Imagine working for a company where you’re overworked and underpaid, but management claims you’re redundant and have zero chance of getting a raise. Would you buckle down and work hard or cash in some of your vacation time?

In this story, one employee is in this situation and decides to choose the second option at a moment when the bosses will really realize how important this employee truly is to the company.

Let’s read all about it.

No support? No money for you!

I work for a manufacturing company that routinely has orders in excess of $50,000 for a single batch of product.

Big customers will bring in millions per year, and the presence of multiple competitors allows customers to be very choosy in where they place their orders.

The employees are overworked and underpaid.

My department has always been understaffed, and we’ve recently been asked to take in additional responsibilities in customer support.

Long story short, one of us 4 members will become responsible for investigating possible causes of specific concerns/complaints for large customers at a moment’s notice, despite already being overworked.

Any complaints about our workload have been ignored, as well as professional demands to be paid national standards for our work (the company sets their pay bands to 15% below national average for any non-management/executive group).

I’ve been told to my face “your position is redundant already” as a reasoning to deny any kind of raise in the past.

OP had enough.

Four weeks ago I was assigned a rather belligerent yet massive customer, and hit my breaking point during their beyond-rude first meeting where I was left out to dry by all accounts reps and customer support personnel.

After being denied additional support for my tasks, I decided to clap back.

The one good thing of my company is that they rolled over a large amount of PTO from lockdowns to present, and I had over 200 hours in my balance.

PTO is almost never ever rejected, as the company says “it’s your time, do with it what you want” in their official policy.

The client is not happy.

After a week of work, I put in three weeks PTO with the blanket statement “I will be unavailable for any work-related activities during this time.”

Apparently, the customer was NOT HAPPY that first Monday that I wasn’t present to answer questions, and that no one else knew anything about the project.

My boss’s boss has called several times to try and negotiate an earlier return, which I’ve ignored each time.

OP definitely proved a point.

I just got an angry email from said boss stating that the customer is going to leave for our top competitor, losing the company about $3 million in annual sales.

All I can think is: “Guess I wasn’t so redundant, now was I?”

I’m debating taking another week off just to see what happens.

Management needs to wake up and realize the employees are the exact opposite of redundant. Hopefully OP’s work will be appreciated more after this, but I doubt it.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This person would update the e-mail auto reply.

Another person has a suggestion.

But this person would save the line until the perfect moment.

It might be time to move on.

If you underpay your employees, don’t expect them to stay.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a carpenter who was shocked to find the police waiting for him after his last day of work.