u/Aarunascut

I used to fly for a self made billionaire. He was very tight with money most of the time (unless it was for pet projects or basketball games). At the time we only had one plane. He was out of town with it and his wife had used a chartered plane for her trip. Since I wasn’t working that day I headed to the gym early so I could beat rush hour traffic.

As I was getting in to my car the boss called. He just rattled off a list of things I needed to go buy and put in their refrigerator for his wife since she’d been gone a few days. I just said okay then called one of the guys at the hangar and gave them the order.

I want to point out that I was not above doing that. But between the boss and his wife, they had 5 assistants. 5! Fetching groceries is not in a pilots job description. But that’s the way they were. If they were paying you they felt they could ask you to do anything. We all had their security code and code to garage so that we could drop off items left on the plane or even collect things before a flight. That was no big deal. But asking as to grocery shop was a little over the line.

Sure. It happened to me once.

Monday morning we were asked to go to an impromptu staff meeting.

The old Executive Team announced that they had all resigned and they introduced a new Executive Team.

The new President informed us that they wanted to bring in their own team and we were all terminated immediately. All of our long term incentives (stock options etc) would vest immediately and we'd receive termination pay according to how long we'd been with the company (roughly one month pay per year of service).

In addition, they had offers for some of us to work for a transition period as contractors.

It was great!

I was her boss. I let her do what she was doing. She couldn't get me fired, but managed to get me out of the way. Little did she know, she was doing me a favor. She thought she won, but the illusion lasted about a week. I arranged to be transferred to another dept. I'm still earning the same money i used to, but my work load is considerably less. I have 2 days off, instead of one, I decide my schedule, I organize my tasks the way I like and if I finish everything ahead of time, I'm free to go or take and extra day off. My boss makes sure I have everything I need to be comfortable and he thanks me permanently for accepting to work with him. So I'm actually very happy with how things turned out for me.

Meanwhile, she got her hours doubled for the same pay, the new boss made her resign to a side job she had to make ends meet. Since he knew she's a troublemaker, he told her she needs to walk the line or her contract won't be renewed.

Oh! I was the one who hired her. But Karma… LOL

Chime in

I worked for a large company. My department was actually shut down and everyone give a few months notice. Before the notice was up I was offered another job as an analyst. I was well know and did and good job so they wanted to keep me on. I started doing this special project. Soon enough I realized, I could actually finish the entire day’s job in about 30 minutes. I basically hung out for the rest of the day. This lasted just over a year.

Another guy at the same company - well, he came from the floor and how he got hooked into this is the first place is beyond me. They started a learning resource centre. Which made no sense because it was a giant warehouse. What was there to learn? Either you knew how to drive your forklift or you didn’t. Anyway they build this room wit several computers, and put this guy in charge of it. Except there was never anyone there. It was a warehouse, everyone was working at their jobs.

One day I went in there to look around, Was there for a few minutes before I realize this guy is actually in his office, with was attached to this room. He was just sitting there, because he had no actual work to do other than making sure this room was running. But since there was never anyone int eh room, he never had anything to do.

Recently I interviewed for a higher paying position at the company I now work for. This would have big a huge increase in pay and status and it was a job I was very qualified for. I was told at the end of the interview how well I had done and how pleased they were with my presentation.

Two weeks later it was announced that a person was chosen for the job that had less time with the company and was much less qualified than I was. I was called to HR to have a final interview (after the appointment of the other person) for an explanation of why they didn’t hire me. Mind you, I am 70 years old and the person they chose is 30. It’s not like I didn’t know the reason I wasn’t chosen. The disrespect came when I was told that they wanted me to sit in to watch this person doing his job and they would hire me for the same position later on if more openings came up.

Naturally, I declined the offer and explained to HR that it was fine and it is their loss. I continue to do my job there but now searching outside the company for advancement.

I was working in a small group when pay rates within the group became common knowledge. The newest hire was making 50% more than all the rest of the group. Annual pay raises had been withheld for the last two years.

People were PISSED.

All of us started looking for new jobs.
One night I was working late and stopped to talk with the team leader. During that conversation I made him aware of the common knowledge, the job searches, and my view of his upcoming interview with upper management post departure.

He was pale, wide eyed, and a little frightened.

I said I didn't know what he should do about this situation. And then I left.

Within a week retroactive pay raises were given to most members. We all stayed and the unrest quietly disappeared.
With all this said, don’t threaten to leave until you are actually ready to leave. You may be right about your value as an employee, you may be wrong about it. Find out your value before opening your mouth.

Finally; if you threaten to leave, even if you get a pay raise, you may now be on someone's shit list. Life will probably not go back to what it was before the threat. And a new job search may not be at your convenience.

If you have decided to leave, leave.

She took one of my team members out for drinks with some other colleagues and didn’t invite me. I didn’t mind at all at the time because people form friendships at work and it’s fine not to always invite everyone. But I did think it was a bit odd.

It turned out that this was the beginning of an elaborate campaign to try to get my job. She tried to undermine me with my staff, my peers and my management as well as my stakeholders. She blamed me for things going wrong, lied about things I had said/not said, and tried to take my work off me. She even tried to tell my lesbian staff member that I was homophobic.

She wasn’t subtle. And because I prioritise people management and relationships at work, it got her nowhere. I got my revenge a bit later when asked to review a crucial report she had produced. I eviscerated it, quietly suggested to my manager that if she wasn’t capable of such basic work, and couldn’t write grammatically correct English, perhaps her contract shouldn’t be renewed.

She never spoke to me again, and left shortly after.

I’ve seen in multiple times. It’s fairly common in jobs that depend on weather and/or crowds.

For example, worked at an amusement park. When weather was poor or threatening fewer people were expected. The boss knew who worked hard when it was crowded and would let them stay to rack up some hours. He also knew that the hard workers would find other things to do; for example, repair some equipment or clean up areas that were hard to clean when crowded.

In another instance a manager estimated how many people were required to do a task. Two hard workers were doing half the work while the other four did the other half. Boss offered to let the two hard workers their choice - they could have half a day off or they could earn another 1/2 day’s pay. When they elected to get paid the boss sent the other four home.

Recently I interviewed for a higher paying position at the company I now work for. This would have big a huge increase in pay and status and it was a job I was very qualified for. I was told at the end of the interview how well I had done and how pleased they were with my presentation.

Two weeks later it was announced that a person was chosen for the job that had less time with the company and was much less qualified than I was. I was called to HR to have a final interview (after the appointment of the other person) for an explanation of why they didn’t hire me. Mind you, I am 70 years old and the person they chose is 30. It’s not like I didn’t know the reason I wasn’t chosen. The disrespect came when I was told that they wanted me to sit in to watch this person doing his job and they would hire me for the same position later on if more openings came up.

Naturally, I declined the offer and explained to HR that it was fine and it is their loss. I continue to do my job there but now searching outside the company for advancement.

I was working a few hours a week at a small local newspaper. I loved the job and had a lot of fun with it. But the general manager, someone who lived and worked an hour away loved to micromanage our office.

After I had worked there for about 4 years, (acting editor, doing the work but not getting the pay) the staff member who was in charge of ad sales retired. So we found a new person to take her place. Then they wanted another writer, so someone applied and got the job. All was going well so far.

I had planned to work until my 5th anniversary and then go back into retirement. In December before my 5th anniversary, I had spent the day at a school function, taking pictures and interviewing people for my follow-up story. I got back to the office to find out that I couldn’t get into my computer. The general manager had been to the office while I was “on assignment” and majorly messed things up. I couldn’t get into the email program to get articles that I set up because she had set up a different one and deleted the address that EVERYONE used to contact us. I couldn’t get into the main server to send the stories down for layout…none of that.

I finished out that day and came in the other day I was scheduled…twiddling my thumbs because I couldn’t do anything. Because it was close to Christmas, we planned a small Christmas party for the 4 local staff for the next Monday, so I went back for that, not telling anyone my plans. We had the Christmas party and exchanged our little gifts. Then I took my office key off of my keyring, laid it down on the desk and said “I won’t be coming back, I’m done.” I then told them that it wasn’t anything that THEY did, but when the general manager disabled my computer and screwed things up so I couldn’t do my work, there was no reason to drive 60 miles round trip a few times a week making $12 an hour sitting around staring at the wall.

While in college, I was hired to be the “salad girl" at a hotel, to keep the salad bar stocked. After about 2 weeks, I was offered a job in my area of education, journalism. A friend was looking for a job so I explained my situation to my boss, and he even hired my friend to replace me. The chef, who I disliked since my first day when he loudly ridiculed me for cutting celery wrong, lied when he told my friend he “fired my ass.”

Fast forward about 10 years when I was writing full time at a newspaper. The chef (who didn't remember me) came in for a delivery job but, a few days later, said it wasn't what he expected so he was quitting. I walked up to his desk and said, “I realize you don't remember me but when you leave, I will tell people I fired your ass.” Oh, yeah. He suddenly remembered me.

We happened to start giving our kids their inheritance starting at 18. My wife got most of hers at 60, both of her parents are still alive. I got one when my mom died, I was the executor, I knew her wishes so I divided it all up equally, even though I legally could have kept a lot more due to her making a mistake on her beneficiaries. Of course kids expect an inheritance. They expect the will to be fair, the parents will have some bank account money, some investments left over, a house likely paid for at time of death to be sold after they die and an executor following the will dividing the estate up evenly. That is what normal people expect. Of course they did not earn it, their dead parents did.

However parents are often lunatics. They play games, they play favorites. They give it to some rip off church or hire a rip off lawyer who drains it all. A friend of mine died young, he had two adult kids but instead he gave it to a girl he went to high school with, who in no way needed it.

Those posting here your own kids don’t deserve it are lunatics, or you should not talk about it and make your wishes clear, but it is your right to be a lunatic if you want to be one.

Many years ago I worked for a Health Insurer.

The Underwriting dept had a vacancy so appointed an experienced underwriter from another Health insurer. She started one Monday and was settling in well until she was called to her new boss’s office and given 2 days’ worth of work he needed finished by the next Monday.

She calmly handed back the work and left for the weekend.

Over the weekend she called her old boss to get her job back. As a result, she called the guy who’d tried to hijack her 1st weekend that Monday to tell him she’d quit. No comeback as UK law allows instant notice from either party in the 1st few weeks in a new post.