His Employer Changed Him From Salary to Hourly—So He Refused to Answer Work Calls After Clocking Out
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Imagine being paid salary, and you’re also expected to be on call. That means you end up dealing with multiple phone calls every single night.
Then, imagine being paid hourly. Would you still be open to being on call?
In this story, one employee was in this situation, and when he transitioned from a salary employee to an hourly employee, he refused to answer the phone after clocking out.
Let’s see how the story plays out.
Converted from salary to hourly, best decision ever.
I worked for a mid size fashion company with around 150 retail stores nationwide as a maintenance and safety coordinator.
4 months into the job my manager quit and I picked up everything and was doing fine on my own for years and I was the only person in charge of maintaining the stores and the alarm systems in all the stores.
I did get a pay bump but not a promotion in title.
He got a lot of calls at night.
I put my contact number on every store’s emergency contact list just in case the primary contacts, usually the store managers, don’t pick up their phones in case of emergencies.
And the store managers almost always refuse to pick up calls during off hours, so my phone would ring at least 2 to 3 times every night.
99% of the times are false alarm, usually caused by window break sensors getting tripped by vibration from a big truck passing by or a leaf hitting the window.
I hated it but had to do it because if no one on the emergency contact list picks up the phone, the alarm company automatically calls the police for dispatch and there are penalties for false alarms, ranging from $50 to $200 per incidence after 2 or 3 freebies, varies by location.
A new law made a big change in how OP got paid.
In 2017, Department of Labor passed a law requiring all employees making under a certain amount of $$$ to be converted to hourly so they can earn overtime.
My salary was $800 short of making the cut.
I brought it up with HR stating that an hourly schedule would actually interfere with my duties and a $800 raise in pay would make everything easier.
And HR simply said, “well, that’s too bad and we can’t do anything about it at the moment.”
OP stopped working overtime.
Well, ok.
After that conversation I put my phone on mute and stopped caring about anything outside of my 9-5.
In hindsight, life was actually so much easier and better that way and not sure why I even wanted to stay on salary.
Months go by without any serious issues, except for the penalties for false alarms starting to pile up.
But the charges didn’t go unnoticed.
One day Accounting and Operations brought me into the office asking what those costs were.
I told them what they were and Operations sent out a memo reminding all store managers that safety is of critical importance and they have to pick up calls from alarm companies.
No one bothered asking why there was a surge of these additional costs and I didn’t care enough to remind them that it was because of me.
Then, there was a big problem.
Few more months go by and one morning I woke up to almost 20 missed calls on my cell.
Apparently, one of our Florida stores was broken into the night before at around 3am. The store manager tried to get a hold of me because I was the one in charging of requesting/dispatching vendors for things like emergency board up.
After an hour of trying to get a hold of me, she eventually started calling up everybody on the hierarchy for help and I had 6 missed calls from the Senior VP of Operations alone.
Eventually the Director of Constructions was able to get a crew to board up the store but that was almost 3 hours later and everyone was royally mad.
OP knew exactly how to answer the higher up’s questions.
Unsurprisingly, the second I stepped into the office I was called into the office with all the senior management and HR and were asked why I was not there to take care of it.
And I simply replied “because I already clocked out.”
The senior VP of operations was obviously not pleased with that answer and said it was my duty and I needed to be on standby at all times to handle these situations even during off hours.
To which I stated “oh, so I should be on call then. In that case I’ll have to work with Accounting to get properly compensated for my on-call hours once we have a schedule established.”
Now, HR wants to talk.
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The room went silent. And nothing came out of the rather short meeting.
Later that afternoon, HR called me into the office again asking whether I’d like to become salaried again with a pay bump.
I said I’ll take the pay bump and but I’d rather stay hourly and walked out.
They didn’t give me the pay bump.
Good for OP! He realized how much nicer it was not being on call and decided to never look back. Well done!
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
This person offers a tip.
Exactly!
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who got the perfect revenge after being told he can’t work from home.
This person shares some advice.
Another person doesn’t understand why some employees care so much.
He was really going above and beyond. The company didn’t appreciate it at all.
He definitely handled this situation well. It sounds like he has a much better work life balance now too.
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