When the choice is either working a holiday for free or staying home with your family, it’s not exactly a tough decision.

So, what would you do if your company removed the extra pay that made working holidays worth it, but then kept asking for volunteers anyway? Would you sacrifice your time to be a team player? Or would you make the obvious decision?

In the following story, one employee explains how their company did this exact thing and then were stunned no one wanted to work. Here’s what happened.

My company got rid of bonus incentive to work on holidays, is mad nobody worked on their holidays.

The company I work for does this thing where to win clients, they base all their contracts around real days and not business days. This means that we need staff on site 7 days a week and on all holidays to keep on top of turnaround times and avoid late penalties.

However, this is skilled white-collar STEM work that requires a solid foundation in biology and chemistry.

They need to offer weekends off and paid holidays at a minimum to be competitive with other employers in the industry.

Then, he received an email.

So for years, they offered a 2x OT rate for weekend hours, and if you worked on your paid holiday, you’d get full holiday pay plus 3x OT for all hours worked.

So shortly before Christmas, HR sent an email stating that, effective immediately, there would no longer be a holiday incentive.

It said, “Paid holidays are an extra benefit meant for you to have time to relax. If you choose to work any hours on a paid holiday, you forfeit the holiday hours. And as a reminder, overtime is only after 40 hours of actual work – working on your regularly scheduled day will not count.”

The company is set to lose a lot of money.

Got in this morning to find an email from my management team saying they’re “surprised and disappointed” that only two people volunteered to work on December 25th and 26th, and that nobody volunteered to work on January 1st or 2nd, despite multiple requests for volunteers.

Now, because nobody was “willing to be team players,” the company stands to lose close to a six-figure amount in penalties for missed turnaround times.

Oh well, so sad. You only get as much loyalty as you’re willing to pay for.

Yikes! Next time, they should plan better.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit feel about this situation.

This person is shocked that they didn’t make people.

Yeah, probably not.

And they didn’t even see it coming.

Here’s something similar.

Who would do this? Literally no one.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.