u/oddment-ripoff

This actually happened to me a while ago, but I've been thinking about it a lot recently and finally decided to write it down.

I had been working at this place for about 14 months. At one point, our assistant manager suddenly disappeared and stopped showing up, so I ended up taking on a huge part of his workload.

My manager started training me for the position, and I was regularly working 32 to 38 hours a week. I honestly thought the promotion was basically a matter of time.

Then someone complained that the position hadn't been officially posted, so they had to go through the whole interview process.

They rejected me.

Instead, they hired a woman from another county who hadn't even finished transferring over yet.

And then they asked me to train her.

I refused.

I told them that if she was qualified enough to get the position over me because she supposedly understood supply logistics better than I did, then she could figure out how to do the job herself.

A few days later, I found out they'd started her at $24 an hour.

I was making $16.

I tried to let it go and just focus on my work, but after that my hours started disappearing. I went from regularly working 32–38 hours a week to getting scheduled for around 12.

They started giving my old shifts to another coworker who wasn't even in management.

I can't prove it, but I always felt like I was being punished for refusing to train the person they had chosen over me.

The thing that finally broke me happened during a particularly busy period.

We were completely buried in orders. I was still doing a lot of the work I'd been doing when I was getting almost full-time hours, including catching supply mistakes and making sure orders were actually going out correctly.

At the same time, I had already been asked to give up some personal time because they were short-staffed.

Then I found out that my manager had managed to arrange an extended break for herself while everyone else was expected to cover the gaps.

Something just snapped in me.

I remember standing there looking at everything going on around me and realizing that I was still putting in all this effort for $16 an hour after they'd already made it very clear that they didn't value me enough to promote me.

So I took off my lanyard and hat, put them on the counter, and said, "I'm done."

Then I walked out in the middle of my shift.

I didn't have some dramatic plan. I wasn't trying to make a statement. I was just completely finished.

And honestly, the feeling I had when I walked out was incredible.

I was terrified afterward, obviously. I wondered if I'd just screwed myself over and made an impulsive decision.

But looking back now, I'm glad I did it.

The department didn't collapse without me. The company didn't suddenly realize they couldn't function without me. They just had to figure things out without the person who had been quietly fixing everything for them.

That experience taught me something I wish I'd understood much earlier: being useful to a company doesn't necessarily mean they'll reward you for it.

Sometimes they'll happily let you keep doing more for the same amount of money for as long as you're willing to accept it.

Walking out was probably the first time I stopped worrying about what they needed from me and started thinking about what I needed for myself.

And honestly, I still think about that feeling every time I'm tempted to put up with something I shouldn't.

Guys, I have a bachelor's degree and some grad coursework too, but I'm still making less than $68K in an expensive city, and the work stress is seriously threatening me. I usually end up stuck in the office until 6:30-7:30pm, and the combination of the workload and the salary has become really draining.

For context, I work in training and employee development at a nonprofit.

So what's the deal, Reddit? Who's working a six-figure job where the stress and responsibility aren't slowly destroying their health? I feel like I won't be able to keep going like this much longer. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to reply.

In about 9 more hours, I'll be submitting my resignation from the job I've had for more than 11 years. No one there has any idea right now. Two things finally made me take this step, but honestly, neither of them would have happened without the courage I got from reading this subreddit, so thank you all.

The first reason is that I was supposed to be promoted, but a few months ago, my new manager basically told me directly that I'd be taking on the responsibilities of the higher position without the higher salary.

So I kept it simple: I changed my LinkedIn so recruiters could find me, answered a few calls, did some interviews, and now I'm going to another company with a 52% salary increase, doing roughly the same kind of work.

I'd be lying if I said I'm not nervous about starting somewhere new after spending such a long time at this place. But I finally understood that no company, no matter how much it pretends to be "like family," will give you your value unless you force it to.

I'm looking for a job right now because my salary barely covers me being able to live, let alone get ahead. I found an ad for a remote work-from-home job a few days ago and applied immediately, because if I can do the job from my apartment, I'm not going to waste my life sitting in an office.

The recruiter sent me an email to schedule a Zoom call at 4:30pm, which worked with the time I'd be done with work, so I told her okay, no problem.

Then it hit 4:30 and I joined the Zoom, only to find around 300 people sitting in the same meeting. No. Fuck that. I told the recruiter to fuck off and stay the hell away from me, and said that every one of us deserved more respect than the group-interview circus she was planning to run.

I'm not actively looking for work right now, but I was looking about 8 months ago, so my resume is still on several hiring sites. I still get job alerts in my field because I like to know what's out there in the market.

Right now I'm a gig worker. I move from job to job, but I'm in a union. On average, I make between 95-130k a year. And through the union, as long as I'm working regularly, I have fully covered health insurance, a retirement account, and a pension. Honestly, I'm very happy with what I do. The only downside is that moving from gig to gig can make things feel not very guaranteed, so every now and then I look at something more corporate and stable in my field.

A recruiter sent me a message through a job site I'm on. It was an office role from 8-4 and suitable for my experience. She sent an email saying she was excited to speak with me and wanted to schedule an interview. After a few emails, the job seemed reasonable enough for me to at least hear them out. I also did the usual checking to make sure it wasn't a fake posting or some weird scam.

Before we got to scheduling anything, I asked her what the pay range was. She came back with one of the things that annoys me most: "What compensation are you looking for in a position like this?" A shitty tactic either to lowball someone who doesn't know better, or to pressure someone who knows their worth into saying a lower number.

Since I don't need this job and truly don't care, I told her honestly: "Right now I make around 110k/yr with a retirement plan and pension. My health insurance is also covered with no premium coming out of my pocket. So the offer would need to beat that in some way for me to be interested in interviewing."

What I got after that was a ridiculous and rude email. I'm not going to post it word for word, but the general idea was:

"That is far outside the budget for this position and frankly not a reasonable expectation. We will not be moving forward with you as an applicant after these demands. Going forward, I suggest making yourself more attractive to employers by adjusting your expectations to better match your qualifications. You won't be successful with this attitude."

Girl, I literally just told you how much I make right now. If that's not in your budget, fine, no problem at all. But don't come lecture me about my value because your job posting can't compete. FFS

I'll answer a few things I keep seeing repeated so I don't have to keep writing the same reply over and over.

"How do you have benefits that good as a gig worker?" - UNION. I said that in the post lol. I can explain the boring details of how it works if people want, but yeah, unions are great. Stop believing every scary thing companies say about them...

"Do you make 95k/yr or are you just guessing from one job?" I'm basing that range on what I reported on my taxes over the last 4 tax years. The lowest year was 93K, and the highest year was 128K.

"Do you seriously think a corporate job would match what you make doing gig work?" Honestly, idk. That wasn't really the point.

"Report the recruiter" I filed a complaint through the hiring site.

Happy to answer anything if people are curious. Thanks, everyone.

I'm studying at a technical college to become an electrical tech. Someone in the career office told me about an alarms company that was looking for installers. He said the job paid $27 an hour. The commute was about 70 minutes, but $27 an hour right after I finish school was too good a number to ignore.

I got there a few minutes early and no one was there. I stood around for about 7 minutes until the receptionist arrived and let me in. I asked her when the interview was supposed to start, and she said, yeah, just sit in this room and wait for the manager. Then she told me to get comfortable because he never shows up on time.

The red flags started going off in my head, but I had already made the trip, and $27 an hour was still keeping me in the chair.

After about 50 minutes, I was getting annoyed, so I asked the receptionist: is this interview still happening? She told me the manager had just messaged her and that he was 15 minutes away. Honestly, I should have left then. But I stayed seated because I kept thinking about the pay.

Another 30 minutes passed and the manager finally walked in like nothing had happened. Then he told me he's intentionally late to interviews because it helps him find patient people. I tried to stay professional any way I could, and honestly, I did really well in the interview.

He wanted to hire me on the spot, but I always ask about the pay and benefits before saying yes. He smiled like that and said the pay was $110 a day.

I just sat there staring at him, confused. I told him career services had told me it was $27 an hour. He said straight up that he tells them that to get more techs to come in for an interview. Then he started whining that no one wants to work anymore and that it's impossible to find good people.

I was so pissed off that I told him I'd take the job. He told me to start on Wednesday. I'm not going.

I hope he gets pissed and calls me asking why I didn't show up. I'm planning to tell him: I jUsT dOn'T wAnT tO wOrK aNyMoRe.

I arrived at the building at 1:40 in the afternoon, right on time with the manager in the reception area. I checked in with the person at the desk, they called inside for me, and I was told he would come out "at any moment."

At 1:55, I turned around and left. 15 minutes. I understand this field, and there's no respectable reason to leave someone sitting and waiting for more than a little while without any update. To me, that's a big red flag that says: "We're seeing how much disrespect you'll put up with, because we need someone desperate enough to tolerate even more later."