Apple device with a special app installed on it.

Maybe they need to just use the other devices.

I was under the impression it was going to be a quick: Log in, add certs, verify account, and then finish all the devices in the MDM. NOPE! Fully managed inside Apple.

Well about 5 steps in, Boss is noticeably agitated and fed up, and I am starting to feel embarrassed for not having known how involved he would need to be for this.

Everyone is very frustrated.

Like the guy has enough on this plate already and trusted me to take care of this, and now I’m crouched in his office with my laptop on zoom with this lady trying to walk him through setting up an iPad on the MDM through Apple.

I was done with it, and he was done with it.

Now for the AITAH moment…

And what about that extra pay?

Since our initial meeting in early June, I had not noticed any remarkably higher pay stubs or any notations that the work with these tablets had been getting paid.

So, I went through and compared the pay check breakdown with my trip sheets to see if there was a difference in the pay.

$200

This is not what was agreed upon.

That’s it. In the 3 months since I started working on this project up until now I have received 1 pay stub that showed a short of $300 and another that showed an excess of $500.

So, $200 for the 47 hours I had put into the whole thing so far.

Never Miss a Story

Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.

Never agree to work without getting it in writing.

On top of that, I have still been working on the project… Fielding called, helping drivers, providing feedback, hunting down MDMs, countless phone calls.

All in all, it is well over 11 hours of work, since the original implementation. In total, 58 hours now.

Now might not be the best time to push back about the money.

Monday I have a meeting with the MDM to determine if we are going to buy the service or decline and seeing that I have not been paid for my work, I sent him the following message today.

“Hey Boss, I went back through my pay stubs and I don’t see where the tablet work we’ve discussed has ever been paid. I’ve also continued putting time into tablet support and the MDM transition since the original rollout.

At least he was respectful about it.

I’m happy to continue handling the tablets and working through the Hexnode transition, but I don’t want to keep accumulating additional hours while the existing work is still outstanding.

I’d like to get the hours I’ve already completed settled and confirm the hourly rate and how we’re going to track/pay this work going forward before I put additional time into the project.”

At least he seems to be planning on paying him.

His response, “I’ll have to see where you’re at pay wise. Either way, I could take it over. The pay will be on the next paycheck”

Am I out of line for telling him I’m not comfortable with working on this project any longer without seeing measurable pay from my efforts, so close to the implementation of this new MDM??

AITA?

Taking a stand when you have some leverage (finishing the project) makes sense, but it can come off as being a bad employee to certain bosses. He certainly isn’t wrong for doing it, but he needs to be careful not to upset his boss too much if he wants to keep his job.

Read through the comments below to see what other people think about it.

This commenter implies that this type of project is very difficult.

Here is someone who thinks the project is going to fail.

This commenter thinks he will need a new job soon.

Discussing pay is the first step in any arrangement like this.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a fast food employee who shuts down a customer angry about her change with a single word.

This commenter is right.

He handled this task poorly from the start, but he does deserve to get paid for it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like his boss plans on paying him what he is owed.